What if I had an Intel Extreme Tech Upgrade
If only I worked for Linus Media Group!
I’ve been a fan of Linux Tech TIps for quite a while now, ever since I got hooked on videos showing how people have designed their studio and one day I came across a video showing their move to their new studio space. Since then I have become addicted to this daily slice of YouTube be it product reviews, build guides or trying to set a power supply on fire.
It’s the kind of company that I would love to work for if only I didn’t live in the UK instead of Canada and worked on pre-recorded content rather than live products. Having said that I’m also a dab hand when working in the pre-recorded workflow but prefer flying by the seams of my pants. If they ever open a UK office I’ll be banging on the door to be let in.
Anyway, I’m getting off-topic… again. Some of their latest videos have intrigued me and made me rather jealous at the same time. For the last few months, they have partnered with Intel to give each member of the LMG team a tech makeover worth $5000. Now that’s not a small chunk of change and would be an absolutely amazing opportunity to be given. Then I thought… what would I do if given the opportunity? Well, I’m so glad I asked because It gave me get another excuse to go window shopping and I thought I’d take you along with the ride.
Unlike my sponsor, that I don’t have. Roll VT
The Computer
So first things first, The Computer! It is an Intel tech upgrade after all. Now I am pretty happy with my current build plans, to be honest. I’ve already got my case, an NZXT H210i that my wife got me for our anniversary a couple of years ago, and I’ve also got my CPU cooler, The NZXT X53 AIO watercooler. That leaves me with a motherboard, CPU, RAM & GPU. So let’s have a look.
CPU
First up let’s have a look at the CPU then. This really wasn’t a difficult choice. I’ll be going for the Intel 12900K. The main reason for this is that I would not be upgrading again for quite a few years, a theme you’ll find throughout this build. The fact that this thing has 8 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores is also a bonus as I’ll know I’ll have enough power to mess about in Blender or when I play a game or two. It’s got PCI Gen 5 too which will come in handy when looking for a graphics card and SSDs and the DDR5 support means I can get some super-fast memory when the time comes
Price: £492
Motherboard
For the motherboard, I’m going to need something that is mini-ITX. Not my original choice but as Mrs Jim bought me the case as an anniversary present it will be absolutely fine and has the added benefit of not taking up too much space under my desk. For the motherboard, I’ve gone with the MSI MEG Z690I Unify mITX Motherboard. As not only does it support the 12900K but everything that goes with it including Thunderbolt 4 which will come in hand for expansion. It also has t 2.5Gb ethernet port built-in too which is going to be great as I plan on filing this computer up with as much storage as it can handle and using it as a NAS as it will be on all the time any way being used as my media server.
Price: £379.99
Power Supply
This is a nice easy one as most of the rest of my rig is NZXT I’ll be going with the NZXT C-SEries C850W Power Supply. This will give me plenty of room to power all of the parts of the computer and possibly allow a little overhead should I need to ad something else later o more to a larger case.
Price: £130.94
Memory
As the motherboard supports up to 64GB of Ramm I’ll be going with 2 sticks of Crucial 32GB DDR5-4800 UDIMM Memory. I’m not after anything RGB and these sticks are nice and black too. Crucial has a great reputation when it comes to memory so I’m more than happy for them to be part of my machine.
Price: £338.39
SSD & Storage
My case will allow me to hold 2 2.5″ SSDs and a 3.5″ HDD and there is also 3 slots on the Motherboard that will allow me to install M.2 SSDs. So My plan here is to have 1 very large HDD for storing all my media, a pair of 2.5″ SSDs ran in raid for cache and I’ll populate 1 of the M.2 slots with a small(ish) SSD to hold the base operating system such as proxmox. Then I’ll use the other 2 M.2 SSD for storage for each of the 2 operating systems I plan on running (one will be Ubuntu the other will be MacOS). When it comes to the HDD will be going with a Western Digital Red Pro 16TB Drive the 2 2.5″ SSDs will be Samsung 870 Evo 1TB SSD, and The Small M.2 SSD will be a Samsung 980 Series 256GB Drive and the larger M.2 SSDs will be Samsung 980 Pro 2TB Drives. This gives me a total of 22.256TB of storage which should give us more than enough space to hoard data for the next 5-10 years.
Price: £745.65
Graphics Card
Now comes the most expensive part of the build the Graphics Card. For this, I’ve gone with the MSI GeForce RTX3080 Gaming Z Trio LHR with 10GB of GDDR6X RAM. Again this choice is planning for the fact that I’m not going to be able to upgrade for quite a long time whilst also not breaking the bank but still getting very good performance.
Price: £849.99
Monitors
For this powerful beast, I’m going to need a couple of monitors. For these, I’ve gone with the LG Ultrawide 34-inch 21:9 Curved Monitors. Not only do these panels give me some extra real estate being extra wide they are also Ultra HD Panels meaning that if I’m editing 4K videos then there’s going to be no risk of video scaling getting in the way. They also support HDR10 which is good enough for me to start playing with HDR content.
Price: £724.64
Keyboard and Mouse
I could do with a new keyboard and mouse but I don’t need anything fancy and If I’m gaming I’ll hook up one of the many controllers we have dotted about the house. So I’ve gone with the Razor Basilisk Ultimate Mouse (& Mouse Dock) and the Razor BalckWidow V3 Pro keyboard.
Price: £210.23
So the total for my computer bill comes to £4236.86 leaving me £763.14 for accessories.
Webcam
For the Webcam, there is only one choice and that’s the Elgato Facecam. I’ve had my eye on this camera for some time now. The picture quality is fantastic and the fact that you can unplug it from one computer and plug it into another and it remembers your settings is just amazing as I’ll be able to use it when I’m training new members of the team also.
Price: £149
Microphone
When it comes to getting audio into my computer I’ll be going with the Elgato Wave:1. From what I have heard this has an amazing sound quality which will be more than enough If I’m gaming with friends or training new team members. I’ll be pairing it with the Elgato Mic Arm LP so I can have it out of the way when I don’t need it.
Price: £179.98
Lighting
In order for folks to see me I’m going to need some sort of lighting setup but I don’t want anything too fancy so I decided to go with the Elgato Ring Light. This single point of light will allow me to put the camera in the middle so I’ll also have even coverage.
Price: £179.99
Control
I’ll need a way to control what is going on around me and as you can probably guess I’ll be going with Elgato’s Stream Deck Mk.2. This 15-button panel allows me to control apps such as OBS, Youtube, Spotify and a whole host more. It also has the added benefit of working with all the Elgato products I have on this list
Price: £139.99
Headphones
Finally, I need some headphones and for those, I’ve gone with another Razer product the Razer Nari Essential Wireless gaming headset. They boast a 16 Hour Battery life, have THX Spatial Audio and, according to reviews online, the audio quality is excellent. They also fit nicely into what remains of my budget
Price: £96.46
So there you have it that would be my Intel Extreme Tech Upgrade if I was given the chance, and I even managed to complete it with £17.72 left in the kitty. Now I doubt I’ll ever be given £5,000 by Intel or Linus or anyone else to build my intimate setup but it’s always nice to dream.
If you had the chance what would be in your Intel Extreme Tech Upgrade? What do you think of mine? Would you change anything? Let me know down in the comments below. And of course, if you haven’t already head over to youtube and subscribe to Linus Tech Tips, Short Circuit, TechLinked, Techquickie, Channel Super Fun, They’re Just Movies, LMG CLips and Mac Address. They are amazing channels that don’t just keep you informed but also keep you entertained.
