I finally got all the pieces of my new PC together and it is now up and running. I made a few last-minute changes to some of the components, but it was pretty close to the plan. The only issue I faced was with the RAM. It turned out that my motherboard was quite fussy and refused to enable XMP for the G.Skill Tridentz DDR4 I had purchased. The tell-tale sign was the computer restarting three times. In the end I found some white Crucial Ballistix sticks on sale on Amazon. They were listed in the motherboard’s Qualified Vendor List. This is something I will check next time (many of the compatible DIMMs on the list were not available.)
The final specification is shown below. For my first real gaming PC build I think I did ok, and spent less than £2,500 in total (I tried to buy items that were on sale where possible.) For a similar spec a custom-built machine would have cost me closer to £3,500
| Motherboard | Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite V2 | £120 |
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 5800X3D | £440 |
| Power supply | Seasonic Prime PX-850 (80+ Platinum) | £170 |
| RAM | 32 GB Ballistix DDR4 3200 MHz CAS 16 (2 x 16GB) | £110 |
| CPU cooler | Arctic Freezer II 360mm AIO | £100 |
| Thermal paste | Noctua NT-H2 | £12 |
| Case | Corsair 5000D Airflow (black) | £125 |
| Fans | Lian-Li AL120 x 6 | £166 |
| GPU | MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12GB Ventus 3x OC | £875 |
| Boot drive | Crucial P5 Plus 2TB (PCIe 4.0 NVMe) | £185 |
| Additional storage | WD Black SN770 2TB (PCIe 4.0 NVMe) | £140 |
| TOTAL | £2443 |
To top it off, I upgraded my monitor to a Gigabyte 32″ M32Q 165Hz 1440p for an additional £349.
As already mentioned, I had some issues with my original RAM. In addition to this I had a couple of other small issues.
- For some reason, the Lian-Li controller fan connector only has a PWM wire. There is no sense signal that provides the fan RPM. This means the motherboard is unable to show the fan speed. This shouldn’t be an issue. Also, I have to give administrator rights to L-Connect3 at login (and to GPUz), which is annoying.
- The motherboard ATX connector on the motherboard was very tight. After bench testing, I had to use a flat-head screwdriver to lever the connector out. I thought it might be a problem with the Seasonic cable, but I had the same trouble with a CableMod cable as well. I also had trouble with the CableMod PCI-e cables and ended up using the Seasonic ones for the graphics card.
Other than this, I have been playing some games (like Star Citizen) and the CPU stays at around 65C and the graphics card at around 75C. These temperatures seem reasonable to me.
Overall, I found building a PC to be fairly straightforward. There are plenty of tutorial videos on YouTube to guide you as well. If you decide to do it – good luck!
Technology, Programming & Flight Sim 