melaus

In this strange period of time, I'm doing my part to help stop the spread of coronavirus by being strict about social distancing and staying at home. This means that there are a lot more time to reflect and pursue the many things I've always dreamed of doing but never "had the time" to.

One of the things I really enjoy is playing a simulation game called Cities: Skylines. Being a social butterfly in normal life, I've spent way too much time at pubs seeing friends that I've not played it for a while. This situation has got me hooked again.

Now, problem: as much as I love Macs and my 2012 MacBook Pro, it is showing its age especially in the graphics department. It's struggling to run the game even at a low resolution with the lowest settings possible. Also, seeing YouTube videos of how smooth and nice it could look got me rather jealous. As it is well known that Macs get very expensive very quickly, they are also not built for gaming, if at all. More importantly, I don't have a huge sum of money to just throw at a non-gaming laptop. Instead, I've got a better idea...

The premise is simple: let's build a PC with great graphical performance without having to splash too much money at it.

Having used a laptop for the past 12 years, I forgot how many components there are to a computer, and how much things have moved on. Building a PC is daunting exercise, so I thought it'd be cool document this experience.

The first step is to choose and purchase everything that goes into a computer. Thanks to the kind help of a good friend of mine, I was able to nail down the sort of build and components I want rather swiftly, and so the journey begins.

Here's the journey I've been through so far to deciding what goes into this build, which I'm naming this computer Zander.

📦 Case

Size does matter - I want it to be as compact as possible. I'm not (yet) an avid PC builder that want the best of cooling systems, LED strips and performance, but a relatively small minimalist build that is powerful enough for casual gaming and graphics intensive tasks such as photo editing will be quite cool.

It can get very confusing very quickly as there are so many acronyms to computer tower sizes. In summary, there are three main tower sizes - Mid Tower (ATX), Mini Tower (MicroATX) and Small Form Factor (Mini-ITX).

The bracketed terms are broadly interchangeable and also refer to the motherboard and power supply sizes they use. The following shows the common size relationship between the case, motherboard and power supply:

Case Size	Motherboard Size	Power Supply Unit (PSU) Size
Mid Tower	ATX	ATX
Mini Tower	MicroATX	ATX
Small Form Factor (SFX)	Mini-ITX	SFX

It's worth mentioning that this is just the general size relationship. The case of your choice will specify the sizes of motherboard and power supply it supports.

With all this in mind, I went for the Cooler Master Elite 110 case. It is a SFX "cube" case that accommodates a Mini-ITX motherboard and a normal sized ATX Power Supply Unit (PSU).

Originally I was going for Fractal Design's Node 202 but it's quite a bit more money. This case is older and harder to find, but it fits with the brief of a relatively cheap, compact and minimalist case.

🖥️ CPU

After having an idea of the sort of build size I was after, it is useful to think about the CPU I want to go for. The brand is important here, AMD or Intel, as they require a different "port" to connect to the motherboard, which will influence the choice of motherboard to go for.

Based on research and recommendations from friends, the common theme is that AMD processors are currently very strong in the low and mid end in terms of performance and price. For my build, that's exactly what I'm after. So I went for the mid-range AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor.

🧠 Motherboard

The next logical step for me is to pick the motherboard. As mentioned, the case and CPU architecture inform the size and type of motherboard that we can use.

To further limit the scope, I find it useful to focus on the ports and features I am looking for. For me, given the compact nature of a mini-ITX build, it is important to have built-in WiFi. I'd also like a USB Type-C port just for the novelty.

Luckily, for a SFX / mini-ITX build, there are only a handful of choices at this point, so the choice was relatively easy and I went for the cheaper end of the spectrum and chose the ASRock B450 Gaming-ITX/ac.

🖼️ GPU

Before considering the rest of the build, I already decided that I wanted a Nvidia graphics card, as I've always had good experience with them. AMD also makes good graphics card especially in the range I'm looking for, but I'm sticking with what I know here.

I picked the MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Super Aero ITX OC. As suggested by the name, it is a smaller version that is made for the ITX size that is overclocked to provide a bit of extra power. Reviews seem to suggest that the GTX 1650 Super strikes a good balance between performance and price, and seems fitting to my purpose and provides enough juice for the foreseeable future.

Manufacture-wise, everything from Zotac to MSI and Asus alike are all very similar. It seems that the main difference between them is the optimisations each manufacture adds, such as the default overclocking behaviour (making it run at a faster speed than designed) and number of fans they use. These features inform the price. Again, it's useful to look at the price/ performance trade offs, but they are all very similar.

💪 PSU

Power is critical to a successful build. From the advice from my friend and articles online, a steady and efficient power supply ensures components to stay alive for a long while. After spending quite some money on these components, you want them to last a good while and not having to worry them breaking.

It's possible to get a rather cheap power supply easily especially if the choice of casing supports an ATX-sized Power Supply Unit. My build is one of such and the components are quite basic in terms of power requirements.

I went for the Thermaltake Litepower 450W which as an efficiency rating of 80%. It's an entry-level power supply but is rather cheap, which helps keep the cost down.

✍️ Storage / RAM

A side effect of choosing the aforementioned ASRock motherboard is that it supports NVMe storage through the M.2 connector. Basically, it's an SSD of the size of a chipset that connects directly to the motherboard, rather than a thick hard drive that connects through a SATA cable. It offers much faster data transfer speeds and lower latency which makes things much smoother.

A quick look shows that M.2 NVMe SSD chips are very closely priced to those of SATA SSD drives. So it's a no brainer to pick an NVMe chip, and I went for the 500GB WD Blue NVMe storage.

I'm a believer in that more and faster RAM means better performance. Originally, I wanted to get 16GB of very fast RAM, but budget constraints meant that I went for a more moderate 8GB of slower RAM, the Corsiar Vengeance LPX DDR4 2400MHz. This will be the first thing I'll upgrade in the future.

📰 Specification

So here we have our spec where these components cost £612.24 (including shipping). All round, I believe this is a nifty little build that strikes a good balance between price and performance.

Item	Name	Price	Bought From
Case	Cooler Master Elite 110	£37.30	Alza
Power Supply	Thermaltake Litepower 450W PSU	£28.98	ebuyer
Motherboard	ASRock B450 Gaming/ITX-AC	£109.72	ebuyer
GPU	MSI GTX 1650 Super Single Fan (OC 1740Mz)	£159.99	ebuyer
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600	£154.50	Amazon UK
Storage	WD Blue SN550 500GB M2 NVMe	£66.96	Amazon UK
RAM	Corsiar Vengeance LPX DDR4 8GB 2400MHz	£34.31	Amazon UK

📔 Useful Resources

Amazon seems to be a good starting point to finding cheap components. By the way, I always use https://smile.amazon.co.uk for Amazon purchases. Amazon will donate (although a very small amount) to a charity of your choice without costing you extra.

I actually find Ebuyer a better place to shop for computer components, as they offer a wider yet more concise range of components, with very similar or even cheaper pricing than Amazon.

PC Part Picker is a fantastic website to check for component compatibility. Key in your desired components, and it'll check for component prices and compatibility. One point to note is that the prices aren't that up to date but it provides a rough idea of cost.

🥡 Takeaway

My takeaway from this process is that it may seem overwhelming in building a PC from scratch with the many acronyms and parts to a computer. But, if you go through it step by step, you'll get there pretty quickly and effortless.

Some initial questions

Before I started to research on component, I asked myself these questions:

• What is main objective of the build?
• Does size matter?
• What is my budget?
• What do I absolutely need in this build?
• What am I willing to compromise on?
• Does brand matter - e.g. AMD or NVIDIA graphics, AMD or Intel CPU?

I find it easier to compile the initial list of components by looking into the components in the order as described above.

The smaller you go, the more expensive the components are going to be

Especially in terms of casing, motherboard and power supply. Basically, the more you want to fit in a small space, the more precise the manufacturing is needed, but also the novelty that comes with it. An example is Mini-ITX cases. They seem to be a fashionable item where there are many minimalist, indie attempts that can go for hundreds of dollars with limited availability.

Budget and Reality

It's useful to have a budget to start off with, but also pick the components you want. It certainly helped me to realise that I need to compromise on certain components. In my case, I picked a different case and downgraded my RAM.

The cool thing about building your own PC is that it is a process over quite a period of time. I'm starting small and hoping to upgrade further in the future.

🏗️ Building Zander

I've now ordered all the components. They will start to arrive next week and I'll be building Zander in the next couple of weeks. I'm planning to share my progress in another post, and hopefully a video of sort to accompany it as well. Stay tuned!