2018 was an incredibly difficult year for computer parts. RAM was extremely overpriced, storage wasn't much better, and a GPU shortage made things even worse. To cap it all off, Nvidia introduced a new generation of GPUs during the start of Q3 with an enormous price increase over the previous Pascal generation. 

During this time-period, I required a desktop with more upgrade-ability and power than the laptop I was using before. I decided to build a high-end desktop with a budget of $1500. After 2 months of research, buying parts, and testing, I completed the build for under $1400, allowing me to buy a monitor with the leftover budget.

Over the course of 3 years more parts were added, including an NVME drive, another HDD, and a new motherboard/CPU combo.

Initial Parts

• CPU: Ryzen 5 2600X 6-Core

• GPU: EVGA GTX 1080 iCX 8GB

• RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB

• Motherboard: Asus Pime X470 Pro

• Case: Fractal Design Meshify C

• Cooler: Deepcool Lucifer V2

• PSU: EVGA Supernova 850W 80+ Gold

• Storage 1: Samsung 860 EVO 500GB 2.5" SSD

• Storage 2: Toshiba P300 3TB 3.5" HDD 7200RPM

Upgrades

• CPU: AMD Ryzen R7 5800X 8-Core

• Motherboard: Asus Tuf Gaming B550-Plus

• NVMe SSD: Western Digital SN550 1TB PCIe 3.0 x4 

• Cooler: Noctua NH-D15S

• GPU: MSI Ventus RTX 2080 8GB

• Additional RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB DDR4-3200 CL14 (32GB total)

After over 5 years of dedicated service, Astra and the RTX 2080 within started to show its age. With the demands of the AI age coming quickly along with a maturing career in rendering/modeling, my trusty 2080 could not provide the necessary compute horsepower that I wanted. Tasks such as raytracing, pathtracing, and generic raster modeling, coupled with increasingly large models with gigabytes of data, warranted a beefier GPU with much more VRAM as well as a faster CPU to feed it. 

To meet this increasing workload as well as providing room to grow (Video editing, local LLMs, etc.), I started to look at RTX 4000 series cards as well as following the rumor mill on the RTX 5000 series. Microcenter provided the perfect base to build off of with their incredible 7900X CPU/Motherboard/RAM deal. In the process of purchasing it though I decided to buy a 64GB kit of slightly better RAM as 32GB had proven to be limited for certain video editing and Unreal engine renders.

After coming across an open box RTX 4080 from Zotac, the build began in earnest. For a total cost under $1700, I was able to create Vanguard, a behemoth of a computer with specifications rivaling pre-builts $500-$1000 more expensive. Not only does it have 64GB of RAM, but it also includes the best liquid cooler on the market as well as 6TB of lightning fast SSD storage. Tacked onto the rear it also has 1TB of HDD storage, a relic of my first laptop from over 10 years ago, serving out its life as an ingest scratch drive to save read/write cycles on the main SSDs. 

Initial Parts

• CPU: Ryzen 9 7900X 12-Core

• GPU: Zotac RTX 4080 16GB

• RAM: G.Skill Flare X5 64GB DDR5-6000 CL30

• Motherboard: Asus ROG B650E-F Strix Gaming Wifi

• Case: Antec Performance 1 FT

• Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420mm

• PSU: EVGA Supernova 850W 80+ Gold

• SSD 1: TeamGroup MP34 4TB NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4

• SSD 2: SK Hynix Gold P31 2TB NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4

• HDD 1: HGST 1TB 7200RPM 2.5" HDD