Woo. Finally. I have built a new PC for the first time since 2008 (my Ship of Theseus PC doesn’t count). I made a 1.5+ hour pilgrimage to the closest Micro Center a few weekends ago to source all the parts. It was a fun experience. The store isn’t that big, but they had packed the aisles with as much stuff as possible. Even then, most of my parts were stored in the employee only “warehouse” section of the building. I wish I could had picked more pieces from a shelf than just the CPU and cooler from a shelf. It was still cool to walk into a store and walk out with a cart of parts. By far the busiest section of the store was 3D printing. I couldn’t count the number of people who came in to buy filament or new printer to get into the hobby.
My system is a Mini-ITX system rocking the following:
- AMD Ryzen R5 7600x3D
- Klevv 32GB DDR5 6000
- Klevv 2TB SSD
- ASRock AMD RX9070 (non-GRE)
- Gigabyte Mini-ITX B650 motherboard
- SSUPD Meshroom D Mini-ITX case
- Peerless Assasin 120 Mini cooler
- MSI 750W PSU
- OS: Fedora KDE Plasma
The reasoning for the parts was pretty basic:
- Must be in stock at the store
- Mini-ITX case that I think looks nice
- CPU cooler that will fit the case
- Cheapest Mini-ITX motherboard that isn’t ASRock
- 7600x3D CPU
- Cheapest 32GB 6000MT/s memory kit
- Cheapest 2TB SSD
- Cheapest RX9070 GPU
- Cheapest quality looking 750W PSU
I’ve got Fedora w/ KDE installed for the OS. It’s been the OS on my personal laptop for the past 1+ year and really like the experience. The living room PC has auto-login configured for boot with Steam launching in big picture mode. It’s the closest to a Steam Machine setup without using SteamOS or Bazzite. I don’t want to deal with the limitations of an immutable OS for now. I also don’t want to keep exiting a Game Mode to make changes to non-Steam games (it gets annoying on the SteamDeck).
Likes
- The case is all metal and mesh, making for plenty of air flow even without case fans.
- Fits a regular ATX size PSU.
- Small, but fairly easy to work in. I was hoping it could fit inside my TV stand, but the case is about an inch too wide. Instead, I have it sitting behind the TV, out of the way, but easy to reach.
- Mostly quiet, after dealing with issues in my dislike list.
- Great performance, even at 4K. I’m using Optiscaler or ProtonGE to unlock FSR4 when needed.
- Using a DualShock 4 controller for my main gaming input. It’s not a Steam controller, but the touchpad is good enough if I need to use the mouse to click a button.
Dislikes
- The Gigabyte motherboard has a tiny little 40mm fan attached to a heatsink for the SSD. It will spin up to 7000RPM and scream when the system is under load.
- I tried tuning the fan curve, but decided to just remove it and heatsink, altogether. I’ll take a warm SSD over this annoying fan
- I was having issues with the Realtek Wi-Fi/BT modules crashing and losing connectivity. I ended up buying a $20 Intel AX210 module based on other various Internet conversations, and it has been working great.
- The PSU isn’t completely silent. It’s hard to notice while gaming, but wish I had found something more quiet.
- Had to swap in a spare SSD with Windows to unlock the free game that came with the GPU. The whole process was an ordeal: Create AMDrewards.com account, add promo code from receipt, download app to verify I have eligible hardware, link AMDRewards to Steam (fails the first time), add game to Steam library (fails the first time).
Let me say, this was not an impulse decision. I had been wanting to do to build a PC for the living room for the past year. But there were a lot of financial hurdles in the way: medical bills from breaking my wrist, fixing the AC in my car, planning something big for my wife’s birthday & anniversary, family vacation, and more car fixes. And during all that time component costs skyrocketed. Worrying over money, plus a lot of other events happening in my life, pushed my stress and anxiety past it’s breaking point. I ended up checking into therapy this pass summer to get help. One of the big things we agreed I needed to work on was trying to refocus on things that I enjoy (something I had neglected for literal years). And after going back and forth with my financial advisor, we agreed I could cut back some retirement contributions and have more money month-to-month. That’s helped with some of the financial anxiety. And this PC is one of the first things I’ve done for myself in a long time. I don’t plan make big purchases like this. But having a little money to put towards hobbies or entertainment is something I’ve not allowed myself to have before now.
