This is my first PC build - the experience was amazing, with much help from this site. My background is in architecture and visualization so my needs centered around rendering and CAD programs. Recently I have been interested in doing some side work outside of my day job and need a machine to run Cinema 4D and Rhino as my daily programs (with some Adobe sprinkled in). I don't game at all - I think the last games I played were Roller Coaster Tycoon 1 and some of the Myst series.

I had a machine lined up with and Intel i7 7700k, however when AMD dropped the Ryzen multi-cores I was sold based on my needs. I was also interested in a small form factor (or as small as I could get - I bought just before the ITX motherboards for AM4 were released or I may have had a different case!) so settled on the mATX motherboard. My last desktop was a 2007 Dell XPS Monster and I wanted something much smaller!

Quite happy thus far with all components - had to wait more that I wanted for the upgrade bracket from Cryorig, however the cooler is working well.

Hardest part for this first time builder was the software install - Windows had some early issues with temporary user bug and I had to reinstall which caused some drive partition issues (since I was still a bit unclear on install order/boot order - which have a better grasp of now). The partitioning stuff was resolved after some research and 3rd party software. Same goes for some MSI software issues - related to the C drive partition stuff, I think. As for now, stable and ready to crank out some renders. The only test I have run is Cinebench since its my only real goal for the machine - and thus far I hit 1474 on the CPU test and 90.1 frames on the GPU test with temps hitting 71C.EDIT: not sure why early tests hit that temp... ran bench again, idle temps as low as 29C, cinebench to 1440s and temps only hitting 35C. I might try that OC! Still nervous though I have seen higher 1700x scores, however, I'm not quite ready to dive into many settings yet. My b350m with my 2133 RAM may lower the CPU score slightly..?

I might overclock as read / research some more. However, my new sub $1000 machine (not counting my peripherals) beat my work Mac Pro (3 yrs old..)with 12 cores by over 100 points in Cinebench so I'm not complaining.

All in all - great experience and I'm hooked.