End of Year PC Build

Those are nice, if tad expensive. And yes, they would indeed seem to be in short supply. I'm betting it's because they have trouble getting controller units.

Kingston though it is HQ'd in California and was founded as an American company with offices in the US, Europe, Ireland and China, the RAM often comes from China and it is horrible. IF you can find a batch of Kingston DDR4 that actually comes from, Taipei, Taiwan....That's the good stuff. As with nearly ever PC component......All the good quality stuff that is dependable and rock solid, comes from Taiwan.

But there are batches that will be manufactured in and shipped from mainland China, and that stuff is notoriously horrible and defective. Have had two builds from previous years in the early 2000s where I had wanted to go with Kingston RAM becuse that is what I had been using since the early to mid 1990s.....But after two batches, I took my rig back to Canada COmputers and they told me that they had had batches come from China and that a great many customers had returned their Kingston RAM with complaints of defectiveness. They then did some digging into the problem...and found that the one common factor is that all the defective Kingston RAM had been made and shipped from China.

So they then recommended G.SKILL....and I've been a G.SKILL user ever since, going back to about 2006-2007. The Gskill modules are actually made by Samsung and then G.Skill makes performance increase to the timings etc and adds their own heat-sinks etc. A great many of people at various PC oriented companies have told me that for all the RAM they sell, G.SKILL is sold the most and comes back with the least number of complaints or failure rates. It's also the 'best bang for your buck'.

In the 15 years I have been using G.SKILL I have only ever had to RMA one module, and it was replaced within 3 days completely free and of no cost to me.

You got some nice stuff there, Heimdall. I am especially a fan of the, CPU, RAM, the SSD/M.2 and the Corsair Liq. Coolers.

End of Year PC Tech?

I infrequently as I would use a Blu-ray drive and have need of a 5.25" drive bay....There are times when I do need it, want one (for such things as watching a movie on my PC as Heimdall said or the odd time when I need to reinstall an older game like my physical DVD copy of ME 1)....so it's definitely in the category of a "not necessarily need, but a nice to have".

And I totally agree about the RAM. I really like G.SKILL. If I couldn't get G.SKILL, I'm not sure what brand I would go with.....Perhaps Mushkin? But I would hunt high and low, go to the ends of the earth to find G.SKILL modules above anything else. For me, they really are the most reliable, best performing Memory for the money you pay.

And if I had a BD drive brand of choice it would always be LG. In terms of Power Supplies....my #1 go to brand is EVGA, but I could possibly be convinced to return to using Corsair though I don't think they are quite as good in quality as they once were yet they are still as expensive...and in comparison to EVGA they don't have the same performance especially when factoring int he cost. In my experience over the past decade, Corsair PSUs have been 'middle of the road' and the quality of components for each model have been very up/down. Like SONY with their TVs, they put the absolute best of the best in their abslute most expensive TV, and the rest of average quality, hit and miss or bottom of the barrel, yet still somehow command a top-dollar. where as EVGA have been nothing short of stellar in every way and they seem to produce an average equality in parts and performance for their low end Bronze models....while stepping up in performance and quality as you go to Silver, Gold, Platinum or TI, but the price for each respective tier remains reasonable. Expensive but reasonable considering performance and warranty.

Whoa....For two of those SN850 WD Black Gaming Performance drives, that must've cost you a small fortune.  At least here in Canada at Canada Computers, the 2 TB capacity WD Black drives that are in your picture are $589.00 each.....That's a huge price tag for an SSD of any form factor for capacity.

That's a pretty penny, but then again perfectly in line with the rest of the build. I didn't mention this before, but I was impressed by the fact your MB had two full speed M.2 slots. I even checked the manual!   I built my gaming rig a year ago, and while it has two slots, it can handle only one at full speed. Hence my rig has only one M.2 drive for OS and games and spinning drives for storage.