My Custom Built Desktop. The Question & The Answers!

9 min readNov 20, 2021

If you do not want to buy an overpriced pre-built like an M1-MacMini, MacPro, or Dell XPS Desktop and do not want to compromise on performance either, A self-built desktop is a preferable option. It's also a suitable choice if you simply like to build things.

If you do decide to go for custom-built, be ready to spend time researching and assembling components with compatible configurations.

In this post, I’m sharing my experience building this colorful powerhouse below. I will discuss,

Why did I do it?
What questions one should ask oneself to get to the right components
The thought process to reach the answers to the above questions.
Which components I finally ended up using.
Benchmark comparison for my final build.

Why did I do it

I decided to get a desktop during the pre-MacM1 era (yes that’s a thing). After browsing through many websites to buy prebuilt PCs, I realized, machines with good configurations were over-expensive & cheaper options were built with subpar components.

I couldn’t settle with any of the two, So I decided to build a machine myself. I’m not a Gamer so a Custom Built PC was not really needed, I could’ve settled with a cheap prebuilt. But building things is fun, so I did it anyway.

Be cautious, these days individual parts are very expensive. If you do not search for price deals, you will end up spending a lot more on a self-built machine than buying a prebuilt one from known vendors like dell, hp, Lenovo, etc.

To find the right parts, you need to ask the right questions to yourself. Below are the questions and answers for each part.

Parts ( Questions & Answers )

0. Decide the Team

Once you’ve decided to build a PC The Zeroth question to ask yourself is, Team Blue(Intel) or Team Red (AMD)? Once you decide about the Team, you can start picking the parts. I’m from Team Blue. (Intel)

1. The Brain (Processor)

1.1 The first question is,
What generation of processors do you want?

As of writing this article, Rocket-Lake aka 11th gen is intel’s latest desktop processor in the market. But there are a plethora of deals on Comet-Lake (10th gen) & Coffee-Lake (9th gen) processors. For me, the best value for money was, a Comet-Lake processor.

Apple dropped Intel processors from the Mac lineup after the 10th gen. I built a Hackintosh so I chose the 10th gen processor. I’m not sure about the legalities of the Hackintosh, so I will neither discuss nor encourage anyone to build it.

1.2 The second question is,
Which 10th gen CPU do you want?

I3 was out of consideration. I9 is great but it has a very high TDP and thus requires expensive CPU cooling components. Therefore, I was torn between Non-F i5 and Non-F i7. Check the previous article for why non-F product-line-suffix.

Although, I did not need a K-type processor, but one day it was on a deal, so I bought an Intel Core i7–10700K.

2. The spine (Motherboard)

Once the processor is finalized, the options for the remaining components are reduced to only supported configurations.

2.1. The first question to ask is,
What CPU socket your processor has?

Intel 10th Gen is LGA-1200. Only 400 & 500 series motherboards are LGA-1200.

I was building for a Hackintosh, on OSX the 500-Series motherboard requires a dGPU for frame buffer patching. I did not get a dGPU to stay under 600$. So I went for the 400-Series motherboard, Otherwise, a 500 series was a better option.

2.2. The second question is,
Which chipset do you want, Z490 or B460?

I wouldn’t recommend H410/H470 unless you are building a low-powered PC. I was using a K series processor, which “can be” overclocked, So the best option was a Z490 motherboard.

Some expensive B460s have better VRMs than cheaper Z490s. Choose accordingly.

2.3. The third question is,
What form factor do you prefer?

I didn’t want to lose the ability to connect many peripherals so I went with a Standard ATX motherboard, in hindsight, A Micro-ATX would’ve worked well.

After deciding all 3 parameters, I kept searching for deals, one fine day I got a deal on this awesome motherboard GIGABYTE Z490 AORUS Ultra.
If you're building windows or a Linux machine, then GIGABYTE Z590 AORUS ULTRA will be a better way to go.

At first look, this Motherboard appears pricy considering sub $100 options available in the market. But it offers a lot more than its price. It has
- 2 USB 3.2 front headers.
- 3 USB-A 3.2 connectors in the back panel,
- 1 USB-C 3.2 connector in the back panel.
- Direct 12 Phases Digital VRM with 50A Smart Power Stage
- 2 PCI-3 slots with pre-installed heatsink,
- 1 PCI-4 slot with pre-installed heatsink.
- An awesome inbuilt RGB
- An onboard WIFI-6 and Bluetooth 5 module.
One paragraph isn’t enough to praise this motherboard. Sure, you can get a cheaper motherboard, but adding these features with external components will bring costs the same if not more.

3. The Skin (Case)

3.1 The only question to ask for the case is,
What’s the form factor of your motherboard?

Don't buy a case with a smaller form factor than your motherboard. It should be bigger or the same as your motherboard.

3.2 Some Optional questions to ask are
*. How many connectors do you want at the front of your case?
*. Do you want RGB in case?
*. Do you want a silent case?

After a lot of research, I concluded that beQuite is the best product line for simple but silent PC builds. I also wanted the RGB, so I went ahead with
be quiet! Pure Base 500DX.

The case has
1 front USB-C gen 2
1 front USB-A 3.2 connector.
An inbuilt RGB with a color picker button at the front.
A clean design with fluent airflows.
Comes with 3 beQuite super silent fans, if purchased separately, each costs $15–$25, based upon rpm.

4. The Cooler

4.0. The Zeroth question to ask is,
Do you really need a CPU cooler?

Non-K series intel CPU comes with a stock cooler fan, which is enough for the i3 and i5 series of non-overclockable processors. In other cases, we go as below.

4.1 The First question to ask is,
Do you want to go with Liquid cooling or Air Cooling?

I picked air cooling, mostly due to the pricing factor, good liquid coolers are really expensive.

If you can afford to spend money then my 2 favorite liquid coolers are these choose the size based on your processor. (explained in point 4.2)

For a simple and elegant build be quite pure loop
For fancy builds, NZXT Kraken

4.2 The second question is,
How much TDP of cooler do you need?

This is directly related to your CPU TDP, try to have a cooler with a higher TDP than your CPU.
Even though I have an overclockable (k series) processor, I never overclock and do not even play video games, I did not need a high TDP cooler.

As I’ve complete faith in the beQuite brand, I opted for be quiet! Shadow Rock 3, BK004. This has a 190W TDP which was enough for my use case. I’ve been using this for 8 months and my CPU temperature usually stays in the 30–35 degrees Celcius range, without any noise from the fan.

5. The Blood (PSU)

The PSU (power supply unit) is a component where you should not make any compromises. A bad PSU can break your computer parts, in the worst case break your whole machine, and in extreme cases burn your house :-)

5.1. The first question is,
What Modularity PSU do you want?

A fully modular PSU is a waste of money (in my opinion). I suggest buying a semi-modular one. When on a tight budget non-modular will also work. Modularity doesn't affect performance. It just gives a little ease or hassle in cable management.

5.2 The second question to ask,
How many wattages do you need?

There are many online calculators to decide how many watts of PSU your configuration needs, I used the calculator at beQuite PSU calculator

5.3 The third question to ask is,
Which brand do you want?

You can guess by now, I love beQuite as a brand. but there are a few more good brands, Just don’t buy any cheaper options.

beQuite parts are on a little pricy side.
I bought be quiet! Pure Power 11 600W . Had I had a bigger budget, I would’ve gone for a semi-modular PSU.
If you can spend some money, I will recommend be quiet! Straight Power 11 Platinum 650W
If money is not at all a concern for you, then buy be quiet! Dark Power .

6. The Memory

There’s nothing much to look at while buying RAM. Just remember these 4 points

It better be at least aDDR4
It's better if the speed is at least 3000MHz or above.
It has to be DIMM. Not SODIMM for a PC build.
It’s better to have 2 RAM of half size than one of full size. A dual-channel configuration performs better than a single-channel, ie, two 16GB memory sticks will perform better than one 32GB stick in a motherboard with 4 DIMM slots.
It “MUST” have RGB. haha. or maybe not. When it's about bringing colors to the computer, XPG is my go-to brand.

With all these considerations, I ended up buying XPG DDR4 D60G RGB 32GB (2x16GB) 3200MHz And it is one of the best things I like when I start my PC.

7. The Storage

Nothing much scientific in storage either, Just don’t buy a Hard disk drive in 2021. You can get a cheap SATA3 SSD or if you care about form factor and speed too much then go for an NVME drive.

Call me childish but I wanted everything with colors. and XPG is the place to go for colors. So I ended up buying an XPG S40G 256GB RGB NVME drive for my osx installation. Oh boy, I love my NVME. I even took out one prebuilt heatsink from the motherboard, because the colors of nvme are in the xpg heatsink.

I also got another SATA-SSD Western Digital 500GB WD Blue for Linux and windows.

Benchmarks

This is the Geekbench score for my machine which cost a little lesser than $700 (monitor, keyboard/mouse excluded)

These are benchmark charts for Mac from Geekbench. Here are the approximate prices. In the Single-Core chart, the bottommost is priced at $1499 before tax and the topmost is at $3,499. In the Multi-Core chart, the bottommost is priced at $1799 and the topmost at $5999.