It's been exactly a year since I built my first AMD system when Ryzen 2 was released, and this time around, I'm building another one for my big bro!
Watch the video:
Last year, roughly around July, I built my first AMD system when the Ryzen 3000 series was released. Being an early adopter, there were a couple of hiccups between the new Ryzen processors and the last generation motherboards, especially with MSI boards.
This prompted me to make a video on my journey from building it to making it work- to my surprise, it has now garnered over 40 thousand views and a dozen of subscriptions. Big big thanks to everyone who watched, subbed, linked and commented on that video as well as on my other videos.
And here we are, one year later. The BIOS and compatibility issues have been resolved, with MSI releasing their MAX boards, which are the same as their old boards, except that their BIOS have been updated to be fully compatible with the Ryzen 3000 series.
So during quarantine, my big brother asked me to build a PC for him- to be used for work, running virtual machines for onlinse security and stuff, as well as a bit of gaming.
I put up a list of parts that, in paper, would be an upgrade from his 2017 15" MacBook Pro. After a few days of back and forth discussing his preferences, budget etc. We finally tried buying at the PC center of Manila- Gilmore. Specifically one of the more famous stored there, PC Hub.
What greeted us was a long ass line outside the store- and everyone was outside because only a maximum of 4 customers are allowed inside, with there being a pandemic and all.
We just came back another day and went there before opening time, they open at 10am so I was there around 9:30. There was already a line, and I was the 10th. I got inside around 12 noon, finished the transaction at 12:30, and I was asked to come back 2 hours later since they have a backlog of products to prepare.
I was like, what? 2 hours? But I just let it pass since these are indeed abnormal times. We ate lunch at a nearby Shakey's, heyyy, you can dine in now, and went back for the parts after strolling in Robinsons Magnolia for a bit.
Pro tip: we couldn't find any parking around Gilmore. Your best bet is to park at Robinsons Magnolia and walk or talk a cab from there to save you from a ton of hassle.
Anyway, enough with the talk, let's begin with the actual building- starting with the parts. I'll be sharing the price and where I bought them as we go through with the video.
WHICH PARTS DID WE GET?
For the CPU, we have an AMD Ryzen 3500X. A budget 3600X with 6 cores nd 6 threads- somewhat middleground between gaming, where single core reigns as king, and creative workloads, where more cores and threads is better.
For the motherboard, we have the Gigabyte B450I Aorus Pro Wifi- an ITX size board for a smaller form factor. I was planning to buy the ATX version of this but this is the only decent board left in PCHub at the time.
For RAM we have 32GB of Patriot Viper Steel, 3200MHZ, as we wouldn't want to get anything below 3000MHZ because Ryzen loves more memory hertz. This is 8x2 btw, and comes a lot cheaper because there's no RGB.
Next is the Patriot P300 M.2 NVME, our main storage device. 1700MB read, and 1100MB write, 5 times faster than your usual Sata III SSDs. I was planning to buy the Adata SX8200 with 3500MB write and read speeds, but alas, no stock.
For the video card we have the Zotac GTX 1070TI. Reason being I went for a 10 series is because their prices have significantly dropped, and the RTX 2070, which costs thrice the price, is only 10% better than this one as per UserBenchmark.com. The 1070TI is good for 1080p 144HZ or 1440p 60HZ gaming.
For the monitor, we have a 25" 1080p 144hz Acer monitor.
For the Power Supply Unit, I went with a 620w Full-modular Seasonic M12ii Evo Edition. Seasonic, because it's a known brand, broze because it's chepear, and full-modular for easier cable management.
For UPS, we have a 650va APC UPS. Generally you should get a UPS with a VA twice the wattage of your PSU. In this case, the system we have doesn't actually run 620w and we just need about a minute from the UPS to save files and shut down.
For extra storage, we have a 1TB Western Digital Blue, typical HDD that runs 7200rpm. The usual.
For the computer case, we have the Cooler Master Masterbox Q300L. It's an M-ATX and ITX case with a transparent and platic right side. It was the only decent case we found in the entire Cyberzone of SM Megamall at the time.
For the fans, we have ID-Cooling's DF-12025-RGB trio, which are pretty decent. They run at 900-2000rpm on load.
BUILDING PHOTOS
There aren't that many pictures, but here are some I took while building the PC.
FINALLY DONE!
The build was a success, and I'm very happy that there wasn't much trouble we encountered. Adding all the costs of the parts mentioned in the video, it brings us to a grand total of 61,094 pesos, or roughly around 1,200 US dollars.
Not bad, because based from experience, you wouldn't be able to build a PC of this caliber at this price a year ago- mainly because the prices of some of the crucial parts have dropped- mainly the 10 series graphics cards, the NVMEs as well as 144Hz monitors. This is also thanks to AMD for their Ryzen processors that are competitively priced alongside Intel systems.
I guess that's it for this article- I might do a follow up video where I'll bench test my brother's new PC. And maybe for another video, I'm thinking of doing my yearly maintenance soon where I clean my desktop tower, change the thermal paste on the processor, etc. Subscribe to the site and my channel for future updates!
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