Building your own computer
these choices a
full-time developer makes

Five years ago I put a PC together myself for the first time. Well, "myself" is a big word. A mate of mine has endless experience building computers and because I was terrified I would completely mess it up, he took most of it on. My job mainly consisted of handing screwdrivers and pointing a torch at the right spot, so not much came from my own hands. All that time later the machine was really due for replacement, and I faced the question of whether I would refresh separate parts or start from a clean slate and research everything all over again.

Why did you not buy an off-the-shelf model?

That is after all a lot cooler than just buying something. Someone who works with computers day in day out, likes gaming, and still enjoys tinkering with software projects in his free time, has different requirements from someone who only googles now and then and reads his mail.

Building my own computer lets me determine exactly what I really need and what I actually value. It also becomes easier in a few years to repair separate components or give them an upgrade when I feel like it. The PC is a thing I use enormously and I want it to look sharp and something I can be a bit proud of. So it is not a shapeless cabinet humming away tucked behind a desk.

Which hardware did you choose, and why?

Buying the very newest generation of every part in the thickest luxury edition is idiotically expensive for what you get out of it. The other way around it also does not pay to go budget or older models everywhere, because then you risk things quickly no longer meeting your expectations and replacement becoming hard afterwards because they do not line up with newer hardware. So I looked for a golden middle where for a reasonable sum I could build a decent PC that still lasts a solid number of years without trouble. The parts that ultimately went in are these.

CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 4.7 GHz 6-Core Processor

A solid mid-range processor then. Not a Rolls-Royce, but not a Fiat Panda either. I deliberately wanted the newest generation, that way I keep the option open in the future to upgrade and/or replace something.

Motherboard - Asus TUF GAMING X670E-PLUS WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard

The motherboard is simply a large circuit board where every part finds its place, and it thereby determines what you bring home for the rest of your build. If that board does not talk to the newest video cards, well, you may not feel that yet. In a few years you search in vain for modern replacements, which in practice comes down to: you can never replace that video card again without scoring a new motherboard. Oddly it also works the other way: precisely when you can plug in the newest generation, some older variants drop away as an option. The motherboard also drives how many USB ports you get, the number of screens you can feed without a separate graphics card, and whether wifi and bluetooth are on board. I chose this one because I want two separate hard drives anyway, want to work wirelessly, and aim for the newest standard with expansion room that does not feel like I will be stuck later. The reviews did not lie, so that strengthens the feeling that the board meets my wish list.

Storage - 2x Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive

Two hard drives of 1 TB each. The stuff does not have to be urgently the absolute fastest. Too little storage is simply a source of irritation, and I do not wish that on myself. One SSD drives Windows, that is where the gaming happens. On the other disk sits Arch Linux where I program, whether for work or hobby. Honestly: I love keeping those two worlds cleanly separated. One disk that fails while the other simply keeps working and I am not immediately stuck without a working PC, that just gives me peace.

Working memory - Corsair Vengeance RGB 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL40 Memory

32 GB RAM, to be blunt: a touch over the top. That was the main brake on stepping to 64 GB. Still the situation stays simple: if it turns out I fall short, I just plug in new sticks. Specifically this memory set drives me with cheerful RGB lights into a street that says: "Not needed, still fun".

Video card - MSI MECH 2X V1 Radeon RX 6750 XT 12 GB Video Card

In my old PC sat an MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti GAMING X 4G. That card worked fine. So the newest 4060 from Nvidia seemed a logical step. But the internet rants that you are much better off grabbing an RX 6750 XT, so I dug into it for a bit. The RX 6750 XT is simply the smarter choice on price-quality and future-proofing because of its 192 bit bus to the motherboard.

Case - Corsair iCUE 4000X RGB ATX Mid Tower Case

The case is an enormous glass cabinet. Enormous because I do not want to have to guess whether everything fits, including a later upgrade, and absolutely no appetite for fussing with too little space while building. Of glass so you see everything sitting nicely, even if only so those RGB lights on my working memory are not entirely for nothing. On the front and top there are relatively few USB ports though, and that is sometimes quite inconvenient, I have to say honestly. That glass front is beautiful, truly, but it can squeeze the airflow and then cooling suddenly gets a lot harder. So far I have not noticed anything of that, luckily.

How did the build process go?

After endlessly roaming the internet, endlessly comparing options and reading a thousand reviews, a box with parts for my new PC finally dropped on the mat. After that I fired up a YouTube instruction video of a good hour and a half and dutifully followed every step. The real building turned out to be mainly enormously fun. It feels a touch DIY when you try to get your computer going outside the case by sticking a screwdriver between two pins, but ultimately it is nice that all connections still come down to that one principle: does a current flow or not.

Which things went less well?

One pin on my processor raised my suspicion. It bent a touch differently. Those contact points have to land perfectly in the motherboard, and one crooked pin can in the worst case short both the CPU and the motherboard. There you stand. I immediately called a friend and after some pressing he managed to reassure me that the deviation was small enough to risk it. You only know for sure at the first boot. You first build the whole PC open and bare, without a case. That is the pre-flight check. If it starts right then, you have not first spent hours on cable management and screws in a tight case for nothing. The moment the fans start spinning and the screen lights up is pure relief. It apparently went well. Or at least, not disastrously wrong. For a first week I sat nervously staring at the sensors: 85 degrees peak. Nothing to be afraid of according to Google, the processor should simply be able to handle that.

Which operating system do you use?

My disk marriage couples two totally different systems. Arch Linux uses my work disk, when I am home or take on my own programming job. On earlier computers I spent hundreds of hours tinkering with config files to bend the environment to my cadence, until it exactly understands my workflow. A pleasure. The other disk breathes Windows 11 purely and only because gaming runs on it without fuss. In terms of pleasant working though that is the other extreme: I find Windows a stubborn struggle where everything is handbrake.

These five things I learned:

1. Take your time. For research and building. You inevitably hit snags and then stressed haste is your only real enemy.
2. What I take from it above all is a mountain of insight: which components actually do what, why a certain choice falls on that part and not something else, and why exactly that detail is so essential.
3. I know my computer now to the bone, and something breaks? Then I know immediately where to go to fix it. That gives confidence in the thing, much more than I had before.
4. Actually it is like this: if you choose your parts generously above your expected workload, then you suddenly become the limiting factor in the whole system. And believe me, that is exactly how you want it. Putting a PC together yourself is not for everyone. Do you enjoy understanding how each part works? Just do it. It can also turn out cheaper, because you buy exactly what you need. But you really have to enjoy it, because if you already dread the hours of research and that fiddling with screws and cables, then preferably do not start. Then it almost certainly only delivers frustration.