I last built a PC in late 2011. 10 years on, I’ve done it again! I wanted to document some of the advances.

In both cases, I’ve gone for reasonably top-of-the-range bits and pieces. The idea is that these will last for a long time – like the last one.

This new one cost about £1,500 to build, excluding graphics card (which I’ll move over from the old machine). The last build was probably about the same adjusting for inflation.

Anyway, here’s what 10 years of progress provides.

CPU

Old CPU is an Intel Core i7-2600K @3.4 GHz
New CPU is an Intel Core i7-11700K @3.6 GHz

• Physical cores up from 4 to 8
• Logical processors up from 8 to 16
• L1 cache up from 266 KB to 640 KB
• L2 cache up from 1 MB to 4 MB
• L3 cache up from 8 MB to 16 MB

RAM

Installed RAM up from 16 GB to 64 GB (yes, I use Chrome)
Speed up from 1333 MHz to 3200 MHz

Disks

Main disk (C:)
Was 2x 500 MB SSD in RAID 1
Now 2x 1 TB M.2 in RAID 1

Performance changes measured using winsat disk -drive c
Disk random read up from 320 MB/sec to 918 MB/sec
Sequential read up from 796 MB/sec to 6,635 MB/sec
Sequential write up from 352 MB/sec to 3,184 MB/sec

Vault disk (D:)
Was 4x 3 TB HDD in RAID 10
Now 2x 2TB SSD in RAID 1

Performance changes measured using winsat disk -drive d
Disk random read up from 3.5 MB/sec to 238 MB/sec
Sequential read up from 125 MB/sec to 609 MB/sec
Sequential write up from 175 MB/sec to 454 MB/sec

Pictures and Notes

I haven’t tidied cabling yet, I’ll do that when I’ve moved the graphics card across. I also haven’t fitted any optical drives yet – perhaps I never will…

Case and PSU are made by “Be Quiet” – and they do what they say on the tin. Mobo is an MSI Z590 Gaming Plus.

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