PC build 1

It's high time I assemble a desktop computer.

At a high level, I want to bisect the machine into two: a Linux side for most of my work and a Windows side for the occasional game¹⁾. Ideally, each would be installed on its own SSD, with a much larger disk shared between the two²⁾. I want to give each side a related hostname to reflect this dual nature.

The hardware will be selected based on the most demanding software I intend to run on it. Since my laptop can run most things reasonably well, that list mostly contains games.

Going by this table, a quad-core 3.5 GHz CPU and 16 GB of RAM should suffice to start. As for the motherboard, 4-ish SATA ports would be ideal. I'd also like one with sufficient space to increase my RAM if desired in the future (maybe get a single 16 GB stick?). Expansion slots will be dictated by choice of GPU.

An ultra-wide monitor would be awesome, although I have no clue where I'm going to put it (or the machine itself, for that matter).

First pass:

• CPU

  • AMD Ryzen 7 3700X ($290): 8 cores @ 3.6 GHz, 65 W TDP, cooler included, socket AM4
• RAM

  • Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 DDR4-3000 ($40)
• motherboard

  • Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero ATX AM4 ($390): no onboard video, X570 chipset
• GPU

  • Gigabyte EAGLE OC Rev 2.0 GeForce RTX 3060 12GB 12 GB Video Card ($370)
• SSD

  • Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5“ ($144)
• case

  • Corsair Airflow 4000D
• misc

Assembly proceeded mostly without issue, though there was a simple snag: we struggled to mount the disks in the included 2.5” brackets. We found the included screws too short, the brackets too slim, and the bracket mount point incompatible with disk cables. This was because we were trying to place the disks inside the brackets rather than the outside where they belong. As it happens, we were not the only ones to have this problem³⁾. The rest of the components fit together immediately and functioned as expected. Though we haven't heavily stress-tested it yet, the cooling system seems to be working well.

When installing Manjaro i3, we faced the same interface problem that occurred when preparing ultiboot. Windows in active workspaces would not update, necessitating constant workspace switching to get through the installation process. Unlike with ultiboot, the problem persisted post install. The root cause was picom's glx backend, which “requires sane drivers” for Nvidia hardware. Switching to the xrender backend and later back to glx with video-nvidia installed fixed the issue. The original drivers also prevented Steam from fully loading.

Audio-wise, ALSA decided to select the graphics card as its default audio device. We set it to the onboard audio following instructions on the ALSA wiki⁴⁾.