The start of this blog happens, perhaps not coincidentally, to follow immediately after the construction of my first PC build. Obviously This is not the first computer I’ve ever owned. My family got their first computer when I was in the fourth grade if memory serves and it kicked off a lifelong appreciation for PC gaming. However, I didn’t grow up with much appreciation for the computer sciences. Thus, the technical specs of PCs meant very little to us and building a PC for ourselves was not an option.
In my early life we went through a number of desktop PCs that were lost to various issues often attributed to viruses. With each new PC we seemed to downgrade in the interest of saving money on a machine that appeared to be a consumable rather than an asset. This largely continued through highschool when I finally got my first laptop to use rather than the increasingly senile family computer. However, I got the computer in 2011 but it was actually a refurbished Dell Workstation from the year 2000 that ran Windows XP and was larger than many epic fantasy novels. My ‘new’ computer would remain a talking point over the years to come as people saw me use it to type out essays and play games in my first year of university.
During my freshman year my dinosaur of a laptop was increasingly showing its age. Every paper I submitted that year was saved every five minutes to help neutralise the effects of recurring system crashes that would happen during the course of every homework session. Not to mention that the machine could no longer run even the early versions of Minecraft. This became increasingly bothersome to me as my new friends in university got into League of Legends, which I enjoyed and wanted to join in on but my laptop would lobotomize itself as soon as I even attempted to download the installer.
After completing my first year I had made up my mind, I needed a new computer. Again I bumped into my lack of computer knowledge. At this point computers were a means to an end rather than something of interest to me on their own. So, a build was still out of the question. Plus, I needed something portable to take with me to campus which meant a laptop was the path I was taking. However, I wasn’t going to be adopting another prehistoric brick. Instead I went to Canada Computers and picked up a gaming laptop. I went with a Lenovo Y510P Ideapad with an Intel i-7 4700MQ, 8 GB of Ram and a GeForce GT 755M. It might not have been the beefiest gaming laptop of the time but I loved it and it opened the door for me to dive more into PC gaming and eventually computers in general. And, most importantly it got me to where I am today, finally ready to retire the old beast and build myself a new daily driver.
This time I wasn’t limited by needing a laptop so I was able to build a desktop and maximize my budget while allowing for further upgrades in the future. I was still limited by budget but was able to get 12-month interest free financing on the components, which is admittedly a scary concept since I could easily overspend and eventually tank my credit, but that’s a problem for future Matt (cries in poverty).
After months of research and deal searching, I decided to build my new system around a Rysen 9 5900x that came as a bundle deal with a ROG Strix B550. I then picked up 32 GB of dual channel RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD. For cooling I went with the biggest Noctua cooler I could get, the NH-D15 and for power I got an 80+ Gold 750 watt PSU from Corsair. To top it off I got a GeForce RTX 3060 to handle the graphics. It might not make for the best PC in the world but for a relatively small budget I was going to have the most computing power I had ever had.
Although I had gained much more knowledge about computers over the years, this was still going to be my first time building my own computer so I called in some help. A friend of mine had built his own PC a year prior so I asked him to help out. After going with me to pick up the components, we went back to my apartment to start building. Overall, the build went well with very few issues. However, when we went to install the motherboard into the case we realized a problem. I had been given an old case by another friend but it was quite old and turns out it was missing the motherboard mounting hardware. In addition, it turns out the case was thinner than we thought and the big ol’ Noctua cooler wouldn’t fit with the side panel on. So, back we went to Memory Express to pick up a new case. I decided to go with a Corsair 5000D AIRFLOW, then, after a lunch break, the build went smoothly and it even posted on the first try. After a windows install and some driver updates I was all set. I finally have a kick ass PC that can do everything I want it to.
Ultimately the experience was super fun and part of me wants to go out and get another one just to build it again. It was, of course, pretty stressful as well but I think that was part of the fun. Luckily for me I left a lot of potential upgrades open for the future so, although the PC is up and running, I will still have fun tinkering on it in the years to come. But, for now it’s time to download some games and have some fun.
The Matter 
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