blog
My First PC Build
2023-01-26 02:35:00 +0000
#personal
About 3 weeks ago, I suddenly decided I wanted to build a PC. I have never ever built one. Being a Mac user, I have never really thought of needing to build one. I kind of got stuck to Apple's computer hardware philosophy for a long time -- let Apple choose the components for you and let them build it for you.
My youngest brother had a huge influence on this decision. He builds his own PC. So he gave me all kinds of tips. He has just a built a new PC and so he had this older PC he built a few years ago lying around in our house. He had to leave the PC since he was moving to Montréal and he could not take it with him. He pretty much just took out the RAM and left everything else as is. He told me I could have the leftover parts and use them for building my own PC.
So I went online shopping for parts. I have decided to take out the following from his old PC and use them for my planned PC:
Power Supply Unit (EVGA 600 BQ)
One of the fans, the white one (it came with the computer case)
Graphics card (Gigabyte GEFORCE GTX 970)
128 GB Samsung SSD
1TB WDC HDD
Seagate HDD (I can't remember the storage size)
These are the parts I bought myself:
CPU (Intel Core i5-11600K - Core i5 11th Gen Rocket Lake 6-Core 3.9 GHz LGA 1200 125W Intel UHD Graphics 750 Desktop Processor - BX8070811600K) - $199.99. On sale. Original Price $299.99.
Motherboard (ASUS ROG STRIX B560-A GAMING WIFI LGA 1200 Intel B560 SATA 6Gb/s ATX Intel Motherboard) - $282.99
Computer Case (Fractal Design Focus G White ATX Mid Tower Computer Case) - $74.99
CPU cooling fan (DeepCool GAMMAXX AG400 ARGB CPU Air Cooler All-White 5V-3Pin Sync 220w TDP 6mm x 4 Copper Heat Pipes CPU Cooler with 120mm Fan PWM 2000RPM 75.89CFM for Intel LGA 1700/1200/1151/1150/1155 AMD AM5/AM4) - $39.99
Memory (Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz C16 Desktop Memory Kit - White (CMK16GX4M2B3200C16W)) - $77.99
Bluray disk drive (internal) - $20. Used from Facebook Marketplace.
Keyboard (Dell) - $7.99. Used from Value Village.
Mouse (Dell) - $3.99. Used from Value Village.
I already have a monitor and a small bluetooth speaker which I have decided to use to use with this PC. In total, I have spent $748.41 and with the tax and shipping costs included, $840.44.
I think it was not too bad. I did save a lot of money thanks to my brother’s generosity.
For my operating system, I chose to install Fedora Workstation 37 because it's free and open source. I was extremely impressed how all the parts worked with this OS -- I mean every single component and hardware feature! I wanted to install Windows because I was worried some of the parts would not work (based on my previous experience installing Linux and FreeBSD... but that was years ago). I DO NOT NEED WINDOWS! So that saved me $169! I have been extremely happy using Fedora Workstation. Easy to install, easy to use, and yet it still offers options for power users like myself! I highly recommend it. I have been using Fedora WS and free opensource programs for Linux with it and everything seems very impressive. I can pretty much do most of my regular workflows that I do on my Mac with this machine!
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