As previously mentioned, I wanted to upload some final images of the PC I did build as the RGB LED’s look kinda cool. So, at the top you see the PC without the dark tempered glass side attached yet. I can control the LED’s of both memory sticks individually, I can control the mainboard LED’s and the GPU LED’s individually as well. But as you can see, I like it simple and have them all set to one color, I am going with blue right now. Below, you will find a photo of the PC with the glass side attached, which makes it look more decent and I like it. Further, I am now going to mentioned what kind of hardware I have chosen and instralled…
System Specifications:
- Case: Fractal Meshify C Dark Tempered Glass
- Mainboard: MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
- CPU Cooler: Alpenfön Brocken 3 Black Edition
- RAM: 32 GB (2×16) G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4-3600 DIMM (CL16-16-16-36) Dual Kit
- GPU: Gigabyte Radeon RX 580 8GB (carried over from the old system)
- M.2 Slot 1: 1TB Kingston A2000 NVMe PCIe SSD
- M.2 Slot 2: 1TB Kingston A2000 NVMe PCIe SSD
- SATA 1 Storage: 2 TB Seagate Desktop ST2000DM001 HDD
- SATA 2 Storage: 500 GB Samsung SpinPoint HD501LJ HDD
I do absolutely love the combination of hardware I have chosen. The only old things in the system are my two HDD’s and the GPU. For now, I keep using the graphics card but I might replace it in a year or so. Most of the software will now be stores and executed on my new two NVME’s. Stuff runs 10 times as fast on them as on HDD’s. But as you can see, I will keep my HDD’s because they still make sense for file storage.
With each day, I am installing more of my go-to tools. Today for example, I installed Lightroom so that I can do more advanced photo edits again. But I am using the new PC already since a week and it’s ridiculously faster than my previous build, which is of course no wonder as tech does advance and apart from that I picked quite good components for my build. I guess I will have a lot of fun with the new PC the next years. Imagine that, I did build the previous one in 2012 and it served me well until 2021. To be more exact, it served me for 8 years and 232 days. Praise the AMD Phenom II X4 BE 965, it’s been a fantastic and long-lasting CPU, I am not kidding! Now it’s time for the new AMD Ryzen 5 5600X to show similar records!
Diary of Dennis 
I’m sure you must be very happy with the new set up.
I am happy with it. And it was fun again to research what kind of components I want, and to put things together. It’s so much fun, I could do this more often but as I build in a sustained manner, it’s probably going to happen next time in 5-10 years (lol). The system is a little bit overkill for now, but that will make it long-lasting like my previous build.
Of course, everything is faster now but I am most happy with the NVMe PCIe SSD’s. The concept of SSD’s isn’t new to me, I did install some for family and friends. They’re fast. But the M.2 NVMe’s are a different beast, they’re put directly on the mainboard like memory kits. In fact, they almost look like RAM sticks… so, they’re directly accesses by the mainboard, without cable. They’re even faster than standard SSD’s. It’s just crazy how fast Windows 10 is booting, it’s 2 seconds maybe. Same for software and games, it all loads up way faster. I do absolutely love it. I previously just used HDD’s… so, these NVME’s I have now feel like from another world. Absolutely cool 🙂
I had never heard of them before so that’s interesting. The Dell PC I bought last year has an SSD and HDD. A large capacity SSD is expensive for me so the HDD is good for storage of photos.
The mainboard needs to have m.2 slots for that. Anyway, if it doesn’t, the real speed upgrade comes from going from an HDD to an SSD, not from SSD to NVMe SSD. NVMe’s are of course even faster but I’ve seen funny tests on YouTube where people just didn’t notice which PC had an SSD or NVMe but almost everyone is able to spot the PC with just HDD’s installed. It’s good practice to store files on HDD’s. There is no need to store them on an SSD. That’s also why I carried over my 2TB HDD to the new system. I only store my OS, software and games on my SSD’s… that speeds up the system and all programs. Just see how fast an HDD can load up a 30MB RAW photo… it’s already fast, and storing them on an SSD won’t make them perceptibly load up quicker. Photos are so little, even RAW files, that HDD’s don’t have a problem to load them quickly. SSD’s shine when they constantly access large folders, like running a 10GB game or a programm where several GB of assets are constantly loaded in the background, or an OS… so, you’re doing it right. HDD’s are perfectly fine for storage. I am doing it the same way.