I Finally Built a "Normal" PC

Attempting to win the console war by building a better machine than either Sony or Microsoft.

A living room PC was an idea that I've been kicking around for some time now - especially since the Steam Deck proved not just to myself; but to millions of people that console-like experiences for PC gaming were quickly becoming a reality in large part to Steam's "Big Picture" interface. I've entertained many potential ideas for what my future "console killer" would look like but between a lack of time and money, I've never really given it serious consideration.

Recently however, between a less than exciting market for consoles (that aren't the Switch) and an extremely volatile and greed driven PC hardware market, I finally decided to bite the bullet and put this plan into motion. I was planning on pulling the trigger during Black Friday but that was more than a week away. In other words, plenty of time for everyone and their mother to come to the exact same conclusion I did: lock in your new build now or roll the dice with near-future stocking and pricing issues. 

The average price of DDR5-6000 2x16GB kits from Aug 2024 to Dec 2025.

As of late 2025, DRAM prices have skyrocketed. Everything from brand new DDR5 kits to used DDR4 memory has gone up even several hundred percent in the most extreme cases. This is apparently due to increased demand from AI datacenter customers and it's widely expected that NAND and VRAM prices are going to follow suit. In other words: a real bad time for regular people like you and me.

What initially was a casual late afternoon browse quickly turned into me scrambling to buy an NVMe that same day and planning out a trip to Microcenter later in the week. Impulsive? Yeah. Sure. Whatever. But I was finally going to put a PC together that didn't start off life as a maligned pre-built.

A render of my planned build I created on BuildCores.

My basic criteria for this build was pretty straightforward: it had to be reasonably compact, run games at 4K 60 FPS raster with upscaling (aka. no frame generation bullshit) and optionally; be visually interesting and not cost as much as a used car when it's all said and done. I at least got two out of the four solidly nailed down. The rest? Ehhh...

So I placed my order, ventured down to Santa Clara and returned home with a trunk full of parts like I was about to assemble the first Iron Man suit. I was thrilled and ready. Finally, a PC build where I didn't have to spend half-an-hour getting metal shavings thrown in my face as I tried to fix the sins of dumb OEMs.

The case I selected was the Asus Prime AP202 microATX case. I will be the first to admit this tower looked a whole lot smaller in the photos and I was actually second guessing my choice as I looked over at much more compact offerings from other brands sitting right next to it. Still, I liked the looks of it enough to where I figured it was worth the shot - especially for the low $120 price tag.

The main party trick of this case is the rather large wraparound slot that helps feed air into the bottom of the main chamber - which by default is entirely configured for negative pressure without the reorientation or addition of any more fans. It's not really the most cutting edge case otherwise. The build quality and attention to detail is just okay, which I guess is to be expected when buying from a big OEM like Asus. They're not exactly Hyte or Fractal.

My motherboard of choice was a Gigabyte Aorus B650M Elite AX. I'm a fan of Gigabyte motherboards, having owned a nicely appointed Aorus Z690 Ultra in the not-so-distant past before my 13600KF shit the bed - so it's nice to finally have another one.

As for the reason I opted for a B650 over the newer B850 chipsets? Well, it's the same reason I went for a Z690 over a Z790 in the past. I can pay less than an entry level B850 for a better equipped board that still runs all the same CPUs and memory. Yes, I might be missing out on PCIe 5.0 but in actual practice I'm probably never going to notice what the difference is - or care. $170, can't complain.

I think the CPU choice for this use case goes without saying - but it's an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D for $380. After living with a Ryzen 9 7950X in my main system for the past year, I was one-hundred percent ready to experience owning a CPU that didn't try to speedrun nuclear fission whenever I watched a YouTube video. 

And yes, I could've bought the 9800X3D instead. It is after all - technically the better CPU, but it isn't $100 better in my eyes. The 7800X3D still punches pretty close to it in terms of performance and efficiency. It's still the gold standard of gaming CPUs for most people, so I'm looking forward to seeing how hot it DOESN'T get whilst I try to run a full IndyCar grid in Assetto Corsa. 

For RAM I used Crucial Pro DDR5-6400 CL32 2x16GB for a total of 32GB. This was easily my luckiest score for this build since I actually didn't buy this RAM - I managed to bag it off Amazon Vine back in October. That's right before the whole market went to shit and Micron decided that us peasants weren't worth the manufacturing capacity anymore versus their datacenter customers. 

It is quite good memory - but the time this kit was about $150. It's now $349 as of writing. Jesus.

And for the most important (and still annoyingly expensive) piece of this puzzle; the GPU. I opted for a $750 refurbished Nvidia RTX 4080 Founders Edition - which sounds silly as hell when the Radeon 9070 XT or the 7900 XTX exist. You wouldn't be wrong. Both of those cards can be had for less money brand new and will easily trade punches with the 4080 - and the 7900 XTX has 24GB of VRAM which is never a bad thing. But, I had a few reasons for settling on this one.

For one, I really like the look of the FE card and I figured it's clean lines would compliment the new case pretty well. It's also a strong cooler design and more power efficient than a 7900 XTX. The efficiency part is important because I don't want to worry about it's notorious 12VHPWR connector going up in flames, as the card isn't going to be drawing that kind of power through the connector. Plus, I'm already used to Nvidia's ecosystem, the card still supports 32-bit PhysX, and the price was actually less than the going rate for most used 4080 FE examples on eBay.

The 4080 FE also has the distinction of being the first air cooled GPU I've owned since GeForce 900-series, so I was definitely looking forward to seeing how it stacked up against my RTX 3090 KINGPIN in terms of noise and thermals. Especially considering this card actually outperforms it in raster.

Rounding out the less sexy components are the 850W Super Flower Leadex III power supply, a 4TB Crucial P310 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD, an Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro CPU cooler, and five reverse spin Asus MR120 fans so I could fill out the open fan brackets and reconfigure the case airflow.

In total, this whole build ran me just north of $2000 which I feel is decent given the current pricing shitshow, but also considering how long I plan for this system to be in service. Ultimately I feel like my early shopping spree paid off as most of the parts I selected quickly went out of stock in the days following my build as Microcenter expanded their early Black Friday sale.

But now that I had everything secured, it's time for the fun part.

Even though it's cable management solutions aren't the greatest and the PSU cavity is a little cramped, I found the AP202 to be a really easy case to build out of. The large wraparound glass panel just slides out on rails, giving wide open access to the interior of the case. The top case fans screw directly into the top of the case and are covered by snap on metal mesh, while the bottom fan bracket lifts completely out, making for easy and clean installation.

As I mentioned earlier; the case is normally configured for negative pressure with the three included fans set to exhaust and the bottom slot serving as the primary intake. Since I was using an air cooled GPU I wanted to help feed it as much possible with cool outside air, so I installed three more fans in the bottom of the case and changed out the side exhausts for intakes.

After the motherboard was installed, the Liquid Freezer III Pro was the next component to go in. Compared to the CLCs I've used in the past, this uses a thicker 38mm radiator instead of the more standard 27mm, and it has a dedicated VRM cooling fan. For a CPU as efficient as the 7800X3D, a cooler of this caliber is admittedly a bit overkill - but I have the space for it so I might as well, right?

Another perk of this cooler is that it mercifully ditched AMD's insipid two hook mounting system that makes getting a good mount incredibly difficult, especially if you have to fight a little hose tension while trying to keep the coldplate from sliding across the IHS. That's something the Thermaltake Toughliquid 360 in my Alienware eventually made me suffer through, and it's 7950X is very unforgiving when it comes to a good contact patch.

The AP202 supports up to four-slot GPUs but you're probably not going to be able to fit one if you're populating the bottom fan bracket. Thankfully, the 4080 FE is exactly three slots thick so the card has ample clearance over the fans. It's also fully supported across the three PCIe slots so sag was pretty minimal, even though the card is an absolute brick.

Connecting everything up from there was a cinch and I was able to keep the amount of visible wires down to a minimum thanks to the copious amounts of zip ties included with the case. From there I was able to give the machine it's first headless test fire. This wasn't going to tell me a whole lot of course, but all the RGB and fans kicked on without a hitch, nor did the mobo throw any diagnostic LEDs that indicated I was going to have any trouble setting up the OS - so I pressed forward.

Configuring the BIOS for this machine was fairly easy - I made sure that EXPO was turned on for my memory, Resizable BAR was enabled, and the PCIe version was set to match the GPU. Even though I'm not using a riser, that last setting is mainly for peace of mind so I don't run into any random crashes due to conflicting PCIe versions.

Oh, and I made sure not to forget to disable Gigabyte Download Center, lest I get bombarded with third-party bloatware the minute the install my OS.

For my OS, I elected to use Windows 11. I did entertain the idea of running Linux, given how generally good of an experience it's been on my Steam Deck, but a lot of multiplayer titles I play outright neglect anti-cheat support for it, and Nvidia driver support on Linux has been very inconsistent. Unfortunately I was going to be stuck wrestling Microsoft's increasingly bloated OS around until something changes.

I once again opted for a custom debloated Windows 11 ISO. It’s worked fine on my main PC for a couple of years, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this route to everyone. If I were doing it ‘properly’, I’d install a clean OEM image and then use an open-source tool like Win11Debloat to strip out the nonsense, so I know exactly what’s being removed and don’t have to trust someone else’s mystery tweaks.

I elected to do all my fan control OS-side using FanControl - the most creatively named app on the planet. FanControl automatically detects fans and calibrates speed control for them, which then allows you easily set curves and temperature sources. In my machine, the bottom and side intakes are controlled by GPU temp, top exhaust by CPU, while the rear exhaust is set based on an average between those two sources. I also set about 3 - 5 seconds hysteresis for each zone just so the fans aren't constantly ramping with even slight temperature fluctuations.

This keeps the system nice and quiet when it's not doing anything overly taxing but feeds it plenty of air when needed - especially when the GPU ramps up. 

From there, it was basically all about making the setup as couch friendly as possible. I elected for a wireless 60-percent keyboard and a trackball as my main control devices, along with my Xbox Elite Series 2 controller for most games. Since I didn't really want to be stuck using desktop Windows from my couch all the time, I'm relying upon Steam Big Picture mode as my main interface and set it to launch at startup.

I also decided to carry the Kinect over from my Xbox One because Microsoft still hosts SDK drivers for the device and it can still be used as both a webcam and a motion capture device. The latter I could potentially see being useful if I ever decide to get back into VR in the future.

But the real reason I wanted the Kinect was for the pure convenience of being able to yell voice commands at the thing - especially for recording game clips. There was something weirdly joyous about witnessing a crazy moment in a game and reflexively shouting "Xbox record that!" after it happened. That's how I used to get footage for YouTube compilations for years and I felt a bit bitter seeing Microsoft cast it aside with the Series S/X - so I definitely wanted to bring it back.

Thankfully, executing this on PC isn't mutually exclusive to owning a Kinect, nor is it that hard. VoiceAttack is an inexpensive piece of software that allows you create custom voice-controlled macros that can be used with any microphone setup - perfect for resurrecting Xbox voice commands. I just paired the VoiceAttack macro to triggering the OBS replay buffer and set both apps to start with Windows. To do this with OBS I just placed a shortcut in the "Startup" folder with a '--startreplaybuffer' command, which tells OBS to automatically start the replay buffer on launch. 

Of course, now the real question is how well does this system perform under load; so I went ahead and put it through it's paces with my usual go-to suite of tests: Cinebench R23 and 3DMark Time Spy. But after running the tests, I quickly realized something was amiss. 

In Cinebench, I was setting a multicore score of 12863 with peak temperatures settling around 73 - 75 degrees C. In Time Spy, I hit a CPU score of 9835 and a GPU score of 28218, for a combined score of 22038. Both of those final scores are significantly behind the bell curve for a 7800X3D and it got me thinking: did I mess something up during setup, or is my chip actually that badly binned? 

So I started digging and it turned out that I had X3D Turbo Boost enabled in BIOS, which for single CCD chips like the 7800X3D can actually be detrimental to multi-core performance. Turning it off immediately resolved the issue and my score bumped back up around the expected average - 17199 for Cinebench R23 and 24196 (13383 CPU/28220 GPU) for Time Spy. Peak temps did go up substantially to about 84 - 86 degrees C, but I at least knew I wasn't leaving any more performance on the table. I can definitely further optimize this with an undervolt and a power limit down the road.

As for the GPU, the 4080 FE is definitely an impressive piece of hardware. It outperformed my undervolted 3090 KINGPIN paired with the 7950X in Time Spy, posting about a 33-percent uplift in FPS across the two separate graphics test. And in spite of running significantly faster, it also ran slightly cooler on average at 59 degrees C versus 62 degrees C on the 3090; and that card has a 360mm CLC. The 4080 FE managed just fine without that, and it wasn't distractingly loud either. I'd have to look at a more in-depth breakdown on thermals though since the memory arrangement on the 3090 is known for running hot and that may skew the results, but that doesn't detract from how much of an efficient monster the 4080 is. It proved that my long running distaste of air cooled GPUs was kind of silly.

And it's basically done!

I won't dig too deep in this post into what actually living with this PC is like compared to an Xbox or PlayStation - but I can say that it accomplishes the vast majority of what I hoped it would. On my 4K HDR 144Hz TV, games look absolutely stunning and run like butter to boot. Familiar titles like Battlefield 1, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and Forza Horizon 4 all look and run better than they ever did on my Xbox One and since all those games have native controller support on PC, I didn't even need to acclimate - other than good mouse and keyboard players generally being a much better shot than a good controller user like myself. That's going to take some time to get used to.

The best part about this system isn't actually the fidelity though - it's how it utterly crushes consoles in terms of versatility. I enjoy a fair number of retro titles but I've never had a couch friendly means of playing them outside of docking the Steam Deck. With this machine, I can load up everything from RetroArch, Dolphin, PCSX2, RPCS3, and Xenia and have access to several generations worth of console titles that I would otherwise need ownership of the systems to fully enjoy my libraries of.

That, and being a PC it can play games on my TV that I only once used to play on a tiny little CRT well over twenty years ago. Seriously, being able to fire up something like Starcraft, Red Alert 2, or SimCity 3000 on this display alongside the slew of modern titles is something otherworldly feeling.

That said, there are some glaring annoyances that really keep this from being a one-hundred percent console killer though. There are a ton of features that consoles seamlessly integrate - like party chat and media apps that I cannot effectively match with Steam Big Picture. For example, if I want to use Discord to voice chat with friends, I have to tab completely out of Big Picture and switch to my mouse in order to control it as Discord isn't integrated into Big Picture in any capacity.

Speaking of which, juggling controls is another annoyance as a lot of games and apps utterly neglect full controller support. I'm not talking about apps that were never designed for controller - but ones that support controllers for the majority of it's functions, but then it's completely absent in some fairly important areas. For example, in BF1 the entire game and UI can be navigated with a controller, except for the menu that allows you to invite friends the EA App to play with you. And god forbid you manage to accidentally open the EA App while in-game.

Another big "why the hell it like this" problem? The lack of split screen in a lot of titles that DO have it on the console version. The biggest offenders to this are the Call of Duty games, which I occasionally revisit to play zombies with friends and family. If I want to pull this off, it's either use some janky multi-instance split screen hack like Nucleus Co-Op, or I just have to settle for firing up the Xbox One and have everyone miss out on things like increased performance and mod support.

In short, I traded having a seamlessly integrated and intuitive user-experience along with a handful of exclusive titles for unrivaled graphical fidelity, a massive multi-platform library, and near-complete control of the workings of my entire system. Not to mention that I no longer have to pay a subscription for multiplayer, nor am I as strictly beholden to hardware generations just to play the latest stuff. I could probably forgo changing a single part in this PC for two, maybe three more console generations - although with the current state of the PC market, I probably won't have much of a choice anyways.

The funniest part is how this computer actually outguns my main desktop as a gaming PC when I intended to build it entirely as a side piece. The Founder's Edition RTX 4080 bests my RTX 3090 in gaming performance, helped along somewhat by it's access to more developed upscaling models in the form of DLSS 3. Meanwhile, the 7800X3D trounces the 7950X in terms of efficiency. It does every bit as well as that chip for gaming without turning into a fusion reactor. 

All-in-all, this was a really fun, nearly cathartic experience after pouring blood, sweat, tears, and countless curse words into the many revisions of my Alienware tower. It's not a complete replacement, granted. My main system still has access to a bigger 24 GB VRAM pool and the 7950X boasts a much higher CPU core count, making it far more suitable for productivity work like rendering or LLM inference. But for racking up frags - I'm far less inclined to do that at my desk now. Let's just hope I don't have to take a Dremel to this one in the near future too.