Photo by Will Porada.

Apparently, I underestimated the severity of the ongoing GPU shortage when I decided to Marie Kondo my previous PC build and build a new one: people almost cannot find ANY graphics cards at a reasonable price for a custom build. After checking a few prebuilt options where one does not need to find a card, I still feel all the options out there are not optimal.

Nevertheless, my solution is to find the cheapest possible “new previous generation” card, and not compromising any other components. Here is my pcpartpicker list.

Make sure we sanitize everything before starting…

With the previous experience, this build was relatively easy. Installing the AIO CPU liquid cooler might be a bit more complicated than expected since I had to reverse the direction of the fans and ensure all the plates and screws were set in the proper place.

Why RGB?

It still took a few hours.

Test drive.