I can remember the day, probably in 1995, that I bought my first Windows computer. I was working from Phoenix, AZ, and all of their people used Windows, so I thought it good to have one as well. Since then, I have bought a bunch more computers, all of them from big-box stores, and all of them pre-configured to whatever the store thought would sell. My last purchase was from HP, with some options that I could choose for myself, but it was still a compromise.
More recently, probably in the middle part of last year, I have been following Cary Holzman on YouTube. He makes a living by building and servicing Windows computers for his clients. Often, when he builds a new computer, he records the "build" and publishes that on YouTube. I have watched a number of these videos and started thinking I could build a new computer myself. And that new computer would have the parts that I wanted and nothing else. It would also have only the software that I wanted with none of what is called "bloatware", junk that manufacturers load on their machines to get consumers to buy other software.
At the beginning of this year, after returning from Antarctica, I started seriously looking at the different parts that I would want. Then at the end of February, I started buying parts, and had enough stuff by March 12 to start the build process. Like Cary, I recorded the process, and I present below the highlights of my custom computer build. But first, here is a list of the components that I chose.
Intel Core i7-9700k central processing unit
Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro WiFi motherboard
Cooler Master Hyper 212X heatsink and cooler
Corsair Vengence RGB Pro 32GB DDR4-3200 memory
Intel 665p Series 1 TB M.2-NvME solid state drive
Western Digital WD Blue 1 TB SATA solid state drive
EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 Super graphics card
Cooler Master MasterCase MC500 case
EVGA SuperNOVA GA 750 Watt modular power supply
Pioneer BDR-209DBK Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer optical drive
Windows 10 Pro operating system
And here is the video.