I have followed an about five-year PC upgrade cycle – making smaller, incremental parts upgrades in-between, and building a totally new computer every four-five years. My previous two completely new systems were built during a Xmas break – in December 2011 and 2015. This time, I was seeking for something to put my mind into right now (year 2020 has been a tough one), and specced my five-year build now in Midsummer, already.
It somehow feels that every year is a bad year to invest into computer systems. There is always something much better coming up, just around the corner. This time, it seems that there will be both a new processor generation and new major graphics card generation coming up, later in 2020. But after doing some comparative research for a couple of weeks, in the end, I did not really care. The system I’ll build with the 2020 level of technology, should be much more capable than the 2015 one, in any case. Hopefully the daily system slowdowns and bottlenecks would ease, now.
Originally, I thought that this year would be the year of AMD: both the AMD Zen 2 architecture based, Ryzen 3000 series CPUs and Radeon RX 5000 GPUs appeared very promising in terms of value for money. In the end, it looks like this might be my last Intel-Nvidia system (?), instead. My main question-marks related to the single-core performance in CPUs, and to the driver reliability in Radeon 5000 GPUs. The more I read, and discussed with people who had experience with the Radeon 5000 GPUs, the more I heard stories about blue screens and crashing systems. The speed and price of the AMD hardware itself seemed excellent. In CPUs, on the other hand, I evaluated my own main use cases, and ended up with the conclusion that the slightly better single core performance of Intel 10th generation processors would mean a bit more to me, than the solid multi-core, multithread-performance of similarly priced, modern Ryzen processors.
After a couple of weeks of study into mid-priced, medium-powered components, here are the core elements chosen for my new, Midsummer 2020 system:
Intel Core i5-10600K, LGA1200, 4.10 GHz, 12MB, Boxed (there is some overclocking potential in this CPU, too)
ARCTIC Freezer 34 eSports DUO – Red, processor cooler (I studied both various watercooling solutions, and the high-powered Noctua air coolers, before settling on this one; the watercooling systems did not appear quite as durable in the long run, and the premium NH-D15 was a bit too large to fit comfortably into the case; this appared to be a good compromise)
MSI MAG Z490 TOMAHAWK, ATX motherboard (this motherboard appears to strike a nice balance between price vs. solid construction, feature set, and investments put into the Voltage Regulator Modules, VRMs, and other key electronic circuit components)
Corsair 32GB (2 x 16GB) Vengeance LPX, DDR4 3200MHz, CL16, 1.35V memory modules (this amount of memory is not needed for gaming, I think, but for all my other, multitasking and multi-threaded everyday uses)
MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Super ARMOR OC GPU, 8GB GDDR6 (this is entry level ray-tracing technology – that should be capable enough for my use, for a couple of years at least)
Samsung 1TB 970 EVO Plus SSD M.2 2280, PCIe 3.0 x4, NVMe, 3500/3300 MB/s (this is the system disk; there will be another SSD and a large HDD, plus a several-terabyte backup solution)
Corsair 750W RM750x (2018), modular power unit, 80 Plus Gold (there should be enough reliable power available in this PSU)
Cooler Master MasterBox TD500 Mesh w/ controller, ATX, Black (this is chosen on the basis of available test results – the priorities for me here were easy installation, efficient air flow, and thirdly silent operation)
As a final note, it was interesting to note that during the intervening 2015-2020 period, there was time when RGB lights became the de facto standard in PC parts: everything was radiating and pulsating in multiple LED colours like a Xmas tree. It is ok to think about design, and aim towards some kind of futurism, even, in this context. But some things are just plain ridiculous, and I am happy to see a bit more minimalism winning ground in PC enthusiast level components, too.
frans goes blog 
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