The Current Rig
First Draft: January 27, 2025
Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX Z490-E Gaming
CPU: Intel i9-10850K
RAM: 4x 16GB Corsair Vengance RGB Pro (3200MHz)
GPU: GTX 3080 (Gigabtye I think? Will edit later.)
Storage: 500GB Crucial MX500, 1TB Samsung 970 EVO, 4TB Fikwot FS810, 4TB WD Blue, 3x 12TB Seagate Exos
Other PCI Cards: Startech PEX2IDE, Startech PEX4S553
PSU: EVGA Supernova G3 (850W)
Case: Thermaltake Core W200
Keyboard: Mistel MD770 RGB BT
Mouse: Corsair Harpoon
For the longest time, I was using a quite old rig to do all my stuff. It had my first ever modern CPU (an i7-870), whatever GPU would work (A GeForce 6600 GT, then a Radeon HD 6850, then a GTX 750Ti, then a Quadro P2000), some non-modular 800W Corsair supply, hopes, and dreams.
When COVID-19 hit, the worst possible time to want to upgrade PCs, I really started to struggle to run the new games that friends wanted to play. My laptop (a Lenovo P52) was outperforming my desktop by miles but setting it up as a replacement kinda sucked. "Guess it's time to look into buying parts" I told myself, entirely knowing I was going to have to fight scalpers for anything.
I wanted to build an AMD-based machine but a 5600X was something like $350. You know what else was $350? An "Avengers-series" (funny box) Intel i9-10850K. Seeing that pretty much made me decide on my rig right there and then. I got that sub-MSRP i9, an at-MSRP Z490 motherboard, a slightly-over-MSRP set of DDR4 RAM, an at-MSRP Samsung SSD, an at-MSRP EVGA power supply, an at-MSRP NZXT case, and decided to just wait on the video card since the P2000 would at least run things on low still. A year or so after the initial build I finally got my hands on an at-MSRP GPU, a plain RTX 3080, which has been doing just fine for what I need.
If you notice from the last little paragraph, I said I bought a NZXT case. My list up top says I have a Thermaltake case? Why's that? Well, I just kinda hate the H510i. It's not that it's a horrible case, it's just that it's so cramped for some of the stuff I want to run. Glass-sided cases are cool and all, I love being able to appreciate the guts in my system (and see that I need to dust them out) but I don't love having wiring channels that are barely wide enough for all the cabling I need and tie-downs that block off drive bays. The Core W200 is a beast of a case that has tons of space, hell even enough space on the other side to build a second small rig (which I'm doing, a NAS with sixteen drives and room for more is living in the right side of the thing lol), so when I found one at a price I liked it was hard to resist.
Everything I play still runs great, possibly in part due to the whole "I run everything at 1080p Medium without raytracing" thing I do, so I don't expect to replace the guts very soon. I like being able to say that.
