Allright, settle down, because this one is going to be long. Let me tell you about my journey so far.
Version 1.0: Late November 2019
Back in 2019, I decided to build three extreme budget builds for me, my wife and my mother in law. Focus, primarily gaming, but some productivity work as well.
So, said and done, I went and pulled the trigger during Black Week in 2019, resulting in this neat little build. Only got one photo of that build, as I was kinda busy with life at the time to make a proper build log. Here is the part list from that time as well, with prices in my native currency as well as the USD rate:
| Type | Item | SEK | USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 3400G | 1119kr | $119.99 |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte B450 I AORUS PRO WIFI | 999kr | $104.99 |
| Memory | Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x8 GB DDR4-3200 CL16 | 711kr | $74.99 |
| Storage | Kingston A2000 500 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 | 591kr | $61.99 |
| Case | KOLINK Satellite | 263kr | $27.99 |
| Subtotal | 3684kr | $389.95 | |
| VAT | 25% of purchase | 921kr | $84.54 |
| Total | 4605kr | $487.49 |
My wife named the computers in honor of her favorite childhood show. Bonus points if you know it, although it is pretty easy to figure out regardless. 
The plan was to reuse a few spare PSUs and keep using the 3400G for a few months, and play through old Retro games while waiting for the next GPU gen to arrive, so I could snag an old-gen GPU on sale. It’s been this way for 20 years, new stuff come out, old stuff get dumped in clearance sales, what could possibly go wrong, right? Everything seemed to check out for about 6 weeks and then…
… F-bleeeeeeeeeeep
Version 1.1: February 2021
So, computer parts were still unobtainium, especially GPUs. So I finally caved and bought three SATA SSDs, because we needed the space. Nothing particularly exciting going on here.
| Type | Item | SEK | USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Storage | Kingston A400 960 GB 2.5" | 735kr | $84.99 |
| VAT | 25% of purchase | 184kr | $21.00 |
| Total | 919kr | $105.99 |
Version 1.2: August 2021
Picked up power supplies on sale, as prices were finally coming down on the PSU front (but GPUs were still scarce). I would have bought three, except the store only had two of 'em and the third would have cost me another $60, placing the last one squarely in the “not worth it” category.
The main idea with an SFX PSU was going with a small form factor case in the future, but still waiting for a price-worthy and small enough case. I’ve been interested in a vertical tower case or a cube style case below 15 liters for quite a while, possibly 3D printing it myself.
| Type | Item | SEK | USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Power Supply | SeaSonic FOCUS SGX 650 W 80+ GoldFully Modular | 997kr | $114.99 |
| VAT | 25% of purchase | 249kr | $30.00 |
| Total | 1246kr | $144.99 |
Version 1.3: Dec 2021
A quick and easy doubling of RAM for X-mas presents
| Type | Item | SEK | USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Memory | Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x16 GB DDR4-3200 CL16 | 1032kr | $122.49 |
| VAT | 25% of purchase | 258kr | $30.00 |
| Total | 1290kr | $152.99 |
Version 1.4: May 2022
Having waited for over 2 years for GPU prices to settle down, I finally caved and bought a proper discrete GPU now. Also bought the third PSU on sale, this time a full ATX PSU. The price difference made it worth it, worst case if I do upgrade the three machines to a small case later, I can always repurpose this ATX PSU to a lab PSU.
| Type | Item | SEK | USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Video Card | Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 6600 | 3992kr | $414.99 |
| Power Supply | SeaSonic FOCUS GX 650W 80+ Gold Fully Modular | 559kr | $59.99 |
| Subtotal | 4551kr | $479.98 | |
| VAT | 25% of purchase | 1138kr | $113.00 |
| Total | 5689kr | $592.99 |
Up to this point I have spent roughly 13.75k SEK or $1.5k USD, over the course of five years. Not bad.
Version 2.0: Nov 2024
Ok, time to create version 2.0. For this time, I chose quite a hefty sum. Here is the purchase list:
| Type | Item | SEK | USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 9 7900 | 3399.00kr | $324.99 |
| Motherboard | ASRock B650I Lightning Wifi | 1730.00kr | $164.99 |
| Memory | Kingston FURY Beast 2x32 GB DDR5-6000 CL30 | 1759kr | $169.99 |
| Storage | Kingston Fury Renegade 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 | 1119.00kr | $109.99 |
| Subtotal | 8007kr | $769.96 | |
| VAT | 25% of purchase | 2003kr | $190.00 |
| Total | 10010kr | $959.96 |
All was planned for like six months ago, except for the RAM. I initially planned on 32GB of RAM, but the store again only had two kits. So, I decided to spend $65 more on 64GB instead of 32GB. It is just so easy to keep everything the same, or close to it.
The build assembly
So, without further ado, here are the photos from the build upgrade!
I photographed the parts to upgrade before I got started.
Lab area set up, all raring to go. Patient is sedated for the system transplant, and the nurse is standing by, ready to help.
Motherboard successfully extracted from the box, with accessories. I will not be using the WiFi antennas instead opting to reuse the older antennas from Gigabyte (seen at the first picture on top of the chassi).
Kingston drive in place, feels good to go from 512 GB to 2TB for the system drive. I am effectively doubling my storage now (from 1+0.5 TB to 1+2TB).
The best part about the 7900 is that the Wraith Prism cooler is included. While perhaps not the best cooler on the market, it should be plenty to cool a 65W TDP / 88W actual part. It even has RGB!
The base copper cooling plate is a chonker, this should do just fine.
System assembled and the operation on the actual case is ready to begin.
Dust buildup is not as bad as I feared, but there sure is some in there. Yes, the case only has a single fan, it’s still cool enough for my purposes… For now. I might revisit once it is time to upgrade to a new GPU.
After a slight mishap with a screw falling into the cooler, requiring me to remove the fan of the cooler and pick it out, transplant was successful. One system down, two to go!
Making sure the systems are posting and installing Windows 11 on Blossom and Bubbles. Buttercup runs Debian Unstable.
Almost done! This is a shot of Blossom, here - all cleaned up. Bubbles is already all installed and raring to go, and the install was dead simple to achieve. Blossom actually has an old 500GB HDD that I forgot was installed there - was handy for backing up the Windows profile from the old system though. The drive is otherwise unused.
Current system parts list
So, with all upgrades done, this is my current setup with what I paid for each part. Prices in SEK and VAT included, but total in USD and no VAT is ~$1.3k.
| Type | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 9 7900 | 4249.00kr |
| Motherboard | ASRock B650I Lightning Wifi | 2163.00kr |
| Memory | Kingston FURY Beast 2x32 GB DDR5-6000 CL30 | 2199.00kr |
| Storage | Kingston Fury Renegade 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 | 1399.00kr |
| Storage | Kingston A400 960 GB | 919.00kr |
| Video Card | Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 6600 | 4990.00kr |
| Case | KOLINK Satellite | 329.00kr |
| Power Supply | SeaSonic FOCUS SGX 650W 80+ Gold Fully Modular | 1290.00kr |
| Total | 17538.00kr |
Analysis and closing thoughts
So, do I recommend going this route? Depends on your priorities. If you want something small that you can grow into something big and reliable, it’s not a bad route to take. I also agree with Tech Deals here though - I have paid extra for the upgrades, spending $1.2k per PC in 2019 would have saved me $300 per computer.
On the other hand, I would also be stuck on 2019 hardware even today, for instance with an RX 580 instead of an RX 6600. So it isn’t that bad of a trade-off, all things considered, but it also isn’t the most efficiently spent money.
Let’s see what the future has in store for these three systems, and thanks for reading!