2023 Computer Build

Background

So, I’ve been around technology for a while now, getting my first computer in 1992 and working in the industry since 1995. I built my first computer in 1995 (Pentium 100, baby!), but I liken myself to an auto mechanic: it seems like everyone around me (wife, kids, etc.) always had newer technology than I did unless it was related to work. As things ended up, this resulted in me last building a PC in 2007. Any other PC that I’ve had since then has been either work-related, acquired from work in some fashion, or leftovers from family members (some members of my family seem to go through hardware like water!).
Fast-forward a mere 16 years, a blink of an eye to people with kids, and I find myself able to acquire the pieces for a long-awaited system and get my kit built. I thought it would be fun to compare that system from 16 years ago to today and see how much more, hopefully not less, I’ve gotten for the money.

Needs and Wants

Having worked on a 3rd generation i5 laptop for the last 9 years, my needs were relatively minimal. My wants maybe not so much.

Needs

• A decently-powered system, as I manage a sizable (900+) home movie collection that is digitized and I want to stop borrowing horsepower from elsewhere to encode them (or wait 1+ days for an encode). This means an i7+ in terms of processor power
• At least 16 GB of RAM. My 9-year-old laptop had this, and I’m not about to step backward
• A monitor, preferably an ultra-wide with respectable features. I don’t currently have a personal monitor and haven’t for a long time
• The ability to hardwire into a network. Although wifi is great, when you start dealing with large transfers you just simply need the stability, predictability, and low latency of a physical network

Wants

• A system that can shred video encodings, even 4k encodes, without a lot of thought
• Something that can play games with a reasonable amount of detail. I am not a gamer, but I like to play a game occasionally
• Something that will allow me to use it for a while. As you can tell, I don’t normally replace my equipment that often
• My than 16 GB of RAM, as since I have extra horsepower I might want to harness it with VMs or the like

Options

So, I looked at a number of laptops, from business-centric to gaming laptops. As always, you pay a bit more for the compactness of the package. In addition, although you have a processor that is in the same family (be it Intel or AMD), they’re still mobile processors, and their processing power is capped by power draw if nothing else. Essentially you end up getting something that doesn’t have the same power-to-cost ratio. Since I don’t have a massive need to tote my horsepower around with me, I chose to go with a desktop and then just RDP in as necessary from a much lower-powered, older laptop when the need was there.

Looking at the desktop options there’s obviously a large number of options from which to choose. Intel and AMD are really going head-to-head these days, and so that is both nice and a pain. However, when I started looking there was a smokin’ deal on the AMD Ryzen 9 7900x that made it very difficult to pass up (thank you antonline.com!). The price was so good that even with the current Father’s Day sales going on you’d pay the same price for the Ryzen 7 7700x.

Decision

So, as you were clued in by the above section, I went with a desktop system.
Due to the price point of the CPU I was able to get more horsepower than I originally thought. I went with 32 GB of RAM right out of the gate in order to allow for 64 GB in the future. I didn’t have any need to go completely insane with the memory speed or timings, as unfortunately DDR5 is already a little more expensive to begin with.
The video card I really went back-and-forth with. I toyed with the idea of not getting a discrete card to start off with, as the 7900x has video built-in and it doesn’t completely suck from what I saw. My son talked me into going with the 4060ti, which had just come out at this pricepoint and seemed like a good way to go. Quite frankly, it’s way more than I really need, but what the heck.
The LG monitor was the size for which I was looking with a decent price tag. Could I have gone with something that gets higher ratings? Sure, but I really didn’t want to spend $500 on a monitor. I use a two-monitor setup for work (2 x 24″ widescreen), but I’m not completely sold on that layout and I miss the single 28″ monitor that I had years ago. The curve I assume will take some getting used to; we’ll see.
Everything else is pretty straightforward. I got a good deal on the WD NVMe, otherwise I probably would have gone with Kingston or similar. The fact is that, unless you’re doing some crazy, the differences with NVMe would really only be noticed in a benchmark. I got two of them just in case I choose to mirror my storage, otherwise I’ll have 2 TB of storage. I store stuff that I can’t lose on my NAS, so not sure if I will mirror.
Below is the current build, and in the next section we’ll do the comparison between what I built 16 years ago and what I have running now.

AMD Build

Category	Component	Specs
Processor	AMD Ryzen 9 7900x	Zen4 Architecture 5 nm design 12 Core 24 Thread 4.7 GHz Base Frequency 5.6 GHz Turbo Frequency L1 Cache: 768k L3 Cache: 64 MB
Storage	Western Digital Black SN770	1 TB PCIe Gen 4×4 5150 MB/s seq read 4900 MB/s seq write Lotsa IOPS
Storage	Western Digital Black SN770	1 TB PCIe Gen 4×4 5150 MB/s seq read 4900 MB/s seq write Lotsa IOPS
Power Supply	CORSAIR RM750e	750 Watts Gold PLUS efficiency Fully Modular cables
CPU Cooler	be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4	Air cooling 24.5 db at full bore (quiet)
Motherboard	Gigabyte B650 Gaming X AX	AMD B650 Chipset 3 x M.2 2280 1 x PCIe x16 2 x PCIe x4 4 x DDR5 Wifi6 Bluetooth 5.2 USB-C and USB-A ports
RAM	Team T-Force Vulcan 32GB	2 x 16 GB DDR 5600 CL32-36-36-76
Video Card	Gigabyte EAGLE GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB	4060i Engine 2535 MHz core clock 8 GB GDDR6 Memory 18 Gbps Memory clock 128 bit memory bus 4352 CUDA cores
Case	NZXT H9 Flow	Mid Tower Up to 10 x 120mm Fans Ventilation everywhere
Fans	Antec F12 PC Case Fans (5 pack)	3-pin Sleeve bearings 0-1020 rpm
Fans	Antec Storm Case Fans (3 pack)	4-pin PWM Fluid dynamic bearings 600-2000 rpm
Monitor	LG 35″ Class UltraWide Curved Monitor	3440 x 1440 resolution 100 Hz refresh rate 300 cd brightness 5 ms GTG

Comparing Old to New

So, here we’ll compare the various specs from years ago along with the price. This will be interesting.

Conclusion

So, if you’re comparing 2023 dollars, it ends up that the new system with capabilities many, many times that of the 2007 system, actually costs $512 less. Pretty crazy!