Building My First Desktop PC
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At long last, I finally did it. I build my first desktop PC ever, for what I think at least is a reasonable price. I have been wanting to do this for a while now. I loved the process of building as well as my finished PC.
Backstory
I have never actually owned a desktop PC before this. My earliest computer was a slow Windows laptop I had as a kid which I used almost exclusively just to play Minecraft and some other games on, then soon after a I got a MacBook after begging my dad. Since then I have been on a MacBook for the majority of my computing history. I was even a Mac gamer, much to the annoyance of all my friends when the game they wanted to play wouldn’t work on my computer. Over a year ago I switched over to Linux completely, but I was still only on a laptop, this time a ThinkPad.
I’m not much of a gamer anymore but building a PC is still something I’ve had a strong interest in doing. Mostly because I like building things and thought I could learn a lot more about computer hardware by assembling one myself. It would also be nice to have a truly performant computer I can rely on, since I’ve never actually owned a powerful computer.
I said I was going to do it last year and never did. This month however the itch was finally strong enough that I bought the parts and did the thing.
Requirements
I wanted to avoid going overboard and originally was trying to avoid spending over $500. I don’t do anything too crazy on my computer, no plans for 4k video editing or training neural nets, so I tried to keep the parts modest. It’s quite easy to fall into the consumerist trap of buying the latest and greatest hardware just because you can or for “future proofing”, even though realistically one will rarely if ever utilize the full power of that hardware. That being said I also did not want to go so cheap that I would be wanting to upgrade soon after assembling the computer, so I aimed to strike a balance. Ideally I’d like this PC to be with me for many many years for personal use.
Some basic requirements I had:
- must be 100% Linux compatible
- a decent but not super expensive GPU so I can play some games
- enough space for potential future upgrades like more hard drives and expansion cards
The Build
I went through three iterations of my build before finally making a purchase.
When coming up with builds, I found both the sites PCPartPicker and UserBenchmark extremely helpful. I used PCPartPicker to select the parts for my PC at first but then eventually migrated that to a spreadsheet.
Build #1
For my first build I decided on the i3-12100F processor and pick my other parts based on that. I didn’t think I would need an extremely powerful processor with lots of cores and liked the i3 for being low power and cheaper than the alternatives while still providing good performance.
For the GPU, my brother actually had an old Nvidia GeForce GPU I could have that for whatever reason did not work for his PC. In beginning I still wanted to buy a GPU, mainly because of the bad experiences I had read online about trying to get Nvidia GPUs to work on Linux, as well as my own bad experience trying to get Nvidia’s propertiary drivers to work on my dad’s old iMac I installed Debian Linux on (story for another day), and Nvidia’s lack of support for Wayland. So I thought I better buy an AMD GPU for hopefully a plug-in-play experience (spoiler: this was not the case). To save money I purchased the GPU used from eBay.
I also wanted to go with a micro-ATX board at first because I was afraid an ATX PC would be too big. Micro-ATX seemed like a good comprise between not being too big but having enough space and slots to upgrade and tinker with in the future.
| Part | Name | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel 12th Gen i3-12100F | $95.00 |
| Motherboard | ASRock B66M Pro RS | $95.00 |
| RAM | Silicon POwer DDR4 16GB Kit | $30.99 |
| GPU | AMD RX 5700 XT | $160.00 |
| PSU | ARESGAME 650W Bronze PSU | $50.00 |
| SSD | Kingston 512G NVMe SSD | $42.99 |
| Cooling | Stock Cooler | $0.00 |
| Case | Cooler Master N200 | $59.99 |
| Total | $533.97 |
Build #2
While doing some more research to verify my initial build was sane I came across a suggestion to look for good deals on bundles at Micro Center. I live ~20 minutes from a Micro Center so I decided why not. I then came across what seemed to me like a really good deal on a CPU, Motherboard, and RAM bundle with better parts than I selected for not much more money. Ultimately I decided to base my build around this instead. Only problem was that I later realized Intel CPUs with the ‘-K’ suffix are able to be overclocked but also do not come with a stock cooler, so I would have to buy that too.
The motherboard was also a full ATX board and I originally wanted micro-ATX, but I decided this was an acceptable comprise since being easily customizable was more important to me than having a small PC.
| Part | Name | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel 12th Gen i5-12600KF | - |
| Motherboard | MSI Z790-P Pro WiFi | - |
| RAM | G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB Kit | - |
| CPU, Motherboard, RAM | Bundle | $249.99 |
| PSU | ARESGAME 650W Bronze PSU | $50.00 |
| GPU | AMD RX 5700 XT | $160.00 |
| SSD | Kingston 512G NVMe SSD | $42.99 |
| Cooling | Thermalright Assassin X | $17.49 |
| Case | Cooler Master N400 | $74.99 |
| Total | $577.46 |
Build #3
So, I picked up the bundle from Micro Center and all my other parts arrived the same day except for the GPU. I also ended up grabbing an Inland SSD from Micro Center instead of ordering the Kingstone one. I decided I would give my brother’s GPU a shot. Turns out it actually worked fine after installing the proprietary drivers (in X11 at least). I was told that in my brothers PC the GPU got very hot and nosiey, but I had no such issues in my PC. I tried some games (Civilization 6 and later Tomb Raider) and also had no problems. Well, in Tomb Raider I did have some issues with heat and coil whine until I enabled vynsc, then everything worked like a charm.
Where I ran into glitches was when I tested using Wayland. I found weird graphical bugs like for example a million mouse cursors appearing on my screen when waking up from sleep. The solution ended up being to just not using Wayland, which is okay and not deal breaker for me.
Graphical glitches with Nvidia and Wayland.
Flash forward a week later when I finally got the AMD RX 5700 XT, I was not pleased. I ran into a few graphical glitches, but the main issue was the unbearable and disgusting sounding coil whine when doing anything moderately graphics intensive. Obviously this is not representative of all AMD GPUs as a whole, it is more like I just got a less than good GPU off eBay, but I took it out the next day and put in a return.
So I am sticking with the Nvidia GPU I got for free, it works well so far after a few weeks of use.
| Part | Name | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel 12th Gen i5-12600KF | - |
| Motherboard | MSI Z790-P Pro WiFi | - |
| RAM | Silicon POwer DDR4 16GB Kit | - |
| CPU, Motherboard, RAM | Bundle | $249.99 |
| PSU | ARESGAME 650W Bronze PSU | $50.00 |
| GPU | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 | $0.00 |
| SSD | Inland TN450 500GB NVMe SSD | $42.99 |
| Cooling | Thermalright Assassin X 120 R SE | $17.49 |
| Case | Cooler Master N400 | $74.99 |
| Total | $435.46 |
Actually Building It
I used this guide for Linus Tech Tips to walk me through building it and found it extremely helpful. Of course, a few days after I finished building they released an updated version of the same guide for 2024 here, not sure if there really is any significant difference between the old guide and the new one (I have no intention of watching the new one to find out) but it’s probably better to go with the newer guide if you also want to build a PC.
The CPU.
Important tip which I am glad I followed is test your PC before putting it in the case. Also make sure the cable from your PSU to the Motherboard is really plugged in all the way.
It’s alive!
Some cable gore.
In the case!
Testing on a live Kubuntu CD.
Building it was mostly straightforward but in total it took my like 4+ hours though mainly because I was going slow and also had some issues midway with actually getting it to turn on (cable from PSU to motherboard was not fully plugged in 🤦).
To be honest, I did not realize how big an ATX Mid-Tower was and at first though it was quite unsightly finishing the build and putting it on my desk. But after having it around for a couple days, I have quickly grown to love it and glad I decided to just go with the standard ATX size.
Software
For my OS I installed Debian 12 stable and then KDE for my desktop environment, my current favorite distro and favorite desktop environment. To install Debian I had to disable Secure Boot in the BIOS. I was able to get all the software I needed pretty easily, even Steam, which does require some extra steps but you can read about that on the Debian wiki.
Conclusion
I had a lot of fun doing this would reccomend it to anyone really interested in computers. I have been in many laptops and some desktops before for upgrades and repairs, but really assembling your very own PC from scratch was greatly satisfying. Combine this with an operating system the puts you in the driver seat like Linux, and I’ve never felt such a strong degree of ownership over and pride in a computer. It really feels like my computer in a way like no other has.