New PC for 2025

21 January 2025

I've built a new Windows PC, for the few times that I actually need one. It even booted to BIOS on the first attempt!

[IMG: New PC]

For the hardware nerds, this is what I have now.

It's been a while since I built a PC from scratch, this was my first small form factor build, and some mistakes were made. Thanks to an error in the listing for the case I initially ordered a M-ATX motherboard and standard PSU that, of course, didn't fit into the M-ITX Ridge case. I also managed to order an Intel CPU cooler somehow. Fortunately, I was able to return and refund the wrong parts and order new, more correct, ones. Unfortunately mostly not at the Black Friday prices of the originals though.

[IMG: Inside the case]

The memory is overspecced for the CPU, which tops out at DDR5-5200, but I got it for the same price as DDR5-5600 and may upgrade the CPU to something that can use, and very much likes, faster RAM.

On reflection, the PSU is probably also overspecced. I'll keep that under consideration for now.

[IMG: New PC beside Old PC]

This machine replaces a big tower i5-7600 with GTX1650S GPU. My goals were to make a smaller, quieter build that used less power for more CPU, and I think I have achieved that with a 65W TDP CPU benchmarking 1.6 / 3.9 times faster on single and multi core tasks respectively. I don't play a lot of PC games and the 8600G's 760M iGPU should handle anything I do pick up at 1080p nicely. Which is plenty. I also wanted more expansion and upgrade potential than a Micro PC with an equivalent mobile GPU, and those get expensive quickly as you ramp up the specification too.

As mentioned, I may upgrade the CPU. It depends if and when 65W TDP Zen 5 desktop chips are released with 800M series iGPUs. They're probably coming in 2025 and I fancy some more cores. Love chips, me.

Windows 10 Download (Microsoft)

Windows Tweaking Tool: O&O ShutUp

Windows Tweaking Tool: Titus Tech WinUtil

Intel i5-7600 vs AMD Ryzen 5 8600G (PassMark)

AMD Ryzen 5 8600G - Gaming Benchmarks

Tags

hardware

windows