Best thing I could build with my university financial status, and using parts from my old rig. (That's why I'm still rocking a 1050ti, it is a great little card though for the price I paid before the mining crisis happened). This is the first build I've ever done, I learned a lot, made some mistakes, it's all part of the fun.
My old rig was a machine that I bought from a friend years ago, and spent the last 4-5 years upgrading it, decided on this new build because the AMD 6100 just couldn't cut it anymore even running 4.3ghz on all cores. This new build includes a new CPU, mobo, case, and ram, all of the other components (par cable sleeves, led's etc.) All of the storage and the psu etc. is from my old build to cut down costs.
The main goal for my build was to make a micro-atx build that I can move easily to and from my rental flat to home, whilst making it personalised and unique, without breaking the bank. I do a lot of coding in my spare time and photo editing, I don't tend to really play the most demanding games even then I can happily settle at lower settings to get up to a higher framerate the specs reflect this.
Overall I'd give myself an A for creativity but a C- for the overall result as with there is little room for cable management and I decided to push-pull my radiator making for even less space (you can probably tell). There wasn't really a theme for this build, more I put what I liked on it whilst ensuring it was still affordable and performed well (gpu and gpu temps are <30 degrees c).
RGB LED lights are all individually addressable, I just cut the connectors off and soldered them to some 4 pin RGB extensions I cut in half then just plugged them into the motherboard, work great! I went with 60 LEDs per meter as it would be easier to solder with that 144. RGB Strip: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01N1Q4JNF RGB Extension: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07CLF81JD
The SSD covers are made using a cheap printer and vinyl sticker paper, and a few mins in GIMP, EZ.
All sleeved cables were discount ones found on Amazon (Cablemod is too high class for me, and they don't do USB or internal audio extensions etc. so they are mainly a mix of BitFenix and Sharkmods, though I'd definitely recommend cablemod as the difference in quality is clearly visible). They are all extensions as I don't have a posh fully modular power supply either. Altogether all the cable extensions cost about £70. Unfortunately, in practice the SATA power extensions were not really designed for this case, as below they are too tight and look a mess and they really don't work with the side mounted SSD's. Audio Cable: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005FYE7A0/ Front Pannel: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B071CDMLDP/ Mobo Power: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004GHD15E/ CPU Power: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004GHD0ZU/ SATA Power: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00B69J2QW/ SATA Cables: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07GDY2TL1/
I used black neoprene to hide the bottom part of the case so you cant see the cables.
Instantly fell in love with the Level 20 VT case as I was a huge fan of the core v21 and use it for my current home server.
To add more of a personal touch I used etching cream to etch onto the front and side panels. Front: God Eater Fenrir Logo, with my name in the god eater font below. Sides: Megumin and Kou silhouettes I made in GIMP, I just think they look nice.
Added a Gigabyte Windforce 5700XT to the system to replace the 1050ti. So far the 1050ti seemed much more stable in both normal use and in VR however I get much better high framerates in games despite the framerates and stuttering being quite an issue in some titles though I haven't been able to test it out much. Hopefully the drivers will be sorted out sooner or later as the system lockups every few days are starting to get annoying.
Added more RAM
added 16GB more ram
upping the ram to 32gb causes a lot of system instability and would not reccomend 4 sticks of ram with this CPU, from my experience anyway, they have to be plugged into the mobo in a specific order or it refuses to boot and will give a bunch of beeps and with 4 sticks it refuses to use the included XMP profile