Hello and welcome,
You are about to witness how I went from a $1K budget build that was supposed to be used for work to a now $6K+ build... I have ZERO experience building PC's but others I have met along my journey insisted that I share my build with others as there are people out there that genuinely enjoy this and after my experience I can say that I truly do enjoy it as well.
To start the story I was walking through Walmart one day looking for a WiFi adapter for my work issued desktop (something Dell that is extremely underwhelming and sucks) as I was going to be taking my desktop setup with me somewhere that did not have direct ethernet access. As I walk through the Walmart I start to look at these nice computers thinking to myself why not just get a nice desktop that I can really make my own and enjoy at the same time? The thought of not having big brother watching, can download whatever I want (without having the admin permission popup & getting denied) along with better performance was riveting! I knew someone that was fairly educated when it came to building PC's so I thought to myself let me reach out and see if this is worth it.
My main question was if my budget is $1K would building my own computer net me better performance than buying a computer for $1K at the store? He told me "Yes" so at that point I knew what I had to do. Granted I had not a single Idea of what I was doing and they were in a different state so I was going to be venturing into this solely with over-the-phone consultation. I didn't even know how to pick out a mother board, at this point I was ready to give in and I hadn't even started yet (lol)! after some back and forth with my friend I landed on a Asus TUF Gaming Z590 + WiFi mother board, off to a good start (I think)! next was the processor, I have had i3's & i5's in the past in some laptops and felt they didn't perform that well but could have been my random install downloads loaded with malware from less than trustworthy websites at the time. I wanted something with a punch so I opted for an unlocked 11th gen i9 Intel model. I also had this sick thought that if I decide I want to overclock in the future that i want to be able to so I got the components that would enable me to do so.
Next was the conversation about Ram. I opted for 2x32Gb Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro sticks of ram. Enough to hold me over with the capability to increase if needed in the future. Next on the list was the power supply. I went to a couple websites where you input your PC components and it spits out a number of minimum Wattage you'll need to support everything. After thoughtful consulatation wI decided that the recommended from the site might not be enough for in the event I expand further in the future. This ended up being a mistake as there was a drastic turn of events in my build which would render the EVGA 850W Gold PSU I purchased useless for my needs as I was going to require even more power
(This PSU in question is available for sale, never used open box!)
The next thing was the decision if I was going to get a graphics card as that would be the first or second most expensive item purchased for the build, pssshhh I wish! This was the start of my downfall of the $1K build, actually that might have started with the PSU purchase.
I found myself a nice GeForce RTX Aorus WaterForce EXTREME 3080 10Gb DDR6 GPU. I can imagine you can see where this is going, if not then let me clue you in, this purchased guarantied my dependence on a water cooled system. Now I did know this but there's just some kind of sickness within me that wants to go over the top for everything that I do and this was no exception but it came with a rather large price, one that I was not familiar with and couldn't have imagined.
At this point I need to find case to start housing everything so I can start ti figure out the water cooling system that I now needed to build in case. Before this point I had never heard of microcenter, I couldn't imagine a place like this even existed to be honest. I was amazed. I was shocked. I was in awe. and when I left there the first visit I was in pain I had spent double the budget on a computer case, a couple radiators and some fans. I had been researching for a month at this point everyday trying to find a case that I felt was my kind of style. I was so torn, watching videos after video, article after article and still not having made a decision, but when I saw it in person I could control myself and I had to take it home. It was Corsairs flagship, the Obsidian 1000D. It was larger than life and an absolute monster. Looking at the floor model I started planning on how I could fill up all the space and the ideas started to flow. I see the room for 8 fans and 2 radiators on the front, 1 larger radiator and 3 more fans on the top and some exhaust fans in the rear. I grab the cart and I start filling
I went with 2 XR5 360 radiators got the front with 6 LL120 fans and a 1 XR5 420 radiator with 3 LL140 fans for the top mount setup. I knew what I had to do, I had to run 2 divorced cooling setups so that this was the longest most pain staking build any man would endure (is there worse out there?).knowing that I was going with a full water cooled setup I also grabbed a XC7 RGB Pro CPU water Block. After purchasing my new goods I go to load up the items in the car with the help of my friend and my god we had made a grave mistake. The monster 1000D was not going to fit in the car. I had already put to much dedication into this and was not going to turn around and return this beauty but rather endure my stress pain and agony to figure this situation out. after 10 minutes of playing Tetris and not getting the case to fit in the car we went to the last resort; removing the case from the box and disassembling everything as much as we could. This was a 15 minute fiasco in front of microcenter but we got everything loaded up and we were off to start the beginning of assembly.
I get the fans and radiators mounted and do my cable management while there was still room to do so. I grab the motherboard and with lots of guidance I get the CPU installed, the CPU water block, the ram, get it mounted into case followed by the GPU. The following day I make my way back to wallet hell (microcenter) for all the tubes, fittings, pumps and other necessities. I went with 16mm hard lines, 2 XD5 RGB Pump/Reservoir combo, 2 in line water temp sensors, tubing bending kit, iCue Commander Core XT, Coolant, EVGA 1300 G2 PSU (for all the added amenities) and lastly Memory as I had not purchased any prior. I went with a Samsung 1TB 980 Pro NVME and a 2TB EVO Plus NVME. The original budget WAS GONE... SO. FAR. GONE.
Now I had to acquire a new skill set, tube bending! I needed to go through the first 2 tubes in order to really learn and hone in the technique for gracious bends. I found that I wasn't having any luck with the bending kits so I decided that I was going to freehand all of the tubes. Jays2cents definitely came in handy! Since I didn't have a lot of time to dedicate to finishing the build getting this part done tool me about a month before it was ready for coolant and its first start up. I had decided that since the GPU might need better cooling I had dedicated the 2 front radiators to the GPU only and the top Radiator to the CPU solely. I took some mental planning for the routing but after countless laps of pacing I came up with a plan and adjusted it as I went along.
After all said and done I filled the system for the first time and nervously hit the power button anddd....... NOTHING!
I went through every possibility, checking everything from the little button cell battery, the ram, they power wires, even having to (gulp) drain the system I just filled so I could remove the graphics card and diagnose why nothing was coming up on the screen. we had power we had lights but nothing on the screen. After an hour or so of looking around I found a couple power connector inputs on the mother board which were left open (DUH!). I wasn't the most savy so I will take the blame on this one after reinstalling everything and refilling the system a second time we fire it up and she goes into Bios, the rest is history...
If you read this far I appreciate the time you have given to read my story! for those of you that hadn't please find the summarized version below with the specs included:
TL;DR
This build in total took me about 1 month to complete assembling with the time I had free which wasn't a lot (usually some point during the weekend) along with having to acquire new skills to put it all together. It was my first build and I really couldn't have done any of this without the guidance of my two friends Joe and Jeff, hats off to you both!!!
Specs:
CPU- 11th Gen i9 11900K
GPU- GeForce 3080 Aorus Waterforce Extreme 10GB DDR6
RAM- 2x Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro
Cooling-8x LL120 fans, 3x LL140 fans, 2x XR5 360 radiators, 1x XR5 420 radiator, 2x XD5 Pump/reservoir combo, XC7 RGB Pro CPU water block, 16mm hard lines, 2x inline temp sensors
PSU- EVGA 1300 G2
Motherboard- ASUS TUF Gaming Z590 + WiFi
Case- Corsair Obsidian 1000D
Software- Windows 11 Pro
Keyboard- Corsair K100 Optical-Mechanical
Mouse- Corsair Dark Core RGB Pro
Bunch of other random bits as well.
Try not to roast me to bad!
You are about to witness how I went from a $1K budget build that was supposed to be used for work to a now $6K+ build... I have ZERO experience building PC's but others I have met along my journey insisted that I share my build with others as there are people out there that genuinely enjoy this and after my experience I can say that I truly do enjoy it as well.
To start the story I was walking through Walmart one day looking for a WiFi adapter for my work issued desktop (something Dell that is extremely underwhelming and sucks) as I was going to be taking my desktop setup with me somewhere that did not have direct ethernet access. As I walk through the Walmart I start to look at these nice computers thinking to myself why not just get a nice desktop that I can really make my own and enjoy at the same time? The thought of not having big brother watching, can download whatever I want (without having the admin permission popup & getting denied) along with better performance was riveting! I knew someone that was fairly educated when it came to building PC's so I thought to myself let me reach out and see if this is worth it.
My main question was if my budget is $1K would building my own computer net me better performance than buying a computer for $1K at the store? He told me "Yes" so at that point I knew what I had to do. Granted I had not a single Idea of what I was doing and they were in a different state so I was going to be venturing into this solely with over-the-phone consultation. I didn't even know how to pick out a mother board, at this point I was ready to give in and I hadn't even started yet (lol)! after some back and forth with my friend I landed on a Asus TUF Gaming Z590 + WiFi mother board, off to a good start (I think)! next was the processor, I have had i3's & i5's in the past in some laptops and felt they didn't perform that well but could have been my random install downloads loaded with malware from less than trustworthy websites at the time. I wanted something with a punch so I opted for an unlocked 11th gen i9 Intel model. I also had this sick thought that if I decide I want to overclock in the future that i want to be able to so I got the components that would enable me to do so.
Next was the conversation about Ram. I opted for 2x32Gb Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro sticks of ram. Enough to hold me over with the capability to increase if needed in the future. Next on the list was the power supply. I went to a couple websites where you input your PC components and it spits out a number of minimum Wattage you'll need to support everything. After thoughtful consulatation wI decided that the recommended from the site might not be enough for in the event I expand further in the future. This ended up being a mistake as there was a drastic turn of events in my build which would render the EVGA 850W Gold PSU I purchased useless for my needs as I was going to require even more power
(This PSU in question is available for sale, never used open box!)The next thing was the decision if I was going to get a graphics card as that would be the first or second most expensive item purchased for the build, pssshhh I wish! This was the start of my downfall of the $1K build, actually that might have started with the PSU purchase.
I found myself a nice GeForce RTX Aorus WaterForce EXTREME 3080 10Gb DDR6 GPU. I can imagine you can see where this is going, if not then let me clue you in, this purchased guarantied my dependence on a water cooled system. Now I did know this but there's just some kind of sickness within me that wants to go over the top for everything that I do and this was no exception but it came with a rather large price, one that I was not familiar with and couldn't have imagined.
At this point I need to find case to start housing everything so I can start ti figure out the water cooling system that I now needed to build in case. Before this point I had never heard of microcenter, I couldn't imagine a place like this even existed to be honest. I was amazed. I was shocked. I was in awe. and when I left there the first visit I was in pain
I had spent double the budget on a computer case, a couple radiators and some fans. I had been researching for a month at this point everyday trying to find a case that I felt was my kind of style. I was so torn, watching videos after video, article after article and still not having made a decision, but when I saw it in person I could control myself and I had to take it home. It was Corsairs flagship, the Obsidian 1000D. It was larger than life and an absolute monster. Looking at the floor model I started planning on how I could fill up all the space and the ideas started to flow. I see the room for 8 fans and 2 radiators on the front, 1 larger radiator and 3 more fans on the top and some exhaust fans in the rear. I grab the cart and I start fillingI went with 2 XR5 360 radiators got the front with 6 LL120 fans and a 1 XR5 420 radiator with 3 LL140 fans for the top mount setup. I knew what I had to do, I had to run 2 divorced cooling setups so that this was the longest most pain staking build any man would endure (is there worse out there?).knowing that I was going with a full water cooled setup I also grabbed a XC7 RGB Pro CPU water Block. After purchasing my new goods I go to load up the items in the car with the help of my friend and my god we had made a grave mistake. The monster 1000D was not going to fit in the car. I had already put to much dedication into this and was not going to turn around and return this beauty but rather endure my stress pain and agony to figure this situation out. after 10 minutes of playing Tetris and not getting the case to fit in the car we went to the last resort; removing the case from the box and disassembling everything as much as we could. This was a 15 minute fiasco in front of microcenter but we got everything loaded up and we were off to start the beginning of assembly.
I get the fans and radiators mounted and do my cable management while there was still room to do so. I grab the motherboard and with lots of guidance I get the CPU installed, the CPU water block, the ram, get it mounted into case followed by the GPU. The following day I make my way back to wallet hell (microcenter) for all the tubes, fittings, pumps and other necessities. I went with 16mm hard lines, 2 XD5 RGB Pump/Reservoir combo, 2 in line water temp sensors, tubing bending kit, iCue Commander Core XT, Coolant, EVGA 1300 G2 PSU (for all the added amenities) and lastly Memory as I had not purchased any prior. I went with a Samsung 1TB 980 Pro NVME and a 2TB EVO Plus NVME. The original budget WAS GONE... SO. FAR. GONE.
Now I had to acquire a new skill set, tube bending! I needed to go through the first 2 tubes in order to really learn and hone in the technique for gracious bends. I found that I wasn't having any luck with the bending kits so I decided that I was going to freehand all of the tubes. Jays2cents definitely came in handy! Since I didn't have a lot of time to dedicate to finishing the build getting this part done tool me about a month before it was ready for coolant and its first start up. I had decided that since the GPU might need better cooling I had dedicated the 2 front radiators to the GPU only and the top Radiator to the CPU solely. I took some mental planning for the routing but after countless laps of pacing I came up with a plan and adjusted it as I went along.
After all said and done I filled the system for the first time and nervously hit the power button anddd....... NOTHING!
I went through every possibility, checking everything from the little button cell battery, the ram, they power wires, even having to (gulp) drain the system I just filled so I could remove the graphics card and diagnose why nothing was coming up on the screen. we had power we had lights but nothing on the screen. After an hour or so of looking around I found a couple power connector inputs on the mother board which were left open (DUH!). I wasn't the most savy so I will take the blame on this one
after reinstalling everything and refilling the system a second time we fire it up and she goes into Bios, the rest is history...If you read this far I appreciate the time you have given to read my story! for those of you that hadn't please find the summarized version below with the specs included:
TL;DR
This build in total took me about 1 month to complete assembling with the time I had free which wasn't a lot (usually some point during the weekend) along with having to acquire new skills to put it all together. It was my first build and I really couldn't have done any of this without the guidance of my two friends Joe and Jeff, hats off to you both!!!
Specs:
CPU- 11th Gen i9 11900K
GPU- GeForce 3080 Aorus Waterforce Extreme 10GB DDR6
RAM- 2x Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro
Cooling-8x LL120 fans, 3x LL140 fans, 2x XR5 360 radiators, 1x XR5 420 radiator, 2x XD5 Pump/reservoir combo, XC7 RGB Pro CPU water block, 16mm hard lines, 2x inline temp sensors
PSU- EVGA 1300 G2
Motherboard- ASUS TUF Gaming Z590 + WiFi
Case- Corsair Obsidian 1000D
Software- Windows 11 Pro
Keyboard- Corsair K100 Optical-Mechanical
Mouse- Corsair Dark Core RGB Pro
Bunch of other random bits as well.
Try not to roast me to bad!
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