MACE'S WEEK-LONG SAGA OF PC BUILDING!

TL;DR: My GPU died, and it took me the whole week to rebuild my PC.

So imagine this:

You are on the computer, playing your PC games & whatnot, and suddenly your PC shuts off by random. Well, that's what I had to endure for the past few months. The shutdowns happened once a while, until one fateful Saturday when it shut itself down not once, not twice, but FIVE times. It's a good sign that something's wrong with your hardware. So the next day, I looked into my hardware, and found out my GPU (an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super) is cooked. Baked, even. No amount of de-dusting and thermal paste is gonna save it.

My PC Setup before the incident. A heavily modified prebuilt on a Micro-ATX motherboard.

Then I tried to salvage the part to desperately save it, but it's no use. The next day, I head to the local bank, asked to raise my spending cap, then head home and shop on Best Buy. I was planning on replacing the default OMEN motherboard anyways, and now's the time to replace the 3 vital parts: The Motherboard, CPU, and importantly the GPU. Plus, a 1TB SSD. These costed me $1530 CAD.

Then at this point, you're gonna stop me and ask: That's a little excessive to replace a GPU. Well, I thought about that too, but IF the GPU isn't the only issue, then the CPU will eventually be one... Despite applying the thermal paste once every few months.

HARDWARE I BOUGHT:

Mobo: MSI MAG X570S Tomahawk Max Wifi (ATX, more slots than the OMEN M-ATX)

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5900x (Upgrade to the Ryzen 3700x)

GPU: MSI Ventus 2X (RTX 3060 12GB) (A budget option, but it ain't no Ti variant)

SSD: WD_Black 1TB (Double the boot space)

MONDAY: PARTS

I've already mentioned what I did on the second paragraph of this blog. The whole research started back about a month or two before the situation happened or in some previous blog, idk. The hard part is that I feel uncertain whether or not these parts actually come together, so I started with the CPU, which is a Ryzen 5th gen, and then find a motherboard that's compatible with said CPU. BUT, I need to make sure that my air cooler is compatible with the kind of CPU, which accepts the AM4 type, like my Ryzen 3700 pre-built. Then the GPU would've been the most expensive piece as prices range from ~$500-$2000+. Luckily, this is the post-crypto mining, and GPU-shortage era of PC shopping.

The last part is in terms of availability and trust. Best Buy reviews don't have many people who could validate the item you're looking for is worth it. The Omen prebuilt I bought from the site had no reviews, but it gets the job done. I rely on YouTube and look up some top of the line hardware for my budget, and these are the parts I've bought.

TUESDAY: ASSEMBLY

The main reason why I went to Best Buy instead of Amazon is quite simple: Fast shipping. That, and I already got a Best Buy store which is in either one town or the other. My place is a bit small. So, parts have indeed arrived, and for the initial test, I preassembled the parts in, and lo & behold: It fits perfectly.

Out of the box and pre-assembled.

However, I had so much fun replacing the mobo and other bits that I've lost track of time, and almost late for work (man's gotta make money somehow). After my shift, I was simply adjusting the WORST ASPECT of PC building: CABLE MANAGEMENT. By that point is done, it's already midnight... And my days off is not until the weekend.

I posted this on r/shittybattlestations, but the users complained that this isn't shitty enough. The other critics do agree with the cable management here, but they're also judging me of the cable management from the back... DESPITE I only show them this.

WEDNESDAY: SSD AND LINUX

On Wednesday, I was adjusting the internals for the moment. Then, I got my USB and properly turn it into some USB key so I could install LinuxMint. Also, my SSD arrived to install. Here's the result:

The first thing with LinuxMint is to have my boy Mutahar as the wallpaper.

Sadly, the one thing that sucks is that I can't connect to the internet. The motherboard I bought said "MAX WIFI," so I asked some friends. One of them told me that the wifi card the mobo was plugged in was Intel hardware, and that brand doesn't favor Linux at all. There is another way to connect to the web and that is lugging my PC to the living room, but I'm too lazy to do that, and not to mention: I think Linux is quite the hassle just to operate things properly.

Besides, I wanted to use LinuxMint as a temporary OS for fun, but what fun would I do without an internet connection and have a few stock programs installed? So I went back to the drawing board and find a way to install Windows, much to anyone's dismay.

THURSDAY: FORMAT SSD & INSTALL WINDOWS

The next day, I spent too much time just to format the damn Penguin-installed SSD. I eventually found out that you CAN FORMAT the SSD via BIOS, and then I attempt to install Windows 11 initially, but I can't pass through the install, due to the lack of drivers. I've been told that you had to use the Windows Media Creation Tool from another PC (that's how I got Linux etched onto my USB btw), and thankfully it worked.

Also, my Plushie Dreadful bnuuy has arrived, just in time to witness my cardinal sin.

Now the next thing I need to do is to remove the amount of bloatware with the use of Chris Titus Tech's Ultimate Windows Utility Tool, which not only remove the bloatware, but also removes & restores certain Windows features. Since this is a fresh PC, I play it a little safe, and I haven't plug in my hard drives yet. 

FRIDAY: BACK IN ORDER

Now this is the part I start to get everything in order: Reinstalled some apps, updated drivers, removed unnecessary bloat, and commit the cardinal sin of dishing out $200 ($189 + Tax) to Activate Windows... Because that white task bar is garish. Unfortunately, the various apps I bought are pretty much void. Not the games on Steam (the games I bought are thankfully intact), but utility tools and they be like: Well, you gotta buy another license. Only one device per license, bro. Luckily for Malwarebytes, I could switch devices with the 1-year license I bought last month. It's gonna be a long while for me to recuperate the purchases.... Or resort to piracy. I was gonna talk shit to CSP, but I just found out that I already got a license for my account.

Also, behind the scenes, I also did some external cable management. I don't have them fancy sleeves, but I got the zip ties, the spare Corsair velcro straps from the case, and this double-sided sticky thing I used for the Wifi card I took off the old Omen case.

Cable setup before I got the PC back in order.

Cable setup after I got my PC back in order.

It ain't the best, but it's far from horrendous.

So yeah, this is probably the highlight of 2023 for me. A whole week of putting things back in order and on a new OS. Dunno what the future holds for me and this PC, but at least I've done one thing: I fully built this PC myself... Even if the upgrades are for a prebuilt.