I used to be an avid PC builder way back in the day. I even used to build PC’s for coworkers (I’d basically sell to them at cost but I’d have left over floppy drives and such and so my benefit was being able to offload parts I didn’t need anymore.) Eventually I stopped following the industry and the industry stopped putting a ton of bloatware in the PC’s so I was fine with buying pre-built. I was buying Intel NUC PC’s for a while just because I wanted a small and light PC, but then I wanted one with more horsepower again. That’s when I found a clearance PC at Walmart and used that for the past 5 years or so.
Within the last 3 months or so, while Best Buy GC’s were being resold at 99%, I started buying a crap ton of BBY GCs. I then banked the rewards and then bought almost all of my parts from Best Buy. I decided to go with the new AMD Ryzen after hearing great things about it. These are the parts I went with:
- CPU – AMD Ryzen 5600X $300 – I had a 5800X, but Amazon shipped it in a polybag and the pins got bent, so I returned it. Plus I read that for what I needed, it wasn’t that much better than the 5600X. I do have a 5950X coming but that’ll be overkill. This was bought from someone in my Slack, not Best Buy.
- Motherboard – $190 Asus TUF Gaming X570 (I was worried about BIOS compatibility issues with the new Ryzen but had no issues)
- RAM – $190 8GB x 4 Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO. 32GB is prob overkill but I read 2 matching pairs is sometimes faster than 1 matching pair.
- SSD – $160 Samsung 970 EVO 1TB NVME SSD Looking back, I probably should have gotten the 2TB or the 980 PRO.
- AIO water cooler – $160 Corsair iCue H115i ELITE. I always thought water cooling was messy, but this was very easy to install.
- Video Card – $220 Radeon RX 580. I’m not gaming, so this was a good compromise
- Case – $150 NZXT H510 Elite case – I bought the cheaper $90 one but realized I wanted to be able to see the water cooler’s LED fans through the front, so I upgraded to this model. I also added $100 of 2 RGB case fans too cuz why not.
- Power Supply – $160 EVGA 850W probably overkill, but that’s what was recommended
- Keyboard – $160 Roccat Vulcan 121 RGB I spent one night researching best keyboards; this one popped up, and I must say, it’s NICE! Doesn’t click-clack like most mechanical keyboards and does feel really nice.
- Mouse – $130 Logitech G PRO wireless mouse. Highly rated wireless mouse. I don’t game, but it’s NICE. Very light; you can change the DPI with push of button. Very precise for a wireless mouse. Funny that I had bought the $150 SUPERLIGHT (next step up) but decided to resell it for $250 instead of keeping for myself.
- Monitor – $700 Samsung 49″ curved monitor. This was a splurge that I didn’t know I needed until I saw it. It’s basically 3 27″ monitors in one. Luckily I found an open box one for $700 instead of $800 new and it’s perfectly fine. This one I paid outright instead of using rewards
- Printer – $300 Brother laser color all in one. I love Brother printers. I also wanted an AIO so I could scan stuff. I also was unsure about color, but since it’s laser, it won’t dry out like inkjets so while I won’t use color much, at least it’s available.
Total all in for the computer – $1920 (of which $1620 came from rewards) plus another $700 for the monitor and $300 for printer (rewards).
Picture of the build:
Haven’t built a pc for probability 15 years. These days, was this setup basically plug and play?
Not sure what you mean by plug and play, but it’s basically the same; like riding a bike. The only ‘new’ thing was the water cooler install which I had never done before. Also a lot easier these days with fewer things like having an mvne ssd means no sata cable, no floppy drives or CD Drives, etc. That’s why it looks ‘cleaner’ than in years past.