Yesterday I finally built my first PC. I did it by myself, with only Google to help me out. It was a long process but in the end I found it pretty darn rewarding. So, I figured I should put a summary of events somewhere.
First, the part list. Everything but the case and OS were bought on Newegg. this was mostly because they generally had the best prices and (for the most part) free shipping. The case was bought on Amazon. The OS I got on eBay.
CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K - $235
GPU: ASUS Nvidia GTX 970 OC - $299
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 2400 - $45
Motherboard: ASUS Z170-A - $135 + $11 S&H = $146
PSU: Corsair CS-M Series 550W 80+ Gold Semi-Modular - $80
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper EVO 212 - $30
Storage: Corsair Force 2.5" 240GB SSD - $59
Case: NZXT S340 ATX Mid Tower Case Matte Black/Red - $85
OS: Windows 10 Pro - $20
Total: $999
So, a few things to note here. First, the CPU, GPU, and RAM were bought piecemeal 1-2 months before the rest of the components. This was mostly because of sales and the like. This also means that when I bought the 970 the Pascal architecture hadn't been announced yet. If it was, I may have sprung for a 1070. However, doing so would've added another $80-150 to the build, which would've pushed the build back 2-3 weeks.
Second, yes, I know, the storage there is paltry. When it came down to it, I only had enough left for an SSD or an HDD, not both. Given the option, I went with a small capacity SSD to serve as my boot drive. Plus, I'm only going to be slumming it with my SSD for a short while. Come Monday I'll be buying a 1-2TB HDD to serve as my primary storage drive. At the same time I'll also be buying a PCI Wi-Fi card. Getting a good ATX Z170 motherboard with wi-fi built in just wasn't an option. At the same time, using a cheap USB dongle (as I am right now) just isn't cutting it. Factoring the price of a 2TB drive (~$65) and the Wi-Fi card ($30-50), the total build will be about $1,100.
Also, yeah, I know, the price on that OS is mad low. This is the one area where I really cut corners in the build. I previously thought I had a way to get Windows free (legally), but it turns out I didn't. So, I had to scramble to get a copy of Windows 10 as cheaply as possible. Turns out people sell products keys on eBay on the cheap. Whether the keys are legit or not, it worked for me. ¯\_(ツ
_/¯
Anyway, the build was supposed to happen sometime Friday or Saturday. However, the person who sold the case on Amazon (they went by CHERRY BOMB) didn't bother to actually ship the thing until the end of the week, despite the order going in on Monday night, along with all the other components. So, I got an email from Amazon telling me my case had just shipped about an hour after the rest of the components showed up at my door. It eventually showed up on Monday.
The build itself went okay. There were only a few real hangups. I ended up having to apply thermal paste 3 times. I had to remove it the first time because I skipped a step or three putting on the cooler.. The second time I actually put the cooler on the wrong way. Beyond that, it was mostly getting getting cables where they were supposed to be. It took me about 20-30 minutes to figure out where the front panel LEDs plugged in.
The cords that came with the PSU had one quirk that has my PC looking less than ideal: the SATA power cords come in at a direction that clashes with the mounting of my SSD. So, my SSD is lifted up on one side to let the cable get to the port. Also the PSU I have has only 3 peripheral ports and one PCIe port. I have one peripheral port not being used right now. Not a huge amount of expandability there but for right now it'll work. Beyond that, cables on the one side are out of the way and unobtrusive. On the other side... well, they're kinda just stuck in corners. But that's okay!
After some monkeying with drivers and such I finally had a PC again! At least, one I could play games on that weren't Duck Game (which even on my laptop had framerate issues on certain user maps). The thing that stuck me the most was the boot time. I've only ever had PCs with HDD and not exactly fast CPUs. Seeing this thing go from power button to login screen in 20 seconds was and still is insane to me. Beyond that, I've thrown a few games at it and have had fantastic results.
The first thing I threw at it was DOOM 2016, specifically the demo of it. Everything was cranked to it's highest setting, apart from textures, which I literally could not put at max due to the 970's 4GB of VRAM. Literally never saw the FPS counter go below 60fps. This was even while I was recording the game via GameBar.
The next game was The Division, which I got for free with my graphics card. Results are less positive there. I had to tone more than a few settings down to get it to a stable 60. Having said that, it looks great even at that level.
Star Wars: Battlefront was next and it didn't even break a sweat. Stuck everything on Ultra, doesn't matter. 60. I even tried doing some downsampling, but I'm not 100% sure where I can stick that and still keep the 60. Still cool that it does it in-engine without requiring out of game fiddling. Speaking of which...
Next I tried CS:GO. Now, I knew it would handle max setting no problem. However, I decided to experiment with downsampling. I was able to get the Nvidia Control Panel to output in 1440p, but I wasn't able to for 4k. Will need to tinker with that. Regardless, it took didn't break a sweat.
Finally, the last thing I stuck in it was Forza Motorsport 6: Apex. After literally 2 days of downloading it (what the hell is up with the slow downloads in the Windows Store?) I powered it up, stuck everything on max, and the PC didn't even cough. What a beautiful game, JFC. Interestingly enough, it offers 1440p and (I'm assuming) 4k as resolution options in game. Might be worth a try for shits and gigs. However, one thing that sucks about it (and I certain this is due to UWP bollocks) is that Shadowplay refused to work in it. Possibly because it couldn't find the game on my drive. Makes sense, given that it's in a hidden file that even when revealed I can't access, despite having administrator privileges. Thanks Microsoft. I'll have to find some other way to track framerate in Store games.
Anyway, that's that. I hope some of you find this interesting? I kinda just wanted to get that down in words somewhere. It was certainly a learning experience. I'll definitely be reading more about the PSU next time. That is the only real down part of the build for me. Here are some pics of the system in you care:
