This build log is about my 2019 PC build. Buying parts started in October 2018, and construction began in the January of the next year.
I reasoned that instead of buying everything in one go, I would wait for sales to pop for each part I needed. This was my "wait and see" strategy, which is why buying parts took over a month.
There were only two major decisions to make: one for the CPU and one for the GPU. After impulse buying a Freesync monitor on sale, I seriously considered a Vega 64 build. Yet, after hearing horror stories about how loud the “blower” Vega was, I decided to commit to a 1080Ti. My brother was able to find one on HardForums for a reasonable price.
The Ryzen 1700x was definitely the bang-for-buck option. I hesitated because of buyer’s remorse for my college laptop, the budget Thinkpad T460s. Forgoing a more premium option made my life a lot harder for the three years of college I had been through. After confirming that it could run Witcher 3 on ultra at a reasonable pace, I decided to go with it over the Intel 8600k.
Another thing to remember. If you are in Texas on Black Friday, stay awake the extra two hours for California to reach midnight. This is how my brother snagged an insane bundle deal on Newegg, who called it off due to lack of inventory. We then went to a brick-and-mortar Microcenter, who honored an expired deal for a Ryzen bundle. The bundle included a cheap B350 motherboard, which became a problem in itself later.
By the end of November, I had ordered all the parts for the build. In hindsight, I regret waiting for sales at all. Buying everything on the same day would have saved a lot of time mulling over parts. Also, Black Friday prices ended up undercutting a lot of the deals I had jumped on a month earlier. In short, I didn't actually save any money by waiting and seeing.
Assuming I had all the parts, I began to assemble the PC, mounting the CPU on to the B350 motherboard. Due to an unexpected loss of stored parts during winter break, the build was stalled. This basic failure to keep inventory secure was the biggest setback so far in time and money. Were they stolen? Misplaced? Eaten? They had, for all intents and purposes, vanished in to thin air.
The shipping of the replacements was another ordeal. Replacement packages were a no-show for a week after the posted delivery date. Without any other options, I ended up requesting replacements for the replacements. This time at least, Newegg fronted the cost (or forced their supplier to).
Even more mysteriously, more than a month after the posted delivery date, what I assume were the original replacement parts arrived. I sold the extra RAM and installed the SSD. The only thing we can learn from this is that USPS is terrible.
The first construction began on February 2nd, 2019.
Everything had arrived. Compared to my last build, the build process was much easier. The improvements in case design made since 2010 was a certain factor. Especially impressing was the section designed for cable management. Without any skill or extra equipment, I got the cables mostly out of sight. Tom's Hardware, various paper manuals, and lizard-brain intuition covered all the rest.
After finishing, I tried booting the system. No response. None of the LEDs told me that I had built something that wasn't thousand dollar piece of garbage. After panicking for a bit, and then remembering to plug an important power supply cable in to the B350, the gods rewarded me with a successful boot in to Windows.
The second construction began on February 13th, 2019.
The main goal of building a computer is to be able to turn it on. I was able to complete this goal in a normal amount of time. What was much harder for me was to get my computer to turn off.
From a forum post I made:
Describe your problem. List any error messages and symptoms. Be descriptive.
PC can not wake up from sleep and can not shut down all the way. When I try to shut the PC down through Windows, the screen goes black and the fan seems to get a little bit louder. However, the motherboard fan LED will stay on (I've used AORUS Engine to turn off the lights for the graphics card, but before I did so the graphics card RGB would stay on too). In this state, the power button does nothing, so I have to force shutdown to turn the computer on again. When I try to sleep, the computer also stays in this half-awake state and the screen is unresponsive, even when pressing the power button/keys on the keyboard.
List anything you've done in attempt to diagnose or fix the problem.
Turned off Fast Startup in Windows 10
make sure Deep Sleep is off in BIOS
Updated drivers
Reset cmos with jumper and taking out battery.
I've also tried shutting down when booting Ubuntu from a usb drive, it hangs on what looks to be a terminal window.
Reset CMOS with jumper with all power cables disconnected. CMOS reset isn't fixing this problem.
Reinstalling Windows, despite confirming with Ubuntu that it isn't an OS related problem. Interestingly enough, freshly installed Windows acts similarly to Ubuntu when attempting to shut off, where the shutdown screen freezes. Booting Windows in to Safe Mode also has the same problem when shutting down. In fully updated Windows, the motherboard can make it to No Signal before the computer has trouble shutting down.
Downgraded BIOS to 3.0, upgraded it back to 5.4 with Instant Flash
Just for reference, other people who had similar problems with ASRock motherboards: 1, 2, 3
I gave up on my old motherboard and bought an Asus X370 on April 12, 2019. In a month and eleven days’ time, I spent around thirty hours of effort to try and fix a hardware problem. Another loss of time (and money).
Replacing a motherboard is annoying, because almost every other component connects to it directly. The only way to do it is to take your computer apart and put it back together again. Which I did. After the second “first” boot, I was able to shutdown without any delay. It only took buying a new motherboard and rebuilding the entire PC to fix whatever had been broken before.
Some doubt still remains. While installing the new motherboard, I realized I had used the wrong standoff screws. What are standoff screws? A new PC case comes with many sets of screws. One set works as a gap between the motherboard and the case, preventing electrical interference. During the first construction, I had used the wrong set of screws as standoff screws. The actual set was still sealed inside a ziplock bag. I needed to test again with the old motherboard and the right set of standoff screws to isolate the screws as the issue. That said, I had already applied some expensive thermal cream and mounted my CPU on the new board. I didn’t want to remove it and install it again on the old board just to isolate the standoff screws as the problem.
Given all this, there are two valid theories about the reason for the “shutdown” issue.
The old B350 motherboard was broken as a piece of hardware, or was incompatible with some other piece of hardware. It could not deliver the operating system’s shutdown signal to the rest of the machine.
Using the wrong set of standoff screws caused interference. This affected the circuitry and prevented a component from shutting off.
Theory 2 is unlikely. The wrong screws still created a generous gap for both components. As long as the metal on the motherboard wasn’t touching the metal on the case, they were still fulfilling their purpose as standoff screws.
Like any other endeavor, building a computer requires decision-making competence. I lacked this at several otherwise inconsequential steps. This made the build much harder than it needed to be. Still, it works. I’ve yet to find a good naming scheme for the computers I’ve built (all two of them), but I’ll figure one out one in time.
