My New Precious

I turned in the page proofs for Capture the Sun on Friday, so I got to spend the weekend having fun. On Saturday, we had a lovely dinner with friends we hadn’t seen since before the pandemic, then on Sunday, I built my new gaming PC.

We’ve been meaning to upgrade our computers forever it seems like, but thanks to the aforementioned pandemic, parts have been in short supply and expensive. We built our existing computers in 2013, then upgraded the video cards in 2018, so I’d say we got our money’s worth. Fingers crossed the new systems last as long.

Behold, my new precious!

A small black PC case on a glass shelf under my desk.

Yes, I forgot to take a picture once it was all together until after I’d already put it under my desk and hooked up all the cables. Pretend you see no mess.

We did a mini-ITX build, so the case is adorably tiny, and it has a pop-up handle on top. A handle! Do I need a handle? Yes, absolutely, obviously. 😂

That glorious rectangle of black mesh started out like this:

It may have been ten years since I built a computer, but the process has only gotten easier. All of the cables had nice labels, and the front IO was in one solid block instead of trying to put each connector on the pins individually. There were only two tricky bits. First, an ITX build is tiny, and there’s not a lot of room to work. Getting the cable routing right took some fiddling. The second was the force required to clamp in the CPU: it seemed like A LOT, but it was fine.

Mr. M’s motherboard arrives on Wednesday, so next weekend will be computer building part two. For those of you interested in specs, prepare to be whelmed: we generally build middle of the road PCs with whatever the newest tech at the time is, then run them forever.

The build is in a HYTE Revolt 3 case. The CPU is an Intel 13600k with an ASRock Z790M-ITX motherboard, 32GB of DDR5 memory, a 2TB M.2 drive, and a giant Noctura air cooler, plus another Noctura 140mm fan that didn’t make the first picture. We’re keeping our existing ancient video cards for a bit until the sting of all these new parts wears off, lol.

But considering my previous computer was too old to run Windows 11 and only had 8GB of ram (a lot at the time!), this is a massive upgrade.

We’ve started playing Satisfactory again, and Mr. M was off today, so we spent the whole day testing out the new system. It works! And the CPU temperature stayed reasonable, which is always a concern with these tiny cases.

We’ll probably have to upgrade our video cards when Diablo IV comes out, or maybe Starfield, if it’s first, but for now, it’s perfect.

And so cute! 😍

6 thoughts on “My New Precious”

  1. Congrats on turning in the page proofs! Can’t wait to read CtS. Happy gaming! Have you read the Fuzzy series by H Beam Piper? Without giving too much away, there is a small sentient race (described as 3 ft tall and under) and there is a scene where one of them is assisting an engineer making precision computronics. The engineer comments about how their vision and dexterity is amazing by human standards, because they live on a smaller scale. I always think it would come in handy when I’m fussing with small mechanical parts or doing tiny stitches!

    Also, I hear you on running tech forever. We usually run our tech for 5-10 years or more. I have keyboards that I’ve had for 20 years- old enough that I have to daisy chain adapters, AT to PS2 to USB to USB-C. They still work fine though, which is a testament to their quality. Kinesis ergo keyboards.

    1. I love my Kinesis Gaming keyboard, but luckily, it’s normal USB. I used to have some old-school IBM clicky keyboards lingering around that needed the adapter chain, but I finally parted with them when we moved. It was a sad day. 😂

  2. my hubby also was obsessed with building the smallest computer he could. then he got a steam deck and upgraded the internal storage. now he’s going to sell his computer, keep his laptop, and use his steam deck as his primary. XD

    1. I have a Steam Deck, too, but it’s not quite powerful enough to drive my normal monitor at a decent frame rate, so it’s mostly for on the couch gaming. Our old computers were fairly small mATX systems, but after dealing with the ITX board, the old one looks huge.

  3. I just built a new pc for work last week! I haven’t built a new pc in AGES – and I was unprepared for all the RGB rainbox blinkenlights on the motherboard, the memory and the video card, LOL

  4. I just built a new pc for work last week! I haven’t built a new pc in AGES – and I was unprepared for all the RGB rainbow blinkenlights on the motherboard, the memory and the video card, LOL

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