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My PC Setup


This is the PC I set up in 2019 which I currently use, with few updates in recent times.

Processor & Motherboard

PC parts

i9 9900k

I bought the i5 9600k initially from Delta Peripherals. Then had 24 hours to think through my decision 😅 Decided to go with the i9 9900k convincing myself with some stupid logic that I would need this much compute at that time. So I called Delta Peripherals and asked if I could come and swap the unopened 9600k for 9900k and they were more than happy to accept it. (why wouldn’t they? 😛). The motherboard is a Gigabyte Z390 which is updated to the latest firmware and works without issues.

EVGA CLC 280

EVGA CLC 280: Bought a liquid cooler from Erodov (RIP) for the processor as it’s known to heat quite a lot. EVGA is one of those companies that I admire purely for their customer support. I’ve always heard good things about them. Sad to hear they won’t be going near GPUs anymore.

Graphics Card

2003: I was lucky to get a graphics card from my dad (he’s awesome!) back in my school days. My first graphics card was an XFX Geforce FX 5200. I still remember how excited I was when we set it up and played Prince of Persia - Sands of Time. I still remember so many details from the purchase day. From me and my dad boarding a bus to Ritchie Street - wondering if it would work with my Celeron system on the way back - holding onto the box tightly from imaginary graphics card thieves - to finally fitting it in our PC.

2009: I sold the card during my college days and upgraded this to a Geforce GTX 260 (216 cores) from Palit. I remember we went there to get the same brand (XFX) but ended up buying from this unknown company during that time. My dad had a colleague who sold PC parts during those years.

GTX 260

My first impression of the card was that it was huge, especially coming from a FX card. I wasn’t as excited as getting my first card.

2015: I never sold my GTX 260. To this day (2024), it lives in my house collecting dust. I’m not even sure it will work now.

At this stage of my life, I was working at my second job so I saved some money for an upgrade. Asked my dad one day if I could buy a new one as it was very slow when I was more adventurous towards UI designing. I wasn’t even sure if I was bottlenecked by my Core2Duo or GPU at that time.😆

“I will not upgrade after this” kek

kek

GTX 970

I got an Asus GTX 970 along with an Intel i5 4440 + SSD. I saw a substantial jump in performance. GTX 970 was VFM and it was a beast!

2019 - Present: Sold my CPU + Mobo + RAM combo in TechEnclave. I’m not sure where I sold my GTX 970 but I remember I let it go before Covid days and at that time I saw GPU hoarding by Bitcoin people and these things were selling for 30-40k INR.

1080 Ti

1080 Ti

Same year I bought a brand new RMA’d EVGA GTX 1080 Ti from a Reddit user from Thailand who was mass-selling it for cheap (or so I thought). He had a lot of reputation and was legit. Bought it for $519 including shipping. Received the card brand new in a box and ended up paying an additional $200 as customs duty to DHL. This card is what I use to this day and runs every game I throw at it. I’d say it’s well worth the money including the one I paid for customs.

RAM

RAM

I had 16 GB RAM from Corsair in 2019. My brother for some reason gifted me 2 x 32 GB of RAM (with Diwali lights). So now I have 80 GB of RAM running at 3000 MHz. It is still useful as my wife uses it for AutoCAD designs and I occasionally play with LLMs.

SSD

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I have a Kingston 120 GB which I bought a long time ago. Then bought a Crucial MX500 GB and recently a Western Digital NVMe 1 TB during a sale. They are all doing well.

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PSU

2019: I bought a Rosewill 1000W Gold for 4k. I know it was cheap for a 1000W PSU but the catch was that it doesn’t have any warranty. The seller wanted to clear inventory by selling them for cheap in TechEnclave. I got one and it lasted for only 3 years. PSU failures are a PITA and this one bit the dust and had me questioning whether the newly added RAM was the problem.

New PSU

2022 - Present: After some good discussion with my friend Abhay, placed an order for Adata XPG Core Reactor 850W and got it fast via MDComputers in excellent packaging. This PSU was also on some high-tier PSU list so I was confident this would be a good purchase.

Keyboard, Mice and Mic

FC660C

I was in a dilemma between Leopold FC660 and HHKB but ended up buying the FC600C from a European site which I can’t remember now. I’m using this till date and I don’t miss the extended keyboard anymore.

Q2U Mic & Hyperx Alloy FPS

I used to have a Hyperx Alloy FPS keyboard which started double-keying strokes and ended up unusable. Samson Q2U microphone is the best mic I bought. I cannot say I have used it much though. The quality is better than any headset mic I’ve used.

Coming to junk that I wasted money on,

Junk XM1

Scrap XM1

My biggest regret in this setup is the purchase of the Endgame Gear XM1. It did not last long. Poor support from the company and no replacement was given for the double-clicking issue. I used this to complete an exam for Georgia Tech in one semester during COVID-19 days and I almost closed the exam tab in Chrome. I would have gotten a 0 in my exam because of this crappy product.

I use a cheap Dell mouse right now and it does the job. 🙄

Webcam

I had a Logitech 720p webcam which worked well but needed a new one because my exam rules required a cam with a wide-angle view or a clearer view (at least HD). I sold this on TechEnclave and the listing did not even last an hour IIRC. This was during Covid time and it sold in minutes. Some people were selling similar webcams for 2x but I listed it with the purchased price.

Logitech 720p Cam

So after searching through what felt like a million sites, I finally purchased Logitech C930e from a wholesaler who had a broken website which was good for nothing. Placed an order for C920 and later got a support call saying that it was a dummy listing and they had C930e for + Rs.600, so paid the difference and waited for it to arrive before the exam.

C930e

C930e

It arrived after my exam.😒 Thankfully, the TA’s and Staff re-visited the exam procedure and gave us a pass for Exam 1.

As Sharath said,

Sharath says it perfectly!

Audio Gear

Galaxy Buds+

Very good product. Bought this 4 years ago and the music quality is excellent. Wear and tear crept up this year and the plastic housing started to break. It still works but the battery isn’t as good as it used to be. The one annoying thing about this earbud is the touch controls and the auto-pause feature. For now, I’m using my wife’s ‘realme Buds Q2 Neo’ for wireless needs.

Fiio FH9

Got this thing. It’s great but doesn’t give you the comfort of a wireless unit. High-quality IEM but I’m not an audiophile and I’m not going to pretend to be one. This does the job well and ruined some classic songs for me.

I used to have a Sony WH-1000XM2. Gave this to my father-in-law as he likes bassy headphones. 😁

Future dreams

That’s all for now. See ya!

categories: PC

tags: desktop , compute , gaming