It has been more than a decade since I last built a computer. A lot has changed since then, and a lot has stayed the same.

The last time I built one, I spent hours searching online catalogs for parts and then drove to Fry’s Electronics hoping to find them, or something close, within budget. Today it is so much easier. With PCPartPicker.com you can plan the whole build and be confident that everything you picked is compatible and will actually fit. Long gone are the days of buying RAM only to realize you got the wrong type.

#Goal

My main goal for this build is to better manage and edit my growing photo library. Second, I want to be able to play some games, mostly simulation games like Cities: Skylines and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. Third is size. Living in an apartment in San Francisco, space matters. My desk already takes up a lot of our living room, and it is already pretty full with an external monitor, a Synology NAS, an Intel NUC running Linux for Plex and a few other self-hosted services, a laser printer, and a UPS.

#Parts

#Case (Cooler Master MasterBox NR200 Mini ITX)

I wanted a simple case that was compact but didn’t limit what parts I could use. After some searching and looking at what people were building on r/sffpc, the NR200 kept showing up in a lot of builds.

I was hesitant to go with a cheap case, since that is one thing I regretted in past builds, but this one has been amazing so far. I really like how modular it is. You can take almost everything apart for better access with no screws, or just one or two. It feels solid and doesn’t feel cheap at all.

#CPU (AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor)

The last time I built a computer, Intel was the clear leader unless you were building a budget machine, in which case you went with AMD. At some point that changed, and now AMD seems to be the first choice for most custom builders. The Ryzen 5 3600 felt like the right balance of performance and cost. It might be one of the parts I upgrade down the road, but it should be more than enough until the Ryzen 7 or Ryzen 9 get a bit cheaper.

#Motherboard (Asus ROG Strix X570-I Gaming Mini ITX AM4)

For the motherboard I wanted USB 3.2 for the case’s front panel and as much RAM capacity as I could get. I don’t really care about the LEDs and lighting and plan to turn it all off (maybe).

#Memory (Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16)

I was originally planning to max out the motherboard with 64GB of RAM, but it was more expensive than I expected. Then I was going to buy a single 32GB stick, but my friends talked me out of it. For now 32GB is more than enough, and I can add more when prices come down.

#Storage (Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive)

Fast, fast, fast. That is what I wanted for the drive with my OS and applications on it. It was on sale when I bought it. I would have liked the 2TB model, but I wasn’t willing to spend more than $300 on it.

I also don’t really need the extra space. Even though this machine is for photo editing and my library is already over 3TB, I have a Synology NAS with 16TB that I plan to mount. My Lightroom and Capture One catalogs fit on 1TB for now, and if they outgrow it I can add another SSD later.

#Video Card (EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti)

It’s not the most powerful card now that the 4090 and newer are out, but after the great video card shortage it is plenty for what I use it for. My bottleneck is probably the CPU more than the 3060 Ti.

#Power Supply (Corsair SF 600 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular SFX)

All I was really looking for here was a fully modular power supply. My last build didn’t have one (I don’t even know if that was an option back then), and I am not going back.

#Cable Management

It has been a while since I built a computer, and my cable management was a bit sloppy.

I ended up getting custom cables from pslate customs. They are a bit expensive, but they are the right length and made for this case, which cleaned things up a lot.

#Setup

I like to plan out my setup and document as much as I can so I can recreate it later. The full setup doc is here, and I will do my best to keep it updated as things change.