About a week ago I went in to the local computer store to browse for a new computer case. My old Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced was awesome when I got it 12 years ago. I was 16 at the time and having a cabinet like this adorning my old room was amazing. I remember working all summer at a warehouse to afford this bad boy. I can't remember the specs that accompanied it back then but it was killer at the time.

While the case was great back then it doesn't really fit in in a living room where it's been stationed lately. It's big and it's clunky. It has way to many lights. And honestly it's not at all pretty. I've had my eye on several Fractal Design cabinets. I'm not all that picky but the case I wanted had to have good airflow, no RGB and I want it to be a completely closed cased. No side window, no nothing. A slick case with nothing but a power button and some USB-ports.

I quickly noticed the Fractal Design Define C they had exhibited. I immedeately loved it. It's small, has a cleverly built inside and it's slick as hell. It's just a neat case. No stupid RGB and nothing extravagant. I decided to buy it.

It's like night and day. Then, I made the mistake of mentioning to the guy that my CPU was bottlenecking me and we had a long talk. After talking to this man for about an hour I made the decision to upgrade some parts. I got a new motherboard, a new processor and a cooler. My RAM is decent as it is and I also have a 1070 GPU that I plan on upgrading in due time.

Since I have a 770 GPU and some old HDD's and RAM lying around I decided to get a new power supply as well. That meant I could just dig up those parts from the basement, stick them in the old case and hopefully set it at a decent price.

Sadly the case was DOA so I had to wait a week for a new one to arrive at the store.

Fast forward one week...

Yesterday I got a text from the computer store that they had gotten the new case. Of course they texted me early in the morning so I had to go being excited and couldn't think about nothing else for the whole day at work. Needless to say I rushed to the computer store after finishing up work.

This meant it was time to start building up the new PC and move some parts over from the old one. My old computer is a real mess as a result of exchanging and upgrading parts over the year. As I've been tinkering with it I've never bothered to have proper cable management in it because honestly the case is quite cumbersome when it comes to hiding cables.

I didn't take pictures of the process but below you can see my old mess compared to my new tidy build.

Old vs. new

On to the fun bit. What did I buy?

Whenever I upgrade my PC I always think long term. 5-7 to year is a minimum and this time I actually upgraded after 4 years due to a bad choice with my last upgrade. I should have never gotten the processor I did and it's been holding me back for all these years.

Old build:

• Intel Core i5-7600K, 3.8GHz, Kaby Lake
• ASUS ROG Strix Z270F Gaming
• Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler
• ASUS GeForce GTX 1070 DUAL OC
• Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3000MHz 16GB
• Some 650W PSU

New build:

• AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 3.8GHz
• Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite AX V2
• Be Quiet! Dark Rock Slim CPU Cooler
• ASUS GeForce GTX 1070 DUAL OC
• Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3000MHz 16GB
• Corsair RM850X PSU

Look at how nice and tidy it is. The new case was really easy to work with. The main space is meant to house only the motherboard with all the accompanying parts. Drives, roms and cables can easily be hidden away in the back. It wasn't cumbersome at all to make the cables look nice. There's straps and everything you need to hold the cables in place and out of sight.

I decided to leave Intel behind for a bit and switch over to AMD. I've heard great things about them over the last few years, especially for gaming. The price vs. performance is supposedly huge. The switch did of course mean I had to replace my motherboard and CPU cooler as well.

My 1070 is still great and I'm keeping it for a while still. I don't intend to upgrade until I can get my hands on a 3060 Ti at the least. I had a 3060 in my hands in the store but decided the price vs. performance upgrade I would be getting wasn't worth it.

This build should hold me for at least 5 years and it will probably be going strong for more than 7 as well.

Performance

Performance has been great so far. I've been doing a bit of testing and some tweaking of the BIOS and I've gotten a noticeable boost to my overall performance. I'm getting 20+ more frames in Outriders which is a huge leap to me. I didn't think the difference would be that big. Speaks volumes of how bad my old CPU was. At the same time I can both stream and look at streams in 1080p without any stuttering.

Temps are great to. No huge spikes even when putting stress on the system. I have an extra fan I could install in the front on the case but temps are honestly so good that I don't see the need for it.

So there it is. My new baby.