A fun article showing off my current desktop PC, as well as the justification of my choices.
CPU
Nothing particularly special here, the 7950X3D isn't technically as fast as the 7800X3D for gaming, but, I appreciate the extra 8 cores for development work.
CPU Cooler
An unusual choice given what is otherwise typically chosen, but, my list of wants/requirements here is unconventional:
- Needed to fit in a 4u chassis.
At the time of specing, my APC 18U Netshelter was sitting right next to my desk, and I wanted to have it mounted in there to keep everything out of the way. If they were smaller, I'd have likely gone with either the Peerless Assassin or Phantom Spirit coolers.
- Air/Tower Cooler.
Folks who know me, know I do not like liquid coolers. Custom loops are incredibly expensive, and, I tend to not have any particular interest in "flashy" systems. Cosed Loop Coolers (not "AIO") typically cost more than comparable tower options as well.
Both of these options have failure characteristics I'd rather avoid, a broken pump is known to cook systems, there is also the concern of having to replace the cooling liquid or deal with leakage.
- Locally available. I'd needed something that was both locally available and would fit into the rack-mount chassis. The NH-D12L isn't very far off the NH-D15 performance wise
Motherboard
My guiding philosophy behind motherboards is "they're just a set of features, get the cheapest that fits". Consequently, that meant that the cheaper B650 boards made the most sense for me.
This board, however, also has a pretty interesting block diagram. This exposed just enough PCIe lanes to do what I wanted long term.
- 2x U.2 PCIe/NVMe SSDs
- 1x GPU
- 1x Mellanox Connect X-6
- Thunderbolt AIC
RAM
I advise folks to buy higher density DIMMs rather than more DIMMs, to give you more options in the future. Furthermore, memory scaling for Zen4 tapered off heavily beyond AMDs recommendation. Consequently, I went with the cheapest 6000MT/s CL30 2x32GB DDR5 UDIMM kit I could find at the time.
Video Card
It was a toss up between the 7900 XTX and the RTX 4080, obviously, I chose the former. I'd wanted to be more forward-thinking with DP2.0 support, AMD's better driver story on linux & really to support them.
I largely didn't and still don't care about the AI features, I do sorta care about Ray Tracing, however, the overhead is too great for me to consider it at this time.
Why Nitro+? Reviewed well, and, I've also literally only owned Sapphire GPUs.
Case
A basic rack-mount case, can also be converted to a desktop as a bonus.
Power Supply
This is a slightly older design at this point, but, it was hard to find many options that are reviewed, available and would supply enough power for me needs.
The 2021 1KW Corsair RMx ended up being the best option available to me.
Fans
Arctic P3's were not available at the time, and, I wanted to fill out all the fans for airflow concerns. Noctua's accessory package is also nice to have.
Monitor
I've had this for a few years, one of the few components I've imported but, monitors are another part where I have unusual opinions.
Essentially, I'll assert that contrast is an undervalued part of monitors. This is vindicated by the recent explosion of OLED displays.
The NX-EDG34 also reviewed reasonably well, it was reasonably fast for a VA panel with typical static contrast, Variable Refresh Rate w/ Low Framerate Compensation, VESA mount support and variable voltage input (to support 240v NZ power, when sourcing products from 110V USA).
I was also upgrading from a pair of 1080p, 60Hz basic IPS & TN displays.
Keyboard
My first "custom" mechanical keyboard, Kalih Box Royal switches (cheap and very tactile) w/ pudding keycaps to show off the now off RGB.
Sound Card
Another hold over, from when I broke the 3.5mm front panel jack on my old NZXT Phantom chassis.
Storage
Another instance of putting my money where my mouth is.
When it comes to SSDs I posit the following. Latency, rather than throughput is what matters for SSDs.
The reasoning behind this, beyond a lack of any real scaling in real world benchmarks with consumer SSDs. Is that, when SSDs first started to gain steam, their throughput was/is comparable to HDDs but with much stronger random performance.
Mouse
My last Steel Series mouse broke, I got this on a recommendation.
Add In Cards
I don't have either of these yet but, the reasoning behind both of these is silly but simple.
Thunderbolt AIC, I want to have my desktop racked in another room, and, leverage optical cables.
Connect-X 5, fast networking, with ZTR support. Which is RDMA, without the switches needing to support it. So, I can leverage the Mikrotik 100G/25G line.