My first desktop PC

2025-03-29

I’ve only owned laptops all my life. Recently I felt the desire for a powerful desktop PC.

I decided to assemble it myself to save some money.
I planned to spend ~1500 euros. At the end the total spent was ~1700 euros.

Motherboard

I wanted a small board, but big enough to fit two NVMes and a decent graphic card. The Micro-ATX is best compromise for me.
Turns out my favourite form factor is the cheapest one. Happy about it.

GIGABYTE B850M AORUS ELITE WIFI6E ICE

€284,88

CPU

Knowing nothing about the state of the art of CPUs, I started from the latest and greatest Ryzen (which I believe is the 9950X3D). It costs a bit too much for me. After a bit of specs/prices comparisons I decided for the 9900X, which again is a good compromise for me.

AMD Ryzen 9900X

AM5. 12 cores up to 5.6 GHz. 120W TDP. 76MB cache.

cpu1

cpu2

cpu3

€495,67

Cooler

I’m cooling it with some liquid.

MSI MAG CORELIQUID E240

liquid

€99

RAM

Hmm… Enough of it and fast enough sounds good.

2 x 16 GB. 6000MHz DDR5.

ram

€89,8

Storage

I bought a new NVMe. Never had problems with Crucial.

Crucial P3 Plus 1 TB. M2 2280.

nvme

€77,99

Power supply

I don’t know exactly how much power I’ll need but 850 W will be enough.

I got one that should be good in terms of power efficiency.
Something with PLATINUM written on it should be OK. See 80 Plus.

Corsair SF850

power

€199,9

Case

I like seeing what’s inside. It needs glass. Also want it to be small.

Mars Gaming MC-SE

case

Cons: it lacks a USB C port.

€45,5

GPU

Fuck Nvidia.

The best from AMD costs too much. I got something that’s just OK. Hopefully I’ll upgrade in the future. The PCIe 5 slot on the MB is quite future proof.

Radeon RX 7600 XT (GIGABYTE board)

16 GB RAM

gpu1