I considered building PCs a bit of a hobby from about 2001 up until 2012. Life happened, priorities changed, all of that fun stuff. So, after a really long hiatus and a good 3 years with a PS5 to keep me content gaming wise, I decided it was time to jump back in with the big boys and get something a little more powerful.
I spent the better part of two weeks researching and reading, going through build iterations on PC Part Picker. Finally, I settled on a build in the $2,500 range. I was going to need everything though, short of a monitor --although that will eventually come after I finish redoing my gaming room. For now, I’m using my 55" Samsung S95B QD-OLED TV and it’s doing nicely but I do worry about burn-in. Right now I’m eyeing the Alienware AW3225QF monitor to grab here in a couple of months, maybe catch it on sale. I can wait this one out honestly.
The STEALTH build
- Antec 1 FT Performance Full Tower Case
- Seasonic Vertex PX-1000 80+ Platinum 1000W PSU
- Asus TUF Gaming X670E-Plus WiFi Motherboard
- AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8-Core CPU
- PNY Verto GeForce RTX 4080 Super 16GB
- 32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo DDR5-6000 RAM
- Western Digital Black SN850X 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD
- Arctic Liquid Freezer III 280 AIO Cooler
- Logitech G515 TKL Wireless Keyboard & Logitech G502X Wireless Mouse
I tried to avoid RGB lighting as much as I possibly could, but it seems that it’s an almost impossible task these days. Fortunately, it’s not too gawdy and the only lights are on the memory, a small spot on the mobo and then the KB & Mouse. The latter two are beneficial though so they don’t bother me at all.
The only thing I’m really having trouble with is figuring out all of the new performance and overclocking features of modern hardware. Man has A LOT changed. It used to be so much simpler just tweaking voltage, front side bus speed and multipliers. It feels like you practically have to have a degree to be able to maximize performance on these new PCs! If anyone has any suggestions or guides for my specific setup that would be awesome. I’ve been looking around now that everything is assembled, and Windows 11 is installed.
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Enjoy that new PC smell when the hardware gets warm :).
Congrats!
At this point I’d just say enjoy the new build.
Easy first steps. Enable the XMP profile in the bios to get the most out of your ram since ryzen is very sensitive to that.
Otherwise, I’d leave it as-is. Maybe grab 3DMark on sale ($5 or so) from steam and bench your system just to make sure you’re within expected results compared to others.
PBO for the cpu pretty much gets you 90% there on your max cpu overclock plus a little more voltage than you’d have with a manual one. The X3D cpus are really thick with the stacked cache so they do require decent cooling compared to non X3D skus. So it may just run a little warm but nothing crazy.
The big thing these days for gpu’s is undervolting. I’ve been able to cut out 50w or so from my 3080 with no discernible performance hit when coupled with my 5600x. Check out the Optimum YouTube channel (formerly Optimum Tech) on his undervolting results. His videos are a little older but are applicable to most gpus that are power hungry.
if you overclock that ram 5200mhz is the top that cpu supports if that helps
each cpu supports different max ram speed
nice build
Dig the cable management, very neat!
It looks great, except for that fan cable running outside of the case. Why did you choose that routing?
I also built a computer after several years out of the scene, and specifically chose non-rgb parts. But then once I put the tinted glass side on the case, I couldn’t see the parts at all. So I replaced the fans with rbg fans. I think it looks pretty slick
Which fan? The rear exhaust? I think it just looks that way, but there aren’t any cables running from inside the case to the outside. I did wrap the fan’s cable around the fan frame and then into the mobo header because it was such a long cable, and it was the first thing I thought of to clean it up. The HDMI cable in the back kind of makes it look like it’s running outside the case in the first pic.
I think you’re right though, the RGB on the memory is growing on me. I might be too old for more flash than that though lol. All of the flashy lights would be screaming for my ADD’s attention.
Yeah, mean the cable on the outside of the case behind the computer. Do you have a braided power cable or something?
It’s the HDMI cord, and yes, it is braided. Zeskit Maya HDMI 2.1 to be exact. Fit the specs, it’s reviewed well, and it’s not ripping me off by costing more than any digital signal interface should. I still don’t understand why anyone would ever pay more than $20 for an HDMI cord, unless you’re running some crazy distance that requires active power for repeaters or something.
I had originally intended to place my PC further away than it is presently, so now I’ve got this 10ft long cord when a nice little 2-3ft would have sufficed. Oh well, at least I can move it around the room if the need ever arises. I’ll likely have a monitor and proper desk before that ever happens though. You all should see the “desk” I’m using. It’s for people that ride exercise bikes, but it actually works very well for how I’m using it. My only complaint is that it was $100 and it doesn’t provide a whole lot of space. I might return it and just get a proper desk, because once I do, I’ll really have no use for this thing.
Ah okay, super cool build then!
There’s a whole lot of data moving through HDMI cables when using 4k HDR, and 5.1 audio (even moreso when the audio is uncompressed). I spent $50 each for a couple of HDMI cables because the ones I was getting from Amazon kept overheating and dropping signal in the middle of a baseball game, and in the middle of playing Diablo 4 with my wife. So I went down to the store and bought the best ones they had. The problem went away completely. I’ll check out Zeskit Maya if I ever need another 2.1 HDMI cable.
That’s a really nice looking case, mate!
OMG nice build! I’m waiting on RDNA4 to finally upgrade my setup to AM5 and by then I hope we already have the X3D variants of the 9000 series from AMD too, but daily driving my RTX 2060 6GB in 2024 on both Windows and Linux has been quite the painful experience…
That’s the same case I recently used when rebuilding my old machine.
That’s a good looking PC right there, great specs, and a very solid build. Congrats and nice work putting that together!
As others have said, congrats on the new build :)
I assembled a desktop* for myself in 2021 after a long run on an ol’ Dino Laptop. I had similar feelings - a LOT had changed. I was able to avoid RGB for all the internal components, but it did take some looking.
RGB lights on memory, etc. look nice if you have a window in your case and keep it on your desktop - doubling as artwork. I’ve seen some very pretty-looking builds out there!
*Deskbottom would be more like it. I keep the case on the floor under my desk.
