I’ve been building my own PCs since around 2001, when I assembled my very first machine from scratch. I was incredibly excited — new parts, everything laid out on the desk. I powered it on, it booted up, and about 30 seconds later it shut itself off. I smelled something. That specific burnt plastic smell. Turns out I had mounted the CPU cooler correctly but forgotten to plug the fan in. I had fried a brand new CPU. The next day I walked to the computer store and bought a new one. That’s the kind of mistake you only make once.
Since then I’ve built a new machine roughly every three or four years. Partly because I just love doing it — there’s something about unpacking components, fitting everything together, pressing the power button for the first time that makes me feel like a kid. But it’s also about control. When you buy a prebuilt you get someone else’s decisions about what matters. When you build your own, you get exactly what you want: the fastest SSD available, the GPU you actually need, the CPU that fits your workload. No compromises on the parts that count.
The current machine
I built this one in January 2023, after coming back from a year-long sabbatical. Three and a half years later, it’s still doing everything I need it to. Which is impressive.
The heart of it is an Nvidia RTX 4090. Not purely for gaming, though that’s part of it. The main reason is 3D rendering. I use Cinema 4D with Redshift, and Redshift runs on the GPU. For years I used Cinema 4D’s physical renderer, which is CPU-based, so back then a fast multi-core CPU was the priority (I always went with AMD Ryzen for that). But the industry has moved to GPU rendering, and once you’ve used it there’s no going back. It’s dramatically faster and the results are great. I made the switch a bit later than most, because the sabbatical meant I was away from serious 3D work for a while. When I came back I wanted to get straight into it, so I went with the most powerful consumer GPU available at the time.
Beyond 3D I use the machine for video editing too, where the hardware also makes a real difference. And yes, for gaming. I still play Age of Empires 2 (no regrets). Recent ones include the System Shock remake, Stalker 2, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Let’s call it a dual-purpose machine.
How long will this one last?
Graphics cards and RAM have gotten seriously expensive. The RTX 4090 already cost a lot in 2023, and its successors aren’t getting cheaper. So unlike previous builds, this one is going to have to last longer than the usual three or four years. So far there’s no sign it’s struggling with anything.
Full component list on:
PCPartPicker
And when I’m traveling or working remotely I use an Asus Zephyrus laptop with an RTX 5080, which is powerful enough that I can do pretty much everything on the road that I’d do at my desk.
