5 PC hardware purchases I’m most proud of

I’ve been using desktop PCs for over 20 years, experiencing everything from an Intel Pentium 3 and Core 2 Duo to an AMD FX-6300 and Ryzen 5 1600. Writing this on a Ryzen 5000 rig, I want to take a step back and revisit some of the components and peripherals I cherish the most. Considering that I started earning only around 8 years back, a lot of the entries on this list are quite recent.

It’s not that all my choices before that were terrible, but they were limited by strict budgets imposed by my parents, so I could rarely pick what I really wanted. Besides, I do intend to limit the list to products that I still use regularly, hence I’m going back in time only to my previous build.

5 Lian Li Lancool II Mesh C RGB

Understated brilliance

That name is a mouthful, but this Lian Li case is certifiably top-notch. The Lancool II Mesh C (RGB version) Snow White is a case I instantly fell in love with. I had just won a PC building competition organized by Nvidia and WD, and had to choose all the components except the graphics card and SSD. I always wanted a white-themed build, so choosing a case that looked great without costing a lot was my priority.

Understandably, I spent the bulk of the allotted budget on the CPU, motherboard, and RAM. Despite that, I could accommodate the Lancool II Mesh, and it surely punches above its weight. It “cost” me only around $100, but provided tons of value — a gorgeous design, excellent build quality, spacious interior, hinged magnetic side panels, ample airflow with pre-installed RGB fans, enviable temps, and top-tier cable management features.

Building inside the Lancool II Mesh was a breeze. The PSU shroud conveniently hid all the excess cables (even with a modular PSU), and there was more than enough space to install the AIO radiator. I’ve been meaning to add a rear fan and some RGB cable extensions to the mix, but even without them, the build looks fantastic inside the case. The only downside I can think of is a lack of support for vertical GPU installation. Otherwise, it’s one of the best PC cases ever by Lian Li.

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4 LG 27GL850

Best of its time

Before I joined the 1440p club, I had an LG 22MP68VQ — a 75Hz Full-HD monitor that was more than enough for the 2017 version of myself. Four years later, however, I desperately wanted to switch to a 1440p high-refresh-rate gaming monitor, and had my eyes on the widely acclaimed 27GL850 for a long time. After all, it had a Nano-IPS panel from LG, a 1ms response time, a 144Hz refresh rate, and minimal artifacts.

It launched for $500 in 2019, but I got it for around $440 back in 2021. While still not a steal of a deal, I was extremely satisfied with my purchase. The 27-inch, 1440p panel was a huge step up from my 22-inch, 1080p monitor, and my GTX 1660 Ti could easily keep up with the latest titles at 1440p. It wasn’t perfect, considering the IPS glow I had to deal with, but overall, I’m still happy with it, so much so that I still can’t justify dropping big money on a new gaming monitor.

It gets sufficiently bright, doesn’t exhibit ghosting or smearing, and hasn’t developed any issues in 3+ years of using it.

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3 Samsung 860 EVO

Worth the premium

When I built my previous gaming PC back in 2017, I didn’t have the luxury of buying an SSD. Prices were still sky-high, and because I hadn’t experienced an SSD first-hand, I convinced myself that a hard drive would be fine. And it was, until it wasn’t. I was itching to switch to an SSD, at least for my boot drive, but couldn’t justify the cost per GB of the best SSDs for the longest time.

Finally, when I couldn’t wait any longer, I bought a 250GB Samsung 860 EVO. It was still expensive, considering I paid around $60 for a 250GB SATA drive (you can get a 1TB NVMe for that much today), but the difference in system responsiveness made it worth the investment. There was enough free space on it, so I could even install some games and enjoy the night-and-day difference in loading times.

My current rig still has the 860 EVO for my secondary OS, with a WD Black SN770 and WD Blue SN550 as my primary and secondary drives. The experience that I had with the 860 EVO, however, can’t be eclipsed by the NVMe drives — switching from an HDD to a SATA SSD was game-changing, but going from SATA to NVMe didn’t even come close to the same impact.

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2 Ryzen 7 5700X

A great decision in hindsight

When it came to picking a CPU platform for my Nvidia-WD PC prize, the Ryzen 7000 series was still a month away, and the deadline to make my choice couldn’t be extended. So, I had to go with a Ryzen 5000 CPU, but which one? For the longest time, I thought I’d choose the Ryzen 5 5600X, which, honestly, would have been a great choice. However, I had some of the allotted budget left, so I went a tier above and got the Ryzen 7 5700X.

The 8-core chip might not have earned me any more frames in games, but the two extra cores proved useful for CPU-heavy workloads and heavy multitasking. Besides, the 8-core chip has a little more longevity, considering some modern titles have started to utilize more than 6 cores consistently. The 65W TDP of the 5700X meant I didn’t have to sacrifice thermals for the extra multithreaded horsepower.

I would have picked the Ryzen 7 5800X3D if I had more left in the budget, but the 5700X gets pretty close to the Zen 3 X3D chip in gaming. If I upgrade next year, I’m pretty sure I’ll pick the Ryzen 7 9800X3D to put together a seriously powerful beast of a rig.

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1 Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080

I’ll never top this one

Based on my entry for the Nvidia-WD PC building competition, the RTX 3080 was one component that I couldn’t change, not that I wanted to anyway. Before I unexpectedly won this competition, I had my eyes on the RTX 3060 Ti or RTX 3070. GPU prices had still not returned to normalcy, so my dream upgrade was just that, a dream. My GTX 1660 Ti was chugging along just fine, but getting the RTX 3080 Founders Edition for under $800 in 2022 made me forget all about my previous PC.

I went from dreaming about playing Cyberpunk 2077 to enjoying it with high ray traced settings at 1440p. I could finally play demanding games like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, and more recently, Alan Wake 2. The RTX 3080 remains one of the best graphics cards by Nvidia in a long time (if you got one for around the MSRP), considering it was way faster than the RTX 2080 Ti at $300 less.

Nvidia hiked its prices with the RTX 4000 series, and all signs point to the same thing happening again with the RTX 5000 series in 2025. This makes the RTX 3080 a fantastic product, with enough juice left to last me until the RTX 6000 series, or even beyond that.

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What are your greatest hits?

It seems like the best PC hardware is always in the past. Perhaps that’s the nature of judging and reviewing things, “history being kinder” and such. Maybe it’s because we don’t take inflation into account when calculating the value proposition of certain older products, or because the industry is progressively getting worse. What do you think, and which of your PC hardware purchases are you most fond of?