Description
My first build, used a super helpful PC building guide by a youtuber by the name of Bitwit. Very happy with how this turned out! Luckily for me, the PC turned on first try with no hardware problems or bunged-up installations; however I'm having a bit of trouble with some software in the PC - unlikely anything to do with the components and more-so to do with corrupted OS installation or something. Getting that fixed soon-ish.
CPU:
Ryzen 5 1600
Heard many good things about this CPU, chose it over Intel as I'm into video editing and photography as well as gaming and figured that Ryzen would give me some boosts in those areas. Mine came with the corner bent slightly, however I installed it normally and my thermals and performance are fine so I think I got lucky.
Motherboard:
MSI B350M Mortar
Chose it as I wasn't comfortable going with ASrock due to hearing negative things about the company from friends. The BIOS is easy to use, and the LEDs are pretty good - however you can easily turn them off with the MSI gaming app if red doesn't fit your 'colour scheme'. Installation was pretty easy.
RAM:
Corsair Vengeance LPX 8gb DDR4-2666
Opted for 2666mhz instead of 3000mhz to shave off a couple bucks at the last minute and downgraded from 16gb to 8gb as I figured I wouldn't need it in the near future and could upgrade later. Had no problems going in to bios and changing the frequency from 2133 to the advertised 2666.
Storage:
Western Digital M.2 240gb
Ridiculously easy installation, although I nearly lost the motherboard screw into the depths of the case. Read/write speeds are slightly underwhelming but not terrible - I may have gotten a slightly bad chip as I open some programs very slowly (Aorus Graphics Engine, Steam, MSI Gaming app) although that could just be the software's fault. Most of my files are installed here as I got a hard drive after finishing the build and haven't moved my files across yet.
WD Black 1TB Hard Drive
Can't say much, got it practically yesterday. Very easy installation and a bit of noise when booting up that wasn't there before - bigger than I expected but that was just me not knowing how big hard drives normally are.
Graphics Card:
Gigabyte Radeon RX 580 8GB
Received as a birthday present, the graphics power is certainly phenomenal and way outperforms my old Macbook Air (obviously). Unfortunately, I have a few things I don't like about this card - the software being ugly (subjective, it's orange and gamer-y) and clunky (buttons not responding, not many LED options), for one - and it can take around a full minute for the software to open after clicking the shortcut, but that could be a problem with the SSD.
Case:
Thermaltake Core V21
Very glad I went with this case. It wasn't easy to build in, as I spent upwards of 2 hours trying to figure out how to mount the Power Supply, and the motherboard was a little bit scary to install - but it was a good challenge. Most of my problems came from being inexperienced, and there being a lack of many good guides as to how to build in it. The manual was pretty useless in a lot of aspects, but thankfully I had the internet to help me. If I could give one piece of advice to anyone looking for builds on PCPartPicker that use this case and have intentions of building with it - Mount the Power Supply first. Seriously. I installed the motherboard first and it was a huge hassle to flip over the case and weave the wires through the sides with my whole arm in the case. Overall though, the case looks great, features optional horizontal motherboard mounting (the default configuration, I recommend this for beginners so you don't have to change things around) and the 200mm fan at the front is quiet and pushes a lot of air. The thermals are great, and the included dust filters are very useful. Certainly a top quality case, not to mention I got it for $20 off.
Power Supply:
Silverstone Strider Gold 550W 80+ Gold Fully Modular ATX
Does it's job. Was hard to mount in case, but not impossible. Quiet, and the wattage leaves room for upgrading my graphics card in the future if needed. If I could have changed anything in the build, I would've gone for a semi-modular PSU, so I didn't have to figure out which cables go in which slot on the PSU - which was funnily enough a lot more difficult than I expected. Worth noting, the actual connectors were worryingly stiff, I could not pull out the cables once I had plugged them in no matter what I tried. I plugged everything in correctly first try so it wasn't a problem - but I'd watch out for that in case it isn't just my model.
Wireless Adaptors
TP-Link USB adaptor
Plug-and-play, easy to use. A little unreliable but I used it until I could afford a PCIE wi-fi card, and now I leave it plugged in as a back-up wifi adaptor just in case. I get speeds of around 10 megabits per second download and 1 megabit per second upload.
D-Link PCIE adaptor
Saved up after PC was built to afford a much better wi-fi alternative, but was ultimately quite disappointed with this card. It does not fit securely into the slot once screwed in on the side, has stopped working twice, requiring me to reinstall drivers to get it working again - the speed is definitely good... when it works. I strongly advice getting a different adaptor if you can, but that being said, don't worry too much if you have this one already. It may or may not give you some trouble - but it's an easy fix most of the time.
Fans:
Thermaltake Riing 12 RGB 120mm
Good fans, the controller is actually a plus for me because I didn't want to have to install software for the fans to work properly. The case allows me to very easily get into the internals to access the fan controller which is stuck with the included velcro controller to the inside wall of the case. The colour range is alright, it offers red, green, dark blue, white, yellow and off - but it also offers a rainbow mode where it cycles through 256 colours and you can press play/pause on the controller to stop it at any shade of colour you want eg. orange or pink. Worth mentioning these fans can't do purple for some reason, the colour cycle just misses purple all together. It can do light pink and light blue, but no solid purple.
To summarise, I am very happy with how it turned out, though it has been a stressful but rewarding experience. Very proud of myself for spending the day assembling a working computer at 15 years old after spending the last 6 months working late nights at McDonalds to afford it. I'd certainly like to thank /r/buildapc for all the advice in choosing out parts, and Kyle from Bitwit for his very in-depth tutorial on how to put everything together. If you have any questions, I'll answer them as soon as I can!
PS. I don't know about PC names, you guys can make suggestions in the comments if you want. Sorry for poor quality pictures, taken on an Iphone 4 and sent through email!
Part Reviews
Storage
Slower than I'd liked, but definitely 100x faster than a hard drive. M.2 is definitely worth the slight cost increase.
Wireless Network Adapter
Slow, but reliable - you get what you pay for. I use it as a backup wifi adaptor for when my PCIE wifi adaptor drops out.
Wireless Network Adapter
Works great, except when it doesn't.
Does not fit correctly in motherboard when screwed in, and does not screw in when correctly fitted to motherboard. Connection is fantastic, but drops out more often than I'd like (not the internet connection's fault, trust me).
I still use my ten dollar USB wifi adaptor as a backup because this card is so unreliable. If you've already bought it, don't worry - it's not the end of the world. But if you're thinking about buying it, do your research and get a more reliable card for the same price.
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