PC Build Portfolio: Hades

I’ve obviously covered this before, but I wanted to provide a template for future builds. So what better PC to start with than my personal computer? Fun fact: PC stands for personal computer, so that’s a thing.

I covered why I build this computer for myself before, so if you’re interested in that, check out my post about it. Obviously the main function is for gaming, though I probably underspent on the graphics card. Still, it’s a capable machine, and it fits extremely well in our game room. Hades is the beginning of all of this, but if you’re wondering why I named it that, just know that I don’t know either. So we’re in the dark together. Luckily Hades has enough RGB functionality to light the way.

Purpose

Hades began with a major focus on gaming, though I did want something that could handle video editing and other productivity tasks. I hadn’t decided on what level of graphical prowess I wanted to aim for, and I had a limited budget at the time that would’ve prevented me from going all-out. In retrospect, it was a good thing in the end, because there was a GPU product refresh not long after I built my PC, meaning that going all in on one of the higher-tier cards would’ve been a mistake.

Decision Making Process

I built it at the time that the 9th generation of Intel processors and 3rd run of Ryzen processors were at their pinnacle.

I settled on the Intel i7-8700K over many other choices for several reasons. It’s meant more for gaming than productivity, so core count wasn’t a major concern, but given that the only hyperthreaded processor in the Intel desktop CPU lineup was the 9900K, I chose the previous generation instead. While I know that the 9th generation of i5 and i7 CPUs were definitely capable, it wasn’t a compromise I wanted to make.

Likewise, while AMD’s Ryzen processors have been running Intel over the coals, they still don’t quite topple Intel’s affinity for gaming. I imagine my next CPU will probably be from AMD, but time will tell.

There were a number of changes I made to my build from the original assembly to today, but I won’t dwell on that too much. I covered that in another post anyway. Instead, I just want to list the system specifications here.

Specifications

CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K
CPU Cooler: Corsair H150i PRO
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 (rev. 1.0)
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 3000MHz 16 GB (4 x 8 GB)
Storage: Intel 665p 1 TB NVME SSD
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 3.5″ 7200RPM HDD
Video Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB XC ULTRA GAMING
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox TD500 ATX Mid Tower (Modified)
Power Supply: Corsair HX Platinum 750 W 80+ Platinum (Fully Modular)
Case Fans: Corsair ML120 PRO RGB 120 mm Fans 3-Pack
Other: Corsair Commander Pro Fan Controller

Glamour Shots

Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a portfolio without showing something off, so here’s a few photos to honor my current PC.

Feedback

There were many lessons learned when building Hades, and there’s still room for improvement. Upgrades are on the horizon with the new generation of GPUs coming out (hopefully) this year, and maybe even a project to move it into a better case. So what do you think of it? What could be improved?