I’ve had the project to rebuild a PC in my mind for the last few years… I postponed so much that I finally decided to just work on it. I think I had my previous motherboard for about 7 years or more. It was about time for a new one, plus my son wanted to play Flight Simulator 2020, so I took a Sunday to build it.
Here are the parts I bought.
- AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-core, 24-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor
- Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 X 16GB) DDR4 3600 (PC4-28800) C18 1.35V Desktop Memory – Black
- SAMSUNG 970 EVO Plus SSD 1TB, M.2 NVMe Interface Internal Solid State Hard Drive with V-NAND Technology for Gaming, Graphic Design, MZ-V7S1T0B/AM
- ASUS AM4 TUF Gaming X570-Plus (Wi-Fi) AM4 Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 & 3rd Gen Ryzen ATX Motherboard with PCIe 4.0, Dual M.2, 12+2 with Dr. MOS Power Stage
- Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition RGB CPU Air Cooler, SF120R RGB Fan, Anodized Gun-Metal Black, Brushed Nickel Fins, 4 Copper Direct Contact Heat Pipes for AMD Ryzen/Intel LGA1151
I already had a case, so I just went with the existing one this time. The whole thing cost me about $963.73 I planned to spend about $1,000 it came in within my budget.
The first hurdle I hit was the system wouldn’t even turn on at all. I was looking all over thinking I got a lemon motherboard… It turned out that the surge protector that the PC was connected to wasn’t turned on. Very basic mistake.
And then, I hit the second hurdle. When I turned it on, it would make one long beep and the three short ones. Beeeeep, beep beep beep… and then nothing showed up on the monitor. For a while, I couldn’t figure out what it was. When I looked it up on the Internet, it turned out the memory sticks may have been misplaced in wrong slots. I checked the manual of the motherboard to place them in the correct slots. And then it turned on OK.
Now it’s time to install the OS. I’m a Linux guy but then my son and I have a few games we would like to play on Windows, so I went for Windows 11 installation. It didn’t even install. Windows 11 is relatively new, so I thought I should upgrade the BIOS. So I went online to get the latest BIOS for my motherboard. I kept trying TUF-GAMING-X570-PLUS-ASUS-4204.zip or newer version of it but nothing worked. It said, the BIOS is not for the motherboard or something along those lines. I tried it for more than 30 mins. Then I searched online… It turned out that I downloaded the wrong BIOS. The one I needed to download was TUF-GAMING-X570-PLUS-WIFI-ASUS-4204.ZIP Notice “WIFI”? That’s the model I have, not the one without WIFI. I’m glad ASUS put a protection. If not, I would have bricked the motherboard.
Once the BIOS was upgraded, I was able to install Windows 11. I didn’t have an existing license for my new rig, so I purchased a Windows 11 home license.
So I probably spent a little more than $1,000 for the whole thing. But my gosh, this PC is really fast! I am able to play FF13, FF13-2 and Flight Simulator 2020 without any lag. This is an amazing PC.
In addition, I was able to install Ubuntu on it and dual boot the PC. I installed my 2 existing SSD. I checked the temperature of the CPU and it’s been running cool even after running some games. So I guess I built the PC correctly.
