Jumping in at the deep end: building a high-spec gaming PC as your first

So, the real question is whether I achieved what I set out to do originally with those components. Well, I think I did, and this makes for a powerful rig with some good specs for both now and in the future, as well as for room to upgrade both CPU and GPU with any more power-hungry components later down the line. That's that part checked off.

As for aesthetics, there's a fresh helping of RGB, which is always nice, while the NZXT H9 Flow is an easy case to build in, offering lots of space for components and convenient cable management, even if you tend to be a bit messy like I was with bundling them together. Some of the other NZXT components in this build also come highly-rated, especially the C1200W power supply with its 12VHPWR connector and reasonable quality cables and N7 B650E motherboard, which looks wonderfully clean, and offers all the features you could want from a motherboard in 2024. I'm a little less enthusiastic about the F120 Core RGB fans however - not from the standpoint of their flashy lights, but because of NZXT's proprietary nonsense concerning their own cable connectors, and the spaghetti it created.

The power of the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D goes without saying these days, and it's a seriously powerful processor for excellent value. For reference. I paid £320 for mine just before Christmas 2023 thanks to an eBay discount code from Box's eBay store at the time, but it regularly goes for £330-£350 these days, depending on when you purchase. However, at this moment, I'm a little less wholehearted on recommending the ROG Strix 4080 - while this particular variant is a gorgeous looking card and it packs in a lot of grunt for 4K gaming (as well as a lot of RGB), at its price, I can't justify the extra £400 or so compared to an MSRP card. You'd be much better off now with a 4080 Super at MSRP with its price cut, or, if you've got £1500+ to spend on a GPU, get an RTX 4090.

With the other bits in mind, the Lexar NM790 in 4TB form offers a lot of storage, as well as snappy speeds with excellent random performance. It's a great value proposition and is an brilliant choice for most people. Corsair's 32GB of DDR5-6000MT/s RAM is also solid, offering a lot of headroom for 4K gaming workloads, as well as more intensive content creation workloads, and as we've seen, the faster transfer rates can benefit performance in games on Ryzen 7000, too. Even with a little bit of work, the Noctua NH-D15 is a wonderful cooler with a lot of airflow, while also being whisper quiet. It isn't cheap by any means and is perhaps even overkill for the efficiency of the 7800X3D, but I had to get some Noctua in somewhere.

Wrapping up and lessons for next time

I'm rather happy with how my first PC build has turned out, and I don't think that this is a system I'll be chopping and changing around too much over the next few years, all being well - the advantage of going overkill may have its benefits later down the line. It does what I need it to do and more, but now I've said that, you can guarantee some form of 'upgrade' is just around the corner.

To be truthful, it was perhaps a little less daunting once I'd put it all together in a matter of a few hours. I'd built up the idea that something was going to go wrong in my head beforehand, and that's all I could think about throughout the process. The most daunting element was slotting the 7800X3D into the motherboard slot, applying the thermal paste and putting the Noctua NH-D15 in, especially given the unwieldy height of the cooler. The rather helpful thing was that I had a magnetic ratchet screwdriver, which made a lot of difference in keeping screws to hand and also offering more power for putting screws in, and ensuring they stayed in. If that's one piece of advice you take out of this whole thing, it's to get a good screwdriver - it pays dividends for more than just PC building.

Since the initial build earlier this spring, I've managed to grab an RTX 4080 Super Founder's Edition, which is more affordable than the Strix it replaces and less RGB-heavy too. The slightly more muted aesthetic works well, given it makes the NH-D15 stand out a little more, and I opted to go for white light from the fans rather than the purple I had before. It all matches up well enough, as seen below:

What does this PC get used for then? It is a mix of general productivity workloads, as well as the 4K gaming I hoped to be doing in recent months. I'm getting back into sim racing, with the likes of Dirt Rally 2.0, Assetto Corsa and Forza Horizon 5, as well as continuing to get minced in Counter Strike 2 and Hitman.

Would I do anything differently next time? If it was anything, it'd either be to build in a slightly smaller case just so I've got a little more real estate under my desk, or to steer clear of proprietary fan-related nonsense in favour of something a little easier to work with. These are smaller issues however, and would require a lot of work to change - something I'm not really interested in right at this moment, but potentially down the line if things get too much.

Well, that's my chronicle of building my first PC after all these years as a hardware enthusiast, and choosing to do it as an overkill build. I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on this if you've got any - feel free to let me know below!