Building a PC With No Experience
As 2020 dragged on, I, like many others, found myself searching for a new hobby. Though the pandemic stole time from people, it also granted heaps of time to those stuck inside. I fell into the second category, desperately trying to find something to do. I had spent many hours during the pandemic trying out various hobbies: I did video editing, some blog writing, a little bit of reading, and gaming — the latter of which I became somewhat frustrated with. And no, I don’t mean that I became angry while playing video games. Rather, I was running into unfortunate obstacles while playing games with my friends on account of my hardware.
Being primarily a PC gamer, I had been making some small upgrades to my setup throughout the years. I first went from a laptop with integrated graphics (which I really didn’t play much on) to a gaming laptop with a discrete graphics card. The biggest difference between these two computers was that one lacked a discrete, or separate, GPU (graphics processing unit), and was therefore running on integrated graphics, or graphics that are on the same chip as the CPU, the brain of the system.
Since integrated graphics limits the CPU and GPU to share the same memory, cooling, chip, etc., a system with a CPU and a discrete GPU usually has more potential in graphically intensive processes. Though I had solved many of my problems with a discrete Nvidia 1050Ti graphics card, there were still many problems I ran into.
The first one was fairly simple — playing on Wi-Fi simply wouldn’t cut it for certain games. That was an easy fix with the purchase of an ethernet cable. I no longer experienced significant network latency, and my system would also be the first to reconnect to the Internet in the case of a router restart.
By the fall of 2020, I thought that I had quite a good setup that would run smoothly and enable me to play online games with my friends during this unfortunate pandemic. That’s when I first realized my CPU bottleneck.
Imagine you are driving down the highway. There are five lanes to drive in. Just a few miles ahead, a deadly seven vehicle accident occurs in Lanes 1, 2, 3, and 4. Traffic suddenly slows down, and as you approach the scene of the accident, you see that all the vehicles on the road are shifting into Lane 5. You slow down to a measly 5 mph, at least whenever you can move. Most of the time, you are simply at a standstill, waiting for cars to pass one a time through Lane 5. The vehicles that slowly pass through Lane 5 are eventually able to get pass the scene of the accident, and the other four lanes become available again. However, due to the slow rate at which cars passed through the area of the accident, the road is virtually empty afterwards. The five lanes are effectively useless.
We can use this traffic analogy to better explain the bottleneck effect between a CPU and a GPU. The CPU, or central processing unit, is the brain of a computer. Without it, the computer cannot perform its calculations, and it cannot do its job. It is the core of the system, and the rest of the components rely on it to make the computer as a whole to work. The GPU, or graphical processing unit, is something of a luxury. It allows us, as humans, to view video output from the computer, but without the GPU, the computer can still “run.” A computer without a GPU might not be of any practical use for the common consumer, since there is nothing to be displayed on screen, but it can still boot.
Keeping this in mind, it makes sense that the CPU more commonly bottlenecks the GPU, not the other way around (although a GPU bottleneck is also possible). Think about it this way: if the CPU is at 100% usage and the GPU is at 30% usage, then the GPU can’t “work any harder” since the CPU is already “maxed out,” and cannot increase in usage percentage alongside the GPU.
This is exactly what happened with my laptop in certain games, as I saw my CPU usage rise to 99% or 100% with the GPU hovering no higher than 35% or so. This was also coupled with a few nuisances, such as the small amount of RAM that many laptops are built with (8 GB in my case), and the random BSoDs that I got on the system. The low speed, low capacity RAM made video editing painstakingly slow in particular, and the blue screen errors I got were persistent and annoying.
That’s when I learned about PC building. Even though I had absolutely no experience with PC building at the time, I knew that my friend had built his own PC the year prior, and he emphasized how easy it was and how powerful his desktop was compared to his laptop (same model as mine, interestingly enough). He never ran into any problems with performance, and the process of building a PC sounded intriguing enough on its own. He offered to put together a basic PC parts list for me to work off of.
I headed over to PCPartPicker, an incredibly useful site that is the most popular site for constructing a PC parts list nowadays. I shared my screen to my friend via Discord, and he began listing off the parts that I would need and which models he suggested. After hearing “motherboard,” “RAM speed,” and “PSU rating” a few times, I got totally lost. Though we ended up with a PC parts list by the end of the call, I felt like I didn’t even have a basic grasp of the components and how they worked together. I decided that I would need to do my own research.
Later that day, I decided to start taking notes on a few videos to better understand how a PC works. Not sure where to start, I headed over to YouTube and searched up something along the lines of “PC parts.” I scrolled down a bit and decided to look at this one first:
Kyle from Bitwit essentially got me started on my whole research process, as beforehand, any PC building or PC-related videos that I stumbled across had much more of an entertainment factor rather than one of education.
I would strongly recommend this video for any beginners to PC building, and even seasoned veterans will likely learn a thing or two. I will forewarn you that he goes fairly fast as he covers every single significant compatibility in just about 15 minutes, so you may have to pause/rewind every once in a while.
Kyle explains the compatibilities very clearly, illustrating his words with a simple dynamic octagon diagram that has lines between parts to demonstrate a necessary compatibility:
I initially considered writing down all of the compatibilities, but then decided on finding compatibilities between my own components. Making a few changes from the PC parts list that my friend gave me, I made a new list on PCPartPicker and copied a table into a Google Doc. I then watched the video methodically, pausing after each compatibility was explained and then confirming that the two parts on my list had that compatibility, and subsequently making note of it on the Doc.
After a couple of hours of rewinding, pausing, and taking notes, I finally finished this 15 minute video. By the end of it, I felt like I had at least gained a basic understanding of PC building. But I also knew that I wasn’t done with researching. I even thought that the list I had pasted into the Google Doc would be my final parts list. Little did I know that I would change SIX of the eight components in that list, as well as tacking on an extra one.
I then decided to revisit a PC building tutorial video, which my friend had sent to me many months ago. I had skimmed through it back in the summer of 2020, but I’m sure I was completely lost while doing so. This video also includes basic set up tips, and even a brief guide to overclocking your CPU and GPU (which essentially increases the performance of those parts):
I ended up taking notes on this video as well, creating a separate Google Doc that listed the steps on how to build the PC, as well as the set up process. Once again, I took an hour or so to pause, rewind, and type out some notes. I also refined my notes to more accurately describe my parts, which I definitely recommend, as it’s a good way to get more familiar with the intricacies of your PC before you even have the parts. Throughout this process you might even change a part or two, learn about its specifications, and further learn how you can optimize your build for its budget or how you want it to look.
After taking in-depth notes on how to build a PC, my parts list ended up changing dramatically for a few reasons. The first reason was my knowledge of PC parts expanding. A second reason was my indecision on aesthetics (lighting, case design, RGB, etc.). The final reason was the release of the Nvidia 30 series GPUs.
On September 1, 2020, Nvidia announced their 30 series GPUs, a new generation of ray tracing graphics cards that would completely blow the previous generation out of the water. The RTX 3080 was released on September 17, boasting 8704 CUDA cores, a 1.71 GHz boost clock, and 10 GB of GDDR6X VRAM, all with an innovative dual-axial air flow design. Starting at $699, it sounded a little bit too pricey for my build. But the 3080’s price tag paled in comparison to the RTX 3090, which launched on September 24, with a whopping 10496 CUDA cores, a 1.7 GHz boost clock, and an enormous 24 GB of GDDR6X VRAM. It was titled the “8K gaming card,” supposedly enabling people to play video games at 8K resolution. This came with a hefty price tag of $1499 however, and would cost even more for modified cards from board partners, like Asus and MSI.
The last card that Nvidia announced was what caught my eye. The Nvidia RTX 3070, starting at a mere $499, was claimed to be faster than the RTX 2080Ti of the previous generation — a card that was priced at $1200! For half the price, you would get more performance. This came as a shock to everyone, and was even more shocking when considering that the previous generation GPUs still held lofty prices. In the case of the RTX 2070 Super that was on my parts list, it costed MORE than the 3070 and would perform worse. It was a no-brainer when I realized this; I was set on getting a 3070 over the 2070 Super. All I had to do was wait until October 15th, the launch date that Nvidia initially set.
I still wasn’t done with my research however, as the video from TechSource on how to build a PC didn’t go too in-depth on how to set it up. That’s when this video popped up in my recommended:
Jason from JayzTwoCents created this comprehensive guide on what to do after building your computer. It goes through setting up the operating system, enabling drives, preventing Microsoft from downloading unnecessary software and applications onto your system, and various other tips on how to optimize your computer overall.
I spent another hour or so taking notes on this video alone, adding to the Google Doc with my steps for building a PC. Pause, rewind, take notes. By this point, I had a very thorough guide for myself on how to build a PC and how to set it up, as well as all of the little specifics that I would run into. Just for fun, I also tagged on a list of my peripherals, the software I planned on downloading, my Windows mouse sensitivity that I would use, the wallpaper I planned on setting, etc. (I kind of went overboard with this part).
At this point, I was the greatest PC builder in the entire world.
Kidding. But there was one last huge hurdle I would run into before I could even purchase my parts — or rather, purchasing the parts was the problem itself.
The Great Gaming Supply Shortage of 2020
Remember when I said that the pandemic gave a lot of time to those stuck inside? Well that huge amount of time made gaming even more popular, so demand for gaming-related products skyrocketed. This pretty much made 2020 one of the worst years to build a PC (and carrying over into 2021).
Now I don’t mean “worst” year because PC building in general is a bad idea, but instead, it was (and still is) very difficult to get your hands on a lot of parts.
Just to name a few parts that you likely can’t get as of January 2021: RTX 3070, RTX 3080, RTX 3090, Ryzen 5 5600X, Ryzen 9 5950X, RX 6800, RX 6800XT, and RX 6900XT. That doesn’t even consider the new consoles that were released in 2020, the Xbox Series S/X and the PS5. Launches of these products all faced severe shortages in supply as well as big problems with bots and scalpers.
The launch of the Nvidia RTX 3080 was the first to show issues, with many criticizing the product’s launch being a “paper launch,” referring to how the product was released, but didn’t make it into customers’ hands. Numerous bots were used to buy these graphics cards, enabling cryptocurrency miners to get ahold of the GPUs first, get some use out of them, and sell them at inflated prices on sites like eBay (otherwise known as scalping).
Thousands and thousands of forum posts protested in frustration at the fact that “no one” was able to get a graphics card. Though some people certainly did receive their graphics cards, the number was so small compared to the demand that the stock seemed nonexistent. I, like many others, questioned if the graphics cards were real at all (jokingly of course).
The RTX 3090 launch was no better than the 3080, and the 3070's initially planned launch date of October 15th was pushed back two weeks, to the 29th. When I heard about this, I was conflicted between the two things that it could mean. There was the optimistic interpretation: “Oh, Nvidia will be able to manufacture more GPUs in that time! My chances of getting one have increased!” There was also the realistic interpretation (considering the low stock, it’s not even pessimism): “Nvidia is delaying the launch by two weeks because some stores and retailers don’t even have a single unit in stock yet.” To no surprise, the realistic interpretation was what ended up happening.
On the day before the launch, I made sure to go to sleep early, even though the launch was scheduled for 9 AM EST, so it was unlikely that I would sleep through it. To get ready for the launch, I made sure that my phone was on the Best Buy app, and that I had prelisted 3070 pages on my laptop. I found the most variation in products on Newegg as I expected, and I knew that Best Buy was probably my best bet for getting a Founder’s Edition card (the one straight from Nvidia). I expected absolutely nothing from Amazon and B&H.
Before I knew it, it was 8:59. With one minute remaining, I began to wonder the same thing that I always think about with these timed launches: “Do I refresh at 8:59:59 or 9:00:00?” Well, whatever I did, it didn’t work out in my favor. I tried adding 3070s from Newegg to my cart at 9 AM, but none of them worked, likely due to the site receiving too many requests. I tried adding MSI’s Gaming Trio 3070, the Asus ROG Strix 3070, and Gigabyte’s Aorus 3070 Master. At that point, I didn’t really care which 3070 I got, since I knew how bad stock was. I went into the launch with the mindset that I should be happy if I got a 3070 at all.
About 40 minutes or so into the launch, I was somehow able to get a 3070 FE in my Best Buy cart through their website. I quickly started filling out the shipping and billing information only to find that Best Buy was “unable to ship to my address.” That sounded strange. The website also presented me with a map interface, showing the nearest store locations to the address I provided. I then realized that every single store within my area was already out of stock — cards either purchased in store by people who lined up the night before (or the week before, as I’ve seen more commonly), or cards promised to people buying online. By 10 AM, I became fully aware of how ridiculously bad the stock was for these GPUs. Best Buy’s system may have told me that I had a 3070 in my cart, but with how astronomically large the demand was in comparison to the stock, it’s as if I never actually had it in my cart to begin with.
With the 3070 out of stock in two seconds like every other GPU launch in 2020, it seemed that I would have to finish the year without building my own PC. Actually, that wasn’t the case, and for two reasons. The first reason will chronologically coincide with the second. To tell the story of the second reason, I’ll have to turn back time…
AMD Becomes a Monopoly (not really)
It’s October 28th, 2020, just one day before the delayed launch of Nvidia’s RTX 3070. The only serious competitor to Nvidia in graphics processing, AMD, has their announcement of RDNA 2 scheduled to premiere at 12 PM EST. RDNA 2 serves as the foundation for AMD’s newest generation PC graphics as well as the Xbox Series S/X and PS5. It seems that Nvidia not only delayed the launch of the RTX 3070 by two weeks due to stock issues, but also to put themselves in a reactive position for the announcement of RDNA 2, AMD’s new GPUs. In the worst case scenario, if the AMD equivalent of the 3070 was announced to be too valuable price-per-performance-wise, Nvidia could drop the price of the 3070. Though that didn’t happen, AMD still demonstrated that they were no longer the underdogs in the computing industry.
Following the AMD RDNA 2 announcement, the Internet was flooded with memes and discussions regarding the “death” of Nvidia. Here’s why:
AMD overcut Nvidia’s RTX 3070 with their RX 6800 at $579 (difference of $80), but with twice the VRAM. The 6800 has 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, while the 3070 has only 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. AMD undercut Nvidia’s RTX 3080 with their RX 6800XT at $649 (difference of $50), and most importantly, their benchmarks claimed that their cheaper GPU outperformed the already-released 3080 in certain games. The nail in the coffin was AMD’s equivalent to the RTX 3090, Nvidia’s “8K gaming card” — a GPU so large that it fails to fit inside many desktop cases. That equivalent was announced as the RX 6900XT, a GPU that more or less matched the 3090 in benchmarks and undercut Nvidia by a cool $500.
That’s right. The 6900XT starts at $999, compared to the 3090, which starts at $1499. Don’t wait up for me, I’ll be back after attending Nvidia’s funeral.
Although it didn’t apply to me, AMD’s release of their new CPUs on the Zen 3 architecture produced further widescale speculation of the rise of AMD and the downfall of Intel, the only other major competitor in CPU manufacturing.
You might have guessed it already, but I tried to get a 3070 on launch date for stock reasons. It seemed foolish to wait until the RX 6800 launch date (November 18th, shared with the 6800XT). Trying to get two graphics cards of similar potential greatly increased my chances of getting one at all. Of course, my chances were very slim, regardless.
After failing to get an RTX 3070 on launch date, I was somewhat upset, but also not surprised. I knew that the two week delay was not a good sign from Nvidia, but I also knew that I had the RX 6800 launch as a safety net — a safety net that was weaved out of very thin and weak thread, that is.
With less than three weeks until the launch of the 6800, I decided to ramp up my efforts in getting a 3070. Although the launch of these products often give consumers some of the best chances to snag a unit, they also give some of the worst chances when considering how everyone else has the same idea — sitting on their computers, furiously clicking at 9:00 AM EST.
To further increase my chances of getting a new generation graphics card for 2020, I did a bit of research into restocks, which also provide opportunities for getting a new GPU without buying from scalpers who inflate the price by hundreds of dollars (some bids on 3080s and 3090s went to above $50,000 to prevent from actually selling it). I found a very useful Google Doc on how to secure a 30 series graphics card utilizing Discord.
The first step was to enable phone notifications for Discord optimally for retailer links. For example, if there was a link to a 3080 on Amazon, Discord’s default settings on your iPhone will open Amazon through an integrated Safari interface within the Discord app. However, disabling the default browser option enables these links to open their respective apps (provided that they are already installed) with just one input. This greatly increases your chances at adding the product to your cart before bots can get to it.
The second step was to join Discord servers with bots that continuously check for stock of items. With the announcement of the 30 series GPUs, many Discord servers set up their bots to scrape the webpages of Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg, and other sites selling graphics cards.
The final step was to set up server-specific notifications; this is usually done by reacting to a message in a text channel entitled “notifications” or something similar. By reacting with a 3070 emoji for example, I would then receive any notification messages sent by the bots in the server to the corresponding restock text channel.
Although the bots are constantly running and scraping the webpages of these cards, there are many false alarms. The webpage may experience change to a single HTML element, irrelevant to the stock, but the bot may still flag it as a significant change to the page (this all depends on how sophisticated the bots are of course).
I ended up joining three servers, with notifications set up for the RTX 3070. On the same day, I experienced my first restock notification, which I was either unfortunately too late to click on, or was a false alarm.
The days leading up to the RX 6800 launch didn’t give me any additional luck. Sometimes I would be blessed with the “Add to cart” button, but clicking it didn’t do anything. At that point, I couldn’t have cared less which 3070 got a restock, or which retailer it was from. If there was a restock notification, I tried to snag it.
Fast forward to November 17th, just one day before the 6800 launched, I was still unable to purchase a 3070. I continued to joke with my friends that these graphics cards weren’t real. It was easy for them to play along, especially considering that some failed at getting a 3080 while checking restocks for an entire month. Unlike the 3070 launch, I didn’t intentionally go to sleep early. Nor did I set up an alarm that was very early. Part of that was due to my lack of enthusiasm, but it was also due to the fact that the 6800 and 6800XT launch did not have a clear launch time. While multiple sources stated that the 3070 would launch at 9 AM EST, articles on the 6800 speculated the same time, but also stated that AMD had not released an official time. I considered that it could have been a tactic to combat bots and scalpers, but without announcing an official time, that would only hinder real consumers further. After all, bots can be constantly refreshing a page for years on end, while humans can only click so much.
I woke up with just over an hour to 9 AM. I hopped onto my laptop, having already decided the night before that I wouldn’t use my phone as a backup. I scoured Newegg for a page with 6800 listings, but found absolutely nothing. Unlike the 3070, it was very difficult to find prelistings on Newegg, and on top of that, only reference cards were being released that day (no custom board partner designs from companies like Gigabyte and MSI).
Not only did it seem that zero 6800 products were prelisted on Newegg, I also wasn’t certain of the time that the launch would occur. Fortunately, I stumbled across a YouTube livestream that implied the launch being at 9 AM EST (at this point, I realized that it was probably common knowledge and I had just somehow missed the memo). Once again, 9 AM arrived faster than I expected. I refreshed my search for “RX 6800” on Newegg, only to find nothing. Luckily, I had also set up notifications for the 6800 on my Discord servers, so within seconds I received links (from Newegg, no surprise there) to products. The first was an ASRock 6800 reference card. Unfortunately, the “Add to cart” button did absolutely nothing, since Newegg was being flooded with too many requests. I found another 6800 and tried again. Nope. Another one? Nope. Another one? Nope.
After trying to get numerous 6800s on Newegg, over twenty minutes had already elapsed. I accepted defeat and half-consciously opened up a new tab to AMD.com. Having never been to the site before, I somehow found the page for the RDNA 2 cards. A few clicks later and I was shocked to find a button that read “BUY NOW” under the 6800. I clicked it, and the rest was history. An RX 6800 was placed in my cart, I entered my payment information with the help of Chrome auto-fill, and sent my order through. I didn’t receive my order confirmation on the spot though, and after I refreshed the page following my checkout, the site promptly crashed. Too many server requests I guess.
The RX 6800 was the second reason that enabled me to finish my PC build with a new generation GPU. Remember what I said about the first reason? Well, by some miracle, right after I ordered a 6800, I clicked on an Amazon link from a Discord bot for a ZOTAC 3070. And I somehow managed to get it into my cart. If I wanted, I could have had not only a 6800, but also a 3070. That’s a little too lucky. I ended up not buying it, knowing that there was a chance that a non-scalping, genuine customer could enjoy the product without paying an inflated price. After all, if I bought it, I would be no better than the scalpers by purchasing a product that I didn’t need, only to sell it at a higher price.
For the rest of the day, I was in a strange state of confusion and excitement. I knew that my order hadn’t been confirmed yet, since their system needed to process countless requests and determine which ones were bots and which ones were valid customers. I kept joking to myself, saying that AMD would retract my order at the last moment. That idea became less and less of a reality as the hours passed; I knew that if enough time passed, there would be little to no chance that my order would be rejected.
The next day, I received an email from AMD that confirmed my order. With the rest of my components already delivered, I just needed to wait for the final part.
PC Build 2020
The first parts list that you make might not be the final list that you end up with. Throughout my research on PC building and attempts to get a 3070/6800, my parts list changed drastically.
First parts list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/3cphGq
Final parts list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/MwCb2V
I ended up changing my motherboard, RAM, SSD, graphics card, case, and power supply. I even bought additional fans for more airflow.
On November 28th, 2020, I got my screwdriver and my unboxing knives ready. In just under five hours, I managed to build my first PC with no experience. I’ll let the video speak for itself.
If I can give you just one piece of advice, it’s this: Take your time. Don’t be pressured to get the build done as fast as possible. Go at your own pace, and be careful whenever you get to a step that could cause irreversible damage (installing the CPU comes to mind). If you need time to eat, sleep, talk to friends, etc., don’t be afraid to do so. I personally had a bite in the middle of the build, and was on a Discord call with my friends throughout the entire process. At some points, I took breaks, just talking to my friends and discussing my progress. It’s okay to take those breaks, and they are especially important for anyone who views PC building as labor rather than a passion/hobby.
Conclusion
Building my first PC has been a great experience. It’s going to be one of those memories that I’ll never forget. Through all the research, discussions on forums, and the build itself, it was amazing. And it still is — I’m currently typing this blog post on it, and I certainly couldn’t have edited that video with my laptop (not easily, at least).
Whether you’re a technology fanatic or someone who struggles to access the camera on your smartphone, I promise that you can build your own PC. Being able to say “I made this” is an experience like no other. But building a PC isn’t the only way to create something of course. Maybe your PC is your own website. Maybe your PC is your own physique. Maybe your PC is your career. Whatever it may be, I’m certain that you can build it.
Here’s to a new year! Hopefully Nvidia and AMD produce more than a grand total of 12 graphics cards :)
