PC Build Log Part 1 - Inspiration & Parts Selection

​The old laptop was starting to show its age, with the slow spinning drive and faulty display. Scouring the internet for deals on budget laptops, I was disappointed by the lack of options with 8gb ram and solid-state storage within budget.

So it was clear – we decided upon a custom-built PC!

This was it! Finally, with all the research I had done in custom pc hardware, I can now use it to select parts for a home PC. I was stoked, as I always wanted to get hands-on with it (3 years of JEE preparation, then the first year of college and so on).

I first searched for the most important part- the CPU. Within the budget, I saw three options – the Pentium Gold G5400, Athlon 200GE ( really wanted the 300GE but wasn’t available in India at that time :-( ) and the Ryzen 3 2200g. The Ryzen 3, while being the fastest among all three, was a tad bit overpriced. The extra cost, I felt was better invested in good storage and ram. The Pentium and Athlon were pretty close in performance, edge to the Pentium. However considering the lack of availability and cost of Intel H310 and H370 boards, I decided finally upon the Athlon. Moreover, the excellent CPU support for the AM4 Socket, ( good upgrade options at a reasonable price ) too pushed me towards an AMD CPU.

Athlon 200 GE

(Source - https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51N9KcOP3SL._SL1000_.jpg)

Next, memory. This was an easier choice- 8 gigs of DDR4 ram in dual channel, i.e. 2 X 4Gb sticks. This allows for double the bandwidth as compared to single-channel, hence better performance. I also found a 2666MHz (well, technically MT/s but minor details) kit which was slightly better than the “bottom of the barrel” 2133MHz or the 2400Mhz ones. The memory timings are atrocious (CAS Latency 19). However, since this wasn’t a gaming or rendering rig, that’s okay. Here’s the thing when it comes to RAM – the specific model doesn’t matter much as long as the specs are fine and the manufacture is reliable. So I didn’t have to dig too deep for this one.

 Coming to the storage – I knew a spinning hard disk was not an option for the boot drive. I looked for 500gb TLC SSDs with DRAM cache, and a decent controller (mostly the SM2258 at this price range) at a reasonable price. Some options I had in mind were the Crucial MX500, WD Blue 3D, the Adada SU800. Of these, the MX500 was the best priced so I went with that.

MX500 (Source-https://www.crucial.in/products/ssd/crucial-mx500-ssd)

Now originally I wanted to go for the M.2 version – which is exactly the same performance as the 2.5” SATA version but this meant I’d have to deal with essentially zero additional cables. And just as I was about to place the order it went out of stock. So just picked up the 2.5” version instead. 

(An explanation of SATA vs M.2 vs NVME here – just to clarify!)

Power Supply – this was the easiest choice of all – the Corsair CX450. It’s one of the few budget models with reliable components, an 80+ bronze efficiency rating and good protections built-in. A faulty PSU can take the entire system with it – the last thing anyone would want. Hence I chose the most reliable PSU that makes sense in the budget. (Surprisingly, it has better availability and more consistent pricing in India as compared to the States at the moment)

CX 450 ( https://www.corsair.com/medias/sys_master/images/images/h97/h24/9112402559006/-CP-9020120-NA-Gallery-CX450-01.png )

The motherboard – well, it's complicated ... Stay tuned for the next part! To summarise - went from an MSI A320M A-Pro Max to a Gigabyte A320M – H.

The case – already had a generic PC case from the 2000s and since everything is (thank goodness) standardized – I decided it would do just fine at the moment.

So that’s it! The parts list was complete and it was time to order it!