New computer build

[Taneli]

My current computer has been running almost 10 years. Felt it was time for an upgrade now. Long story short, I went with full AMD build. Do various editing photo/video and (very) occasional gaming. Also likes silent builds so I tried to find components suited for a such build. Read more about spec in another thread. This is what I ended up with:

Computer build 2023 #01 by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr


Luckily I have this big carpenter-desk very suited for computer building

Computer build 2023 #02 by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr


Some things have changed since I last built a computer almost 10 years ago, but the CPU is still the same

Computer build 2023 #03 by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr


Here in place, you had to remove the attachments for cooler...

Computer build 2023 #04 by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr


...to fit this massive Noctua cooler! It really looks cool this

Computer build 2023 #05 by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr


And here with fans on it. The other components are mounted to the motherboard so I could finally put it inside the chassi. The "biggest" component tech leap was the SSD I think. They come as a chip now and are very small and fast (see the Samsung 980 Pro drive there).

Computer build 2023 #06 by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr


One great feature of this chassi is that it has 5¼ drive slots! Need my MDisc-drive sometimes so it was great finding this wonderful chassi which is almost perfect for me! Very easy to build also.

Computer build 2023 #07 by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr


Cable management on the back side was somewhat difficult though. Had to rearrange to get it all fit together. I also had to put the PSU up-side-down because I will run it hybrid mode for near silent operation.
Have prepared a second HDD drive bay to fit another Firecuda drive for RAID1 setup later.

Computer build 2023 #08 by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr

 

[Taneli]

Finally done with building! Looks very nice with glass side.

Computer build 2023 #09 by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr


The graphics card is massive! Luckily I went with ATX form factor this time to accomodate the bigger components.

Computer build 2023 #10 by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr


Chassi front is a bit sleek for my taste, had to put a logo there. 3D printed my logo and glued it there with the help of this jig. Got very good.

Computer build 2023 #11 by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr


Finished build here, the front has a magnetic cover that hides not only the optical drive but also a snack box!

Computer build 2023 #12 by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr


Fired up the computer. Have avoided RGB Led components but the GPU has some lights to it. Whatever, it looks cool when you have a transparent side.

Computer build 2023 #13 by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr


Here compared to my current computer. Somewhat similar but this time ATX instead of ITX. Back to basics

Computer build 2023 #14 by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr


So then came the moment, time for maiden! First thing is to enter BIOS and see if everything works and looks ok. All fans are running, the SSD self test was ok. All systems nominal.
Time to start Windows 11 installation and migration of old data.

Computer build 2023 #15 by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr


Feel satisfied with my new build. Hope it will work another 10 years. Probably I will change some drive along the way, otherway I think this will be it for long time to come.

 

[mike3996]

Good looking setup.
Mine will turn 10 in June. I am planning on building a new one in Fall -- Ryzen 9 5900 is on my shortlist at the moment. If the electricity prices plummet then 5900x might be an option.

 

[agentlossing]

Love it! Very clean and appreciable style. The CPU cooler and GPU actually do a really good job as accent pieces inside the case. I've been intrigued by AMD components, and considered a Ryzen build the last time I upgraded my PC but stuck with Intel as I found a good deal on a processor at a time when they were hard to find (early in chip shortage days). I do want to change cases, in my case a mini-ITX format, and something clean-looking and preferably white will probably be my goal.

 

[Taneli]

@agentlossing : yes my current is a mini-ITX. Really small that one. Used it several years without add-on graphics card. Wanted to change to a smaller case, had a vision of building a computer in a small treasure chest, would have been cool. But never found the time for it maybe a new HTPC build could be something like that, they open up interesting oportunities

 

[John King]

Great write up, Daniel. Looks great, spec wise.

I opted for a bit bigger box, with room for 4x 3.5" HDDs, 3x 5.25" bays, and 4x NVME.2 slots. Sufficient room to add more 3.5" drives or SSDs if required, and 6x SATA3 headers on the motherboard, if necessary. 2x SATA slots get sacrificed if using the 2x extra NVME.2 slots. I cannot see that problem ever arising. I am currently running 3x HDDs - 1x 4 TB 1x 3 TB and 1x 2 TB internally. The 4 TB drive is partitioned into 1x 3 TB with the balance spread for 3x old drive letters that used to reside on an old 500 GB HDD.

32 GB of 3200 MHz DDR4 RAM

Lots of USB3 connections on front and rear.

My new optical drive will handle Blu-ray disks.

Lots of 120mm fans, plus the 2 fans and heatsink on the graphics card. All runs at around 31-34 °C without additional cooling.

Hope that you are as happy with your new box as I am with mine ... .

 

[davidzvi]

Nice build, might have gone with a black Noctua since you have a glass side.

 

[Taneli]

@davidzvi : yes, or a white GPU can agree it looks a little odd. But I will never see it anyway. When I put the computer beside my desk leg you see there, I will never see anything of the interiors. What a shame. I would have like a solid side chassi but the white version only comes with glass side

 

[Taneli]

@John King , you have a solid drive plan. My weakest spot. But you got me into RAID for the first time in my life Will be great I think. Just have to revise the backup solution also. But that is next step.

 

[William Lewis]

I recently put Linux Mint 21.1 on my laptop. I'd have preferred to put FreeBSD on it but right now, only Linux deals with my Wi-Fi card. Sucks but it's still slightly better than WinDog 11.

I can do 99% of what I want to (the biggest problem is Steam and what is/isn't available on Linux. In the meantime, I do what I can.

 

[Taneli]

@William Lewis : Linux is very nice, I tried various Ubuntu-distros before. Used it both at home and at work actually. Found many great cross-platform options for daily use software. But couldn't get comfortable with Gimp. Used Photoshop very much at that time so I had to go back to Windows. But still runs and likes very much Thunderbird, Firefox, Libre Office and such great free software.

 

[Taneli]

Have been thinking of doing some follow-up here, there are some things to notice now after seven months with new computer

Have been very happy with my new computer except one thing, more on that later. But it was really great getting something new that are up to any task I throw at it. I have been doing various work, lots of CAD, some graphics manipulating and photo edit, some video editing and some gaming because suddenly I found that could be nice (for example running MS Flight Sim in high settings is quite demanding but stunningly beautiful).


- Besides the obvious thing you noticed (like how fast it was) when starting it up was actually quite loud. The new CPU architecture (and especially AMD) is very dynamic in appearance. It is like a full blood horse, when you give it a tap it runs like crazy. And the fan curves with it. I had to tune it down slightly and also adjust the fan curves (chassi and cpu) to have it more gentle. Not rush until it really is necessary, when pushing things really hard. The fan treshold was very low at stock settings. And now when running benchmark I get the same or even better values! And now it is actually decent quiet if you not push it, which happens rarely on general office work.


- (Speaking of settings, the stock memory clock was also low, you had to change from stock profile to XMP profile)


- Windows 11 is actually quite nice, feels very fresh and I really like the new look of things, especially the task bar with its smaller centered icons.


- The one thing I am not to happy with is the SSD drive. The Samsung 980 Pro. It turned dead the other week! Suddenly windows blue screened and I couldn't get my computer started anymore. To make a long story short, the controller on the drive is dead. I bought a new drive, WD Black. What a crap this SSD was, didn't even last a year before it failed on me. Well well, hopefully this new drive works a little better...




- Thanks to @John King I did get a solid backup plan. Bought an external USB3-box and fitted an 8TB WD Gold in it for use as off-site backup. Also I got a new NAS with x4 drives in RAID5 with BTRFS file system which will do more regular backups. Actually this off-site backup is what saved me this time (since that was the only backup I had fixed at that time). So I was up and running again with new system drive the next day!




- The graphics card is actually quite heavy, it hangs down on the corner where there is no support. Can't be good this. Designed and printed this roman column (in ancient Doric order style). Fits very good in there, I love the interior, nice and tidy.

Computer Inside by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr

 

[John King]

Glad that it worked for you, Daniel.

I use a Kingston Fury X 1 TB as my boot/system NVME.2 drive.