Wow it has been a while since I posted, the last one was June 3, 2021 and that was more than a year now. Yes, my work has been affected by COVID being in a travel industry, it was heavily hit, even though I don’t want to leave the place I had too and it was really sad. I was with this amazing company for more than 11 years, it was such a fun ride, definitely a lot of wonderful memories kept, all the challenges and the fun stuff we did, it will be hard to find it in another place.
Now I moved on to a bank, financial industry and the tech stack is a total opposite, all my tech career it was under Microsoft Stack since I started professionally around 1999, .Net, SQL, Azure DevOps, Azure Cloud, Node.js, React and Wintel, now it’s a total turn around, I am now doing Java, Oracle, SpringBoot, Jenkins, Linux and Amazon AWS. Yes, it is a steep learning curve but if you have many years of experience, it will be an easy transition, it’s just a one it to one translation of what is in the other Tech Stack, it was hard but still learning and it a good experience. I am with the bank for near a year now but can’t share the things I learn becuase you know it’s a bank, for security purposes we can’t disclose anything even if they are heavily obfuscated so today, I am not posting a piece of code or solution but moving forward I will share something still technology related but those I do on a personal regular basis, starting with this.
I haven’t built a PC since the late 90’s the technology would have changed a lot since then but the concepts still remain the same. I remember I met my wife in a class teaching how each component on a PC work and how they are assembled now I am building one with my daughter as she starts her Technology Career. Never thought of building one but her gaming laptop broke and we need something grunty that won’t break the bank, a fast PC that can edit videos (as she has a YouTube channel), something that she can code on and playing some games once in a while. So instead of buying another gaming laptop we decided to build something around the NZ$2000.00 (US$1200), a budget build but still grunty and a lot of space to beef it up in the future.
So, what does NZ$2000.00 get you.
| Product | Details | Each | Qty | Total |
| DEEPCOOL CK500 WHITE | ATX Mid Tower Tempered Glass, Support Mini-ITX / Mico-ATX / ATX / E-ATX, 2 X Pre installed 140mm Fans, CPU Cooler Upto 175mm, GPU up to 380mm, 360mm Rad Supported, 7X PCI Slot, Front I/O: 2X USB, 1XType C, HD Audio, | $162.00 | 1 | $162.00 |
| Intel Core i7 12700 | CPU 12 Core / 20 Thread – Max Turbo 4.9GHz – 25MB Cache – LGA 1700 Socket – 12th Gen Alder Lake – 65W TDP – Intel 600 Series Motherboard Required | $574.40 | 1 | $574.40 |
| MSI SPATIUM M470 1TB | NVMe PCIe Gen 4 M.2 2280 SSD up to 5000MB/s read, up to 4400MB/s write , 5 years Warranty | $198.95 | 1 | $198.95 |
| MSI PRO B660M-A Motherboard | WIFI DDR4 MATX Motherboard For Intel 12th Gen, LGA1700, B660, PCIE 4.0, 4XDDR4 Dimm, 2XM.2, Back I/O: 6XUSB, PS2, 2XDP, 2XHDMI, Wifi AX+BT, Lan, HD Audio, Internal I/O: 2XUSB 3.2, 2XUSB 2.0, 1X12V RGB, 2X5V A-RGB | $240.35 | 1 | $240.35 |
| Corsair Vengeance RGB RS 16GB RAM | 2X 8GB, DDR4, 3600 MHz, Unbuffered, 18-22-22-42, 1.35V, Black PCB, For AMD Ryzen & Intel XMP | $136.60 | 2 | $273.19 |
| DEEPCOOL DQ750-M-V2L 750W | 80PLUS GOLD, Full Modular 10 Years Warranty | $163.00 | 1 | $163.00 |
| MSI AMD Radeon RX 6600 MECH | 2X Graphics Card 8GB GDDR6, PCIE 4.0, Dual Fan, GPU Upto 2491MHz, 2 Slot, 1XHDMI, 3XDP, 235mm Length, Max 4 Display Out, 1X8 Pin Power, 500W Or Higher PSU Recommended | $447.99 | 1 | $447.99 |
| MSI MAG Coreliquid 240R V2 AIO Cooling | 240mm, A-RGB, For Intel Socket LGA 1700/115X/ 1200/ 1366/ 2011/ 2066, For AMD Socket AM4/FM2+/FM2/FM1/AM3+/AM3/AM2+/AM2 | $109.25 | 1 | $109.25 |
| be quiet Pure Wings 2 140mm PWM High Speed Case Fan | Max 1600 RPM | $19.40 | 2 | $38.80 |
| DEEPCOOL Fan Hub | PWM 4 Fans, 4 Pin Controls up to 4 PWM fan speed Supports fan with 3PIN/4PIN | $10.58 | 1 | $10.58 |
| GGPC Gaming PC Updated Version Braided Cable Kit Pack | (White, 40cm), Set of 5 Cables. Includes 1 x 20+4 Pin, 2 x 6+2 Pin, 2 x 4+4 Pin Cables | $38.63 | 1 | $38.63 |
| $2,257.14 |
Well, it’s a bit over than 2K but its roughly in that budget, in US this will still be cheaper as the parts there tend to be more affordable than here in New Zealand.
Now let me tell you my reasoning why I choose those parts
DEEPCOOL CK500 WHITE ATX Mid Tower Case
It’s actually my daughters choice, she loves this case, clean and flat, nothing fancy about it. As we use it, I notice a lot things good about it, cable management is neat plus there is an adjustable support bracket for heavy video cards. It very open, lots of space, so good with cooling, I actually installed 4 x 140mm fans and a 240 mm radiator, by the way two of the 140mm fans are included already. Good build quality, mostly metal and glass, no plastic parts.
I just had good experience with Intel and had tried one AMD before but I did not like the performance, since then I stayed loyal with Intel. Now why not i7 12700F (NZ$557.00), it has no video, I just feel a need for a backup video output in case the video card stops working for some reason. Why not i7 12700KF (NZ$618.00) and i7 12700K (NZ$658.00)? Well, the rig is not meant for heavy gaming so no need for a K Processor.
1TB seems to be a standard today so we opted for it.
Better speed than the similar priced SSD, Samsung 970 EVO Plus.
It is 1500MB/s faster in sequential read speed, 5000MB/s vs 3500MB/s
It is 1100MB/s faster sequential write speed, 4400MB/s vs 3300MB/s
50000 IOPS faster random write speed, 600000IOPS vs 550000IOPS
The Cheapest LGA1700 Motherboard that has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, plus it was on Sale at PBTech, originally it was NZ$274.85
So in short its an inexpensive way to own an Intel 12th-gen system. The I/O panel features two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports as well as two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and then two USB 2.0 ports. There’s also four Video Outputsm two DisplayPort and two HDMI. The VRM is covered by two large heatsinks, have two M.2 slots but only one gets a heatsink, there’s four DIMM slots, four SATA ports, a second full length PCIe x16 slot and 2.5Gbps network support, Wifi and Bluetooth. It is a well equipped board, it is the best value budget Intel B660 Board you can get. Reviews for this board is great too.
Corsair Vengeance RGB RS 16GB RAM
The cheapest 3600MHz RGB, I have to get 4x8GB to have 32GB RAM rather than 2x16GB. This is to fill all DDR Slots to complete the RGB look, probably a mistake as we may upgrade to 64GB in the future then all the 4 DRAMs will be useless, I also recently learned that there are dummy RGB modules.
The cheapest 750W Modular Power Supply. Was thinking of 650W but extra oomph can help for upgrades in the future.
Not the cheapest Radeon RX6600 but since most of the brands were using in this build is MSI so we chose this just to have brand affinity. Cheapest Radeon 6600 is NZ$398.99 which is the ASUS Dual AMD Radeon RX 6600. Sadly, while I was writing this the price dropped to NZ$418.99 from NZ$447.99
This graphics card does the job well, overall its a good value for money, it can do most of what we intended for it to do, gaming, programming and video editing. It is a graphics card built for 1080p but it performs extremely well at 1080p resolution, it performs and exceeded our expectations of what a “1080p gaming graphics card” can do.
MSI MAG Coreliquid 240R V2 AIO Cooling
Cheapest 240mm AIO Water Cooler plus its MSI too, it offers decent performance with good ARGB implementation. Best part is that the PUMP is located inside the radiator fins, which helps in producing less vibration.
Cheapest 140mm fans
No other fan hub options, there is 10 port one but we don’t need it.
There you go, in the next post I will show you how we build it step by step, it will be a good read for those who is planning to build thier first PC and haven’t done it before. Take note these are prizes in New Zealand and when I say cheapest, they are the cheapest locally available component we can get. Definitely there are other cheaper options in other countries but this article is under the premise that we dont have enough variety of components available to us here.
