I built a PC – Will Never buy Another Pre-Built Machine

During the initial pandemic lockdown in 2021, I decided to build a PC from scratch.  What drove me to do was wanting to play Microsoft Flight Simulator as well as just doing it for the fun of it.  You can see a picture of the finished product will RGB l

The build took me about 6 hrs over 2 days mainly because I had not done this before and was using a Youtube Video as a reference. If you have changed memory or replaced a hard drive in a PC you can probably build your own PC.  Below is a list of what you will need to build the pc.  I did not post models and prices because they have changed since I built this one. But my total outlay was about $1100.00 for everything.

Why Build From Scratch?

• You are familiar with every part of the system.
• You can replace or upgrade any part for repair or bring it  up to date as new tech is release
• Cheaper to replace individual parts than to buy a brand new machine every 3 years.
• You can void the warranty – this is none
• There are more system utilities that are kept more up to date than the typical pre-built computer vendors provide
• After configuration and  tweaks by system boots up to windows 11 in 3secs

What are the cons of build from scratch?

• You may be on your own when it comes to troubleshooting issues.
• There is an entire sub-culture you can access for help so the previous comment is for this not familiar with finding these resources
• All system updates such as BIOS and some drives are on you to do, Once you have an OS installed there are utilities to do these updates
• The higher-end Graphics Cards (GPU) can cost more than all the other components combined.
• Mess up a BIOS upgrade and your system will not boot. It’s fixable but not pretty.

Parts Needed

• PC case – need to make sure it fits your motherboard, graphics cards, fan, power supply, etc
• Motherboard
• CPU –  ARM or Intel, I chose ARM because of the architecture  (AMD Rizen 5 with 6 Cores)
• fan – to cool the CPU I upgraded the original one
• Power Supply
• Memory –  My system has 32GB
• Storage  – I have 2- 500GB nvMe drives which are faster than a SATA SSD drive
• Graphics card  – Radeon 580.  This will be upgraded when prices get less crazy

What’s it like after a year

So far I have had no problems with the system. I have done 3 BIOS updates and numerous driver updates. Ran Windows 10 up until  2022 and have been running Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 with good success. The only issue I have is the graphics card performance. It’s good any game but FS 2020 is a graphics hog so I have to run the game on a medium graphics level. Recently upgraded to Windows 11 after the CPU vendor put out an update to address issues with Windows 11 disk performance. But once updated boot time is still 3-4 secs.