Building My 1st PC- Step 3 Building It

in #pc3 years ago (edited)

Finally, I ordered everything and got it and was able to build the final machine. It took about a total of 3 days to get everything from when the first part was ordered(though, everything got here within 2 days of ordering them, I just stagnated the ordering by 1 day).

My final specs:

Cudy WE3000 Wifi + Bluetooth Card
WD_Black SN750 1TB NVMe
Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3600
NZXT H510
Thermaltake Smart 500W 80+ White
MSI B550 GAMING PLUS
AMD - Ryzen 5 3600X
MSI - AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB

I did skimp out on a few of the parts, especially the power supply, but it was really cheap(I paid $32 for it) and I didn't want to get something a little bit better that I probably was going to have to upgrade when I upgraded my GPU anyways.

Building wasn't too hard of a process. It took me a total of about 2 hours but I did some pretty stupid things and so next time I can easily get it under an hour and a half knowing what I do now(and someone else I know does one to build a PC soon too so I will get a next time on building).

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The first step was to install the CPU and and the heatsink onto the motherboard. That wasn't too hard. I was scared when inserting the CPU into the MB just because I had the possibility of breaking it if I did something stupid like facing it the wrong way, but I simply matched the triangles and that was easy. I did mess up and not check to see if there was any plastic on the thermal past that was pre applied and so I had to later open it and check then, but the answer is no, there wasn't any plastic so I wasted time on nothing there. But better safe than sorry.

Then was installing the SSD. My screwdriver didn't work and so I had to use a weird one there. But hey, whatever works right? Installing that was pretty easy. Just insert it in at an angle and screw in the other screw. At that point I hadn't received the RAM yet and I was hoping it would come early the next day so I just built it that night(and it did) ramless.

Then I prepped my case.

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The standoff were pre included so that made my life a lot easier. I inserted the power supply to the bottom, and then put the motherboard on. Now here's my first really stupid thing. I was using the wrong screws for about 10 minutes. After wondering why they wouldn't fit, I consulted the manual and realized that I was a dummy and moved over to using the right ones. That made it a lot easier. Then I realized why all the videos recommended a long magnetic screwdriver(I had a medium sized magnetic but not too strong screwdriver). There was one screw that I just couldn't get in no matter what I tried. Finally I realized I had to remove the fan on top to make it easier to get that screw in and so I did.

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Once that was all good, I inserted the GPU in and connected all the cables needed. That was actually one of the hardest part. I didn't realize that I had a fan header at the bottom of my motherboard and I rerouted a cable to the side making me do a lot of unnecessary work. My cable management work wasn't the greatest but because I plan on changing the power supply I didn't care too much.

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At this point, I had a wifi card that isn't the one I have listed in the specs. Thats because I exchanged it because this one didn't have bluetooth support. Then came the hard part, waiting for the RAM to come in.

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The next morning, a miracle happened and the RAM arrived shortly after I got up. I inserted it in(though at first only one stick was all the way in, the one on the right hasn't clicked on the bottom so it wasn't being read). I powered it up praying for the best and boom, it turned on. She worked and that was great. Next step was setting it up(and boy was that fun), but thats for the next post.

I'd like to thank @foxon @deathwing and @cadawg for helping me when I got stuck building, especially @foxon. Without his help it would have been a much more painful build.

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Nice work and pretty build.

I like the white case.

Is this an everyday machine for gaming?
What OS are you planning to run?

Thank you, the case is very beautiful(even more in person than in pictures) and everyone who's seen it compliments it. I plan on using it mostly for everyday tasks(hence the really cheap GPU) with some programming and very light gaming involved(playing Batman Arkham Origins right now, a 7 year old game and it runs very well). I'm using windows for now, but am thinking of adding linux in either a VM(I would want to get my second kit of 16 gb of ram first) or linux dual boot.

You can run Linux natively in Windows 10 very easily using Windows subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2).
See my post re setting up a witness using it.

If you got another 16Gb of RAM you could comfortably run a witness or seed node without impacting the performance of the PC for your everyday work or gaming.

This is much simpler and will have better performance than a VM because its deeply integrated in Windows and runs the Linux kernel natively (not via emulation).

I definitely need to look into WSL2, I'll check the post out. Downloading 300 gigs of data will make my isp not happy. I've got limited data even at in home wifi.

I often forget it's not always a simple thing building your first computer, Having done so myself for the last 20 years It's a doddle for the most part... Except when you go completely crazy and spend close upwards too £7,000 on bits and spent 3+ months modding a case to make it look cooler.

Do you plan on getting moar RGB? =p

Lol I don't even have 7 grand to spend so thats just insane. I'm actually not really a fan of RGB. If anything, I'll get white led and a diffuser so I can show off the internals a bit more. Right now I have my ram telling me the temperature of my cpu and gpu(left stick tells cpu, right gpu) and the one on the MB is set to look pretty. Any tips for a beginner? Especially about upgrading parts as thats my next step.

I guess with upgrading parts is make sure you check for compatibility, although most things are backwards compatible these days you usually lose performance as a result. For instance PCI-e gen 4 over pci-e gen 3.

Why the Wifi/bluetooh card and what was the final build price?

I didn't want to run ethernet up to my room so I needed wifi. Its fast enough and I'm happy. I also don't have audio on my monitor and so my only decent way of getting sound is bluetooth headphones. I could use cables but it gets weird since the port is on the left side of my headphones and the case is to the right of me, plus the cable is too short.

As for price here it is(with tax and "shipping")

Wifi+Bluetooth = $23.11
SSD = $143.43
RAM = $95.61 (a second kit of this will be bought sometime in the new year)
Case = $74.36
Power Supply = $30.68
MotherBoard = $164.99
CPU = $260.30
GPU = $195.55

Adding it all up we get a total of $988.03, which was under my goal of $1,000(though I was thinking 1k pre tax so considering I was below budget with tax and shipping I'm happy). If you add in the prime I bought($6.49) we are still below. Normally I'd use my cousin's prime but because I was ordering a lot of things which could potentially be DOA, I didn't want to have to bother him too much.

You should go straight to Linux, I use ubuntu 20.04 desktop myself. You can always run Windows in a VM. 16GB would allow you to run that.

PS. I thought you were a MAC guy 🙃

Who knows, I might do that :) For now though I'm going to stick to a OS I'm more familiar with using with a GUI.

It depends, apple does some things well and sucks elsewhere, same with Microsoft.