Building a new PC

Overview

Background

The eGPU as a part of a HomeLab computing setup has served me pretty well, allowing me to use a lightweight, ultraportable laptop (Asus Zenbook S 13”) and pair it with a high-performing GPU when I need it for gaming or running inference. This has been a really nice combination, however, the limitations of not having a desktop class system with all the upgradability that implies has finally pushed me to the point where I need to great such a system for development and testing.

Goals

  1. Keep the cost under $1000 (not including the GPU, which I will move from the eGPU enclosure)
  2. Make the system as quiet as possible when operating at moderate load
  3. Keep the footprint small so it’s not dominating the room.

Parts and Decisions

Case

I went back and forth on a number of cases, first trying for a mini or micro-ATX formfactor. The RTX 3090 really eliminates a lot of options (or makes them extremely tight), so landing on the safe side, I found the Geometric Future M4, which has a smaller footprint but can also expand a bit to accommodate larger components and different configurations, as needed.

Review of the M4

PCMag article and review building a Geometric Future M4

A note on Small Form Factor Computers

Also known as “SFF”, a small form factor computer seeks to maximize the performance in a small package, ideally that can be easily carried to LAN parties, to/from college, or just generally more portable than a giant tower. Since space is tight, you need to make sure things will fit, and I came across this amazing SFF PC master list spreadsheet where people meticulously record the size of nearly all components in one handy -if large- reference document.

Normally, I would end with the case selection, but since my objectives of small footprint and re-use the GPU are almost at odds, I needed to make sure I’d be able to fit everything.

CPU

Intel or AMD?

This build isn’t meant to over-index on gaming, and I want a well-rounded system that can do a good job with recent -but usually not the very latest- games, as well as multi-tasking workloads. To research this, I looked up a recent rundown on Tom’s Hardware of the best performing workstation-class CPUs. Skipping over the really-serious Xeon and Threadripper contenders, this guide had a nice breakdown for budget, overall, etc.

While I had been eyeing a couple different AMD processors, specifically in the “X” series, as they appear to have a sweet spot between performance and power consumption, I ended up with an Intel i5-13400. The 12th generation of this processor appears to be the best performance per dollar, along with lower power consumption. Given that I’m building in 2025, the 13th generation was about $30 cheaper, and CPU Monkey has a comparison of the Intel i5 13400 vs. i5 12400 and it indicates a fairly significant performance bump. While the 12th generation used less power, I went for the 13400 for these reasons.

CPU Cooler

A lot of the design in modern PC builds surprisingly comes from the mechanism used to keep the CPU cool. However, in keeping with my budget goals, the fact that the 13th generation i5 processor from Intel comes with a cooler was a big deal, saving me between $100-$150 in the final cost.

Thermal Paste

Applying thermal paste between the CPU and its cooler is absolutely critical, and the included coolers for Intel chips like the 13700 have this paste pre-applied.t

Motherboard

A note on motherboard chipsets

Which Intel chipset? The biggest differentiator between motherboards is the chipset they use. I think of this as the intermediary between the CPU and the rest of the components, but in reality, the chipset takes care of a lot of processing, especially with I/O tasks.

I had to choose between the Z790 and B760 for the motherboard chipset. Generally, i think the B760 series, with its general-purpose approach, lower power consumption, and ability to take on more I/O, such as NVME and graphics cards. However, in searching, I ended up finding a better overall deal in a Z790

Check component compatibility

I didn’t think about checking all aspects of the motherboard, and it turns out this Asus uses the Mediatek MT7902 chipset, which has no working driver for the Linux kernel.

The small things

Once all the major parts had been figured out, there was the small stuff to tackle. This is where I really felt out of my element and had to do a lot of searching through reddit, Newegg forums, and straight-up DuckDuckGo searching. I had decided that I didn’t want to go crazy with the internal lighting, but it seemed silly to have a case with a glass panel and mostly white components to be dark, so I left some items like the RAM as plain, but added lighting to a few components such as some of the case fans, the idea being to have a nice low glow that’s not obnoxious. Because I had landed on an Asus-branded motherboard, I looked for lighted fans supporting Asus Aura, which may have been a mistake, but they look to be supported by OpenRGB.

I feel like the ARCTIC P12 PWM fans look the best and may be the best build quality. Unfortunately, they are only available at Amazon, and I found some Jonsbo fans as a deal at Newegg for 33% less than the ARCTIC case fans, so I bought those. Starting out, I wasn’t sure if I’d need a more powerful CPU cooler; in fact, I assumed I didn’t because the point is not to be maxing out the system all the time. However, I put the ASUS ROG RYUO III on a list of “nice to have”, as it would really make the system look nicer.

Software Configuration

Some of the things I did to get this working for my environment and the way I like it:

Conclusion

This came out really successful, the system is whisper-quiet when in operation, and while I could have probably found a smaller case that would still accommodate the 3090, but coming in just under $900, I feel like this was a success.

References