My main PC is an ever-shifting, questionably arranged agglomeration of components selected as if at random, initially designed and assembled by yours truly circa March of '22. Apparently, I have a lot to say about it.
The Ryzen 7 5700G is basically the 5800 except cheaper and you trade PCIe gen 4 support for an integrated GPU. This was important to me in case my dedicated GPU died or otherwise became unavailable. This has come in useful occasionally.
Admittedly, a bit overkill for the 65-watt chip it's attached to. I bought it because I was getting thermal throttling with the stock cooler, but when I took it off to put the new cooler on I discovered I hadn't mounted the stock cooler properly to begin with. The stock cooler, mounted correctly, would probably have sufficed, but frankly that mounting system was dogshit anyway. SecuFirm™ gang 4 lyfe.
Now that I have it, this cooler is great. Nothing specific to say, it just works and works very well. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the first and last CPU cooler I ever buy. My one complaint is that the fan clips are kind of annoying to deal with.
Nothing much to say here that you couldn't get from the product page on Newegg. Plenty of external I/O, though internal I/O has proven limited, and has yet to cause any problems with operation. I chose it partly for the included wireless functionality, which now mostly gets used for my bluetooth Xbox controller ever since I upgraded to a wired connection.
I recommend this motherboard if for some reason you're building an AM4 gaming system in $CURRENT_YEAR, but be warned that the screws holding the M.2 heatsinks down are made of cheese and will snap off if over-torqued. Don't ask me how I know. Also, the included Wi-Fi antenna is fugly and has an absolutely pathetic mounting magnet.
Good RAM. No complaints. I thought for a while that the XMP profiles weren't compatible with my CPU or something, but an update to my motherboard's BIOS solved that.
Used solely to store my OS and programs. Far bigger than necessary for that purpose, but no issues so far. Plenty fast and all that. I initially assumed it had DRAM, then I learned it didn't, then I learned that it's one of those drives that leeches off of your system memory instead of having an onboard cache, so make of that what you will.
This drive is mounted as /home, for convenient OS reinstalls and such-like. Also nice and zippy, but I suspect I'm not actually doing anything that would hit this thing hard enough to noticeably differentiate its performance from that of any other NVMe SSD. This one also uses your system memory as a cache, but that's fine. I've got plenty to go around.
The drive that used to fill this role was a WD Blue 1TB SATA SSD that started off serving the same purpose as an aftermarket upgrade to my old laptop, but got transplanted wholesale when I upgraded to the new system. That drive still functions, but since it holds all my most sensitive and irreplacable files, I elected to replace it for Peace Of Mind™ after my PSU exploded, and opted for a cheeky capacity upgrade while I was at it. Plus, this one was on sale for like, $90 off!
This drive is here as an overcorrection following years of gaming on laptops with tiny little SSDs in them. I mostly fill it with Legally Obtained Content™ and the dregs of my Steam library that I don't play very often. Absolutely no complaints thus far.
I seem to have accidentally gotten into building sleeper PCs. I promise I didn't mean to — I was drawn to this case for its superior expandability, greater ease of working-on, and massively increased piezo-buzzer-havingitude compared to the Corsair 110R this machine used to reside in. It just so happens to also be from 2004, back when "Pentium" was the name for Intel's flagship line of CPUs instead of their worst ones and I was learning to walk.
For all those reasons plus its absolutely charming aesthetic character, I really like this case. Unlike the last guy, I can actually get at the modular PSU without yanking it out and scratching all the paint off. It even constitutes an upgrade in terms of front I/O and airflow, after some aftermarket mods.
See, this case came with mounts for two 92mm fans, which is better than some of its contemporaries, but not nearly enough for several hundred watts of glistening, sinewy computing muscle. In order to bring it up to modern snuff, I cut a couple slightly sketchy speed holes in the bottom and 3D-printed a bracket and vent for the front drive bays, and mounted the 120mm fans out of my old case in those places. I also fitted some slightly goofy-looking aftermarket rubber feet to give the case more ground clearance to get better airflow from the bottom. Since I now have two entire fans blowing directly onto the GPU, I'd guess that it's actually getting better airflow than in the old case.
This power supply is a tad bit overkill for the system it's in — in spite of my new video card, I'm still running a 65-watt CPU. I've got so much headroom I could probably fit a second of the same GPU in here. I could probably get away with a 750-watt unit, but I've got good — or at least understandable — reasons for going this crazy.
I originally specced out this system with a much more sensible Seasonic Focus GX-650 rated for 650 watts, but despite being, by all accounts, the correct power supply for my use case at the time, it still died suddenly with a loud POP two and a half years into Seasonic's 10-year Worry-Free Warranty™. The RMA process was good, at least.
I wanted to get something less likely to suffer the same fate this time around, but having just lost a well-reviewed unit from a reputable brand with a good efficiency rating and a generous yet sensible rated wattage to nothing but bad luck, the only thing I could really do to maybe accomplish this other than just getting luckier was to buy something so overbuilt that it no longer regards my machine running at full bore as a significant load, hence this absolute goliath of a PSU. The original plan was to get a slightly more reasonable 850 watt unit instead, but this one was on a really good sale. I basically paid 850-watt money for it.
As of writing a few months after installing it in my system, my plan has yet to backfire. Time will tell if I made the right call.
It's really important to me that my computer have a disc drive, and this was the cheapest unit available that supported all the major formats. Like most of the parts in my computer, it functions reliably as advertised without significant issue and I don't have much to say on the matter. This thing isn't just for the Aesthetic™ — I have a decently large collection of CDs that I've ripped using my computer.
I used to have a WH14NS40, which is basically the same save for slightly worse performance in certain specific contexts and a weird firmware issue to do with ripping 4K blu-rays. I had no problems with it, but I had to cannibalize it from my main rig for a different build and ended up replacing it with this, the closest thing available to the exact same unit.
All perfectly fine fans. The 120mm Arctic P12s are good value at a good noise level, but in my experience the same cannot be said for their smaller fans, hence the premium Noctuas for the 92mm fan mounts.
I've also got random generic dust filters on all the intakes in a desperate attempt to sort of control the dust buildup inside my machine. It kind of works.
Fine, enough edging. Here's the part you're probably actually interested in, you filthy gamer.
I got this card used in late 2024 for circa half of its launch MSRP — I would not have been able to justify something this high-end brand new, especially at scalper prices when I was initially building this machine. I used to run an RX 6600 XT, but I had a project going which urgently required a quality video card and I'd been looking for an excuse to upgrade the one in my machine for a while, so out it came and a-scouring the eBay listings I went.
Gaming wise, the 6600 XT was about all I really needed. Frankly, I could probably get by on the integrated graphics in my CPU, but I quite like having two display outputs to complement my second monitor. This new GPU is ludicrous overkill for me in this department; it's marketed towards playing the latest triple-A titles at maxed-out settings in 4K, which means it completely pulverizes every PSX-graphics indie title I can throw at it with the overwhelming force and ruthless efficiency of the Chicxulub impactor.
The real reason I wanted this orbital nuke of a graphics processor was for Blender. If Blender Open Data is to be believed, this thing represents a more than doubling of the performance available to me in the Cycles rendering engine, which translates to a substantial improvement in render times. Of course, a mid-range Nvidia product would be better here than anything AMD is capable of, but as a known Linux user that was a no-go for me; I've heard nothing but horror stories about Nvidia GPUs and desktop Linux, and my personal experience frankly corroborates them. The venerable Mr. Torvalds said it best: fuck 'em.
There were a handful of GPUs in this performance class and approximate price bracket that I was considering — in fact, my original upgrade plan was a 7700 XT. I went with the 6800 XT because I deduced through the awesome power of spreadsheets that, with the current state of the used market, it had all the others beat in price-to-performance ratio, and it wasn't even close. I specifically went for the AMD reference model, since it was the only version with a short enough heatsink that I was confident it would fit in my case without any modifications.
I want it on record here that if I ever drop north of a grand on a 4090 or whatever the biggest baddest new this-or-a-used-car AAA-cruncher is and I haven't won the lottery, I am to be taken out back and shot like a lame horse. Frankly, I probably need some sense beaten into me if I'm buying lottery tickets to begin with.
This is my forever mouse. Excellent build quality, more than good enough performance for my casual gamer ass, and it takes AAs. I recently took it apart to replace the first component to start failing, the switch for the left mouse button. I intend to keep using this mouse until I can't get replacement parts for it, or I get carpal tunnel and have to upgrade to something with better ergonomics.
I generally prefer wired peripherals where possible, but the RF dongle this mouse uses has been rock-solid for me, as long as I don't keep it behind a bunch of EMI-blocking metal panels. My only real issue with this mouse is that the software for it doesn't work on Linux, but I only need that to configure the side buttons.
I would have just gotten a 100% keyboard, but they didn't have it in the chassis colour I wanted so I ended up with a TKL and separate numpad instead. I'm a huge fan of both, what with the open-source firmware and hot-swappable switches and all. I especially like the extra included keycaps for use with a Mac, not because I intend to use it with a mac, but because it lets me finally get rid of the fucking Windows logo on my keyboard.
Unless I lose them in a house fire or something, I think these units probably constitute my "endgame", as keyboard enthusiasts say. They have every feature I care about and every upgrade or change I can see myself caring to make is maximally easy. This is one of those things that I shelled out for with the intent of never, ever replacing it.
I bought this several years ago when I was still running Windows because I wanted maximum compatibility for minimum effort. It still works now that I'm on Linux, using bluetooth and with xpadneo installed. It's decent, no complaints, I'm sure it could be better but I don't use it enough to justify caring.
Another "endgame" purchase. Very good monitors, if I replace them it'll be because they broke. (Speak of the devil, one of them has been replaced under warranty since I originally wrote this section.) I truly don't care for OLEDs — they get burn-in, for god's sake, I thought we moved on from that in the early 2000's when LCDs became commonplace.
These are mounted on a cheap, AmazonBasics-tier VESA monitor stand that came with a huge metal foot that kind of defeated the purpose, but that I have since replaced with a much more compact combination of 3D-printed brackets and wood screws.
After a lifetime of losing headphones to frayed cables and the inevitable failure of poor quality materials, my top priority when getting my next nice pair of cans was durability, and Beyerdynamic's products fit the bill nicely. As a bonus, they also have excellent sound quality and are supremely comfortable.
The only issue with these headphones is the non-removable cable, which is an automatic deal-breaker for me. I purchased mine through a modding company that replaced that cable with a 4-pin mini XLR jack, which has proven to be a bit of a double-edged sword as finding sanely priced replacement cables for it is nigh impossible.
I'm also rocking aftermarket cat ears. I just don't trust the quality on the cheap novelty headphones that come with them built in.
Perfectly cromulent 12-inch display tablet. It doesn't completely work out of the box, but the proprietary driver program is at least available for Linux. I like that the stylus is completely passive and doesn't need to be charged, which is frankly an absurd thing for a stylus to require.
It's a USB webcam. The picture is good enough — better than most laptops — but it does some annoying auto-adjustment stuff that makes chroma-key shenanigans difficult at times. Standout features are the privacy shutter, indicator light when the camera is in use, and screw mount. I'm sure the microphone is adequate in a pinch, but I have no reason to use it.
Very good microphone. Probably as good as I'll ever need. Superb sound quality; my friends in voice chat complain whenever they hear me on anything else. I'd have gotten the XLR version but I did not yet own an audio interface and didn't want to shell out for one just for this.
In what is becoming a running theme, it sits on a perhaps unbefitting $20 no-name mic arm from Amazon, with matching cheap shock mount and pop filter. They work, though. The springs on the arm are loud and, as my friends are keen to point out every time, quite audible through the mic.
Nothing to write home about for the most part. It's a good quality audio interface with the amount of I/O I presently need, which is to say two mono inputs, and it mostly works fine on Linux. Bizarrely, though, between this and my Benhringer Model D, the only device with a MIDI interface that's recognized by my computer is the analog synthesizer.