pickingpcpart
Description
First PC build. Use mostly for casual use, programming, 3D rendering, and sometimes gaming. It’s more than enough for all of these cases. i5-13600K is barely touched in casual use and quick in compilation and other cpu-intensive tasks. 3050 can run the most graphically intensive game I have on max settings far beyond my monitor’s refresh rate without breaking a sweat. It’s not a triple-a game, though, so your mileage may vary. The NH-U14S is excellent and keeps my CPU at serviceable temperatures under load. It’s easy to install, too. You may want to make sure you have enough clearance for it, though. The RM850x is more than enough for my use. I don’t think my computer will ever use more than about three quarters of its maximum wattage, and it rarely even reaches half of that. The fan only kicks on when the load is high, too. I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard it, either. The reviewers were not exaggerating when they said the cables were stiff. Combine that with the Focus’ cable management hole being about an inch from the end of the PSU and my utter lack of experience, the cable management on this thing is an atrocity. This also means I couldn’t plug the hard drive in, which is unfortunate. The hard drive is apparently not great anyway, so really I would’ve been better off saving the money and using it on a better M.2. The Focus is otherwise pretty nice. It’s a solid mid-range case. I would like to put more fans in it at some point, though. The Keychron V1 is a massive leap in quality from my previous keyboard. VIA support is nice too. Considering how cheap it is, I would definitely recommend either it or the K2. My one gripe with it is that the keycaps aren’t shine-through, which makes the backlight pretty useless. The mouse is good as well, and way lighter than any mouse I’ve used before (especially the magic mouse).
Part Reviews
CPU
No problems. Haven’t put much load on it, but it’s worked well so far. I have no frame of reference as to how hot it is, but it seems okay to me. You might want to not skimp on the cooler, though.
edit: Having used it a bit longer, I can say I probably didn’t need something this powerful. I don’t use more than like two percent of this CPU just doing normal stuff, and compressing the linux kernel (1.6 GB) takes only a few seconds (pixz). Haven’t compiled much, but I did compile aseprite from source and it didn’t take long at all. I can’t speak on the gaming performance since the games I play (in order of resources I think they use from low to high: Hedgewars, Mindustry, Minetest, Xonotic) are either not resource-intensive or are probably more graphics-bound, which with a 3050 is not a problem.
CPU Cooler
Keeps my i5-13600k cool so far. CPU hasn’t gotten above 60 C, and doesn’t solidly go above 50 C either (with fan curve shifted -5 C from default). Makes a bit of noise, but it’s not a bad noise. Straightforward to install. Make sure it fits in your case, though.
edit: CPU got over 60 C, but that was briefly while doing compression tasks, so it’s definitely acceptable.
Motherboard
Looks nice, works well. Build experience was good. I don’t know if I missed something, but the manual in the box seems incomplete. You may want to have another device with the manual PDF open. I’m deducting a point for it not having a CPU-less BIOS flash. Really?
Storage
It’s an SSD. It’s not very fast. You might want to look for something fancier if you have the budget.
Storage
This hard drive is SMR. This means it is much, much slower when overwriting things and performing random reads and writes. This hard drive is useless for RAID. The only use for this drive is situations where you write occasionally and read many times. Do not be wooed by the low price. IIRC the 1TB drive in this lineup is CMR, which is the standard type of drive. Go buy that instead. Or better yet, go get a nicer M.2 SSD. I wish I did.
Case
Straightforward to build in. Has some quirks, but nothing ridiculous. It looks nice. Docking one star because the cable management hole in front of the power supply could be further to the right, but this is more of a problem with my PSU’s cables and may not affect you.
EDIT: Because 3.5” and 2.5” drives are mounted flush with the case, my power supply SATA cable won’t fit in it. Fractal seem to have foreseen this problem and they put a little dip in the case to give you room, but it’s just barely not enough to plug the drive in.
Power Supply
It delivers enough power, is efficient, and should last a pretty long time. Feels high quality. I’m docking a star for the stiff cables. The other reviewers aren’t joking about that. I don’t know how much of this is my inexperience, but I had a lot of trouble figuring out where to put the cables and eventually gave up for the most part. It’s not like it’ll bother anyone but me anyway. You should note that you can buy separate premium cables that may be easier to manage.
Wireless Network Adapter
No problems. Wifi speeds seem faster than other devices, but that may be because I built it near the router. Way faster than my internet actually is, so it definitely won’t be a bottleneck. Bluetooth works fine. There’s a USB port on it, but I’m not entirely sure what it’s for. Note that this card plugs into a USB header, so you might want to have a spare one. Haven’t tested if it works without it.
Mouse
Solid mouse, and not just for gamers. Has all the features most people actually want, nothing extra or flashy. It’s by far the lightest mouse I own. It feels much nicer than my old logitech m510. I like that - like most logitech mice - it’s wireless without having to fiddle with bluetooth pairing. Just plug the little usb receiver in and forget about it. Not rechargeable directly, but you can find rechargeable AAs and a charger for under $20. It has a configuration program (only on Windows, unfortunately), but the defaults are fine. It’s way less expensive than most logitech gaming mice, but I still don’t know if I’d buy it at full price. If you can find it for less than that (you probably can), it’s a great choice.
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