I recently went through the process of building myself a new PC, from the ground up. My previous i7-3770k based system was beging to show signs of aging – Windows 11 Compatibility lock-out, adobe products moaning about my Radeon HD7700 graphics card not being compatible with the latest versions and generally wanting something a little more up-to-date, after all – it had done me solid work for the past decade – and I’d like something a little more powerful if I’m going to try and make more Youtube Videos around guitar pedals and whatnot.

So I did what any neurodivergent programmer who hasn’t kept up to date with hardware progression for some 11-12 years would do, no – not research and look for the best of each component possible given my budget! Ask Chat GPT a rather unfounded question at something-past midnight on a school night.

Spec me a PC build ensuring compatibility, powerful enough for multi-track sound recording, 4k video editing and photo editing. Utilizing Intel i7 or i9 processors. Keeping the total build, including case, power supply and all cooling aspects within the budget of £800.

At the time, I thought I was so smug keeping it to i7 or i9 processors, little did I know that AMD have been at the forefront of CPU technology and there’s a massive spate of intel chips overheating and burning themselves out. *facepalm*. Still, we live and learn.

The components that GPT spat out were as follows (Prices quoted by Chat GPT):

Total £820, but ensuring a solid performance build, according to ChatGPT.

I then asked if the motherboard had WiFi, as that was a requirement in 2024 for me, although I didn’t state that in my original question.

Chat GPT advised this did not contain wifi and suggested the MSI Mag B660 Tomahawk Wifi Motherboard which did support wifi 6 (and bluetooth) at £190 – pushing the budget to £850 – roughly where I wanted to be.

I asked how long the system was likely to stay relevant as my current machine is not compatible with the latest Windows Operating Systems and wanted to check there was no planned obsolescence for the items spec’d.

ChatGPT suggested that the 12th gen alder lake processer is art of Intels latest architectural shift offering hybrid core architecture, the motherboard supports both DDR4 and 5 Memory along with PCIe 4.0 giving it future proofing advantage whilst the RAM although last generation a good budget friendly option, with the ability to upgrade to DDR5 in the future as prices come down. The GPU was rated as a solid mid-range GPU for 4k editing and photo work but not designed for high-end gaming and that newer GPU’s support PCIe 5.0 and Ray tracing which may become standard in the next few years, this may be where the system would be let down over time, but 3-4 years on an already 3-4 year old graphics card didn’t seem too bad to me. The Storage seemed good enough and should be fast enough for a few years, and 550w would see the current build out, but may not be good enough to upgrade the GPU to the n’th degree in the future. Case and cooling are essentially timeless, provided I don’t want to upgrade the motherboard to something non-standard!

I then asked Chat GPT to find me suppliers in the UK that can provide 0% interest free for 12 months via klarna, paypal or similar. Chat GPT replied with Amazon, Scan and Overclockers UK. I asked Chat GPT to price each item along with provide links for each item at each of these retailers.

Amazon came out the cheapest for the combined total, whilst some items were cheaper at different retailers, I wanted to be able to buy all items from one location – given the cheaper price and the legendary returns policy of Amazon, I decided to throw it all in the basket and get purchasing… Now well past midnight…. Risky? Maybe.

I couldn’t locate some of the items that had been specified by ChatGPT, certainly not for the prices it had looked up, although some of the ones I had found were significantly cheaper due to me having a prime account. I ended up replacing the Motherboard for a refurbished MSI PRO B760M-A Wifi, and I couldn’t find the case, so Chat GPT provided some alternatives – of which I picked the MSI Mag Forge M100R and the SSD wasn’t availble so I looked for a similar spec WD Black.

I also got a better price on the Corsair CX650 Bronze power supply, so went that route rather than the CV550 – and extra 100W is only going to make it easier to upgrade power hungry items in the future…

The GPU that I found was a Showkings GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB Graphics Card. More on that later…

I hit the button and arranged delivery for the Thursday of that week, a few days away, since that was the latest day any one of the items could be delivered and I wanted it all-together.

The build went smoothly over the Thursday evening and Friday afternoon – I’d never taken so long putting a build together, but with the RGB and the massive full-side window, I wanted to make sure the cable routing was spot on.

The machine powered straight up and following a few tweaks in the BIOS was working very well. Windows 11 install from scratch has a few quirks I’d not come across before – like having to log in to a microsoft account which has now given my user folder a stupid name, but aside from that everything appears to be working well, ish.

Takeaway/Thoughts

Admittedly, trying to get ChatGPT to do the leg work for me was lazy, and more than a little foolhardy – PC Spec and design is a little more personal to your situation, budget, experience and knowledge of whats going on in the world, and ultimately ChatGPT is only ever as good as the quality of question that it is asked.

With that in mind, I made some fundamental errors in the questions that I asked – I should have ascertained which was the best CPU to use for my budget rather than add the restriction on Intel I7 and I9 straight out of the gate – that’s a little bit of brand-loyalty kicking in on my part – when I bought my last build, Intel was at the top of it’s game, my work Laptop is also running on Intel, so I chose to stay with them – only since building my machine I’ve learned of the issues Intel is having and the bang-for-buck value of AMD processors.

I also should have stated some of my requirements a little bit more thoughtfully, it’s only after the fact and I was looking through the motherboard specifics that I realized my oversight of not specifying Wifi – although not a complete deal breaker as I already have a PCI Wifi card I could use from my old machine, integrated with modern protocols would be much better.

Then there’s the things I don’t know that I don’t know at the moment that will probably crop up 3 weeks from now.

And don’t get me started on that Showkings GPU…

I hope you found this interesting, or entertaining – my full Chat GPT Transcript from this interchange here. Chat GPT has a million great uses, is this one of them, well – maybe. It was a great starting point – I think if I wasn’t buying on Finance on a whim I think I probably would have put some more time and effort into the spec, maybe looked into it a little more and decided for myself what was required or what the best for me was, but ultimately I’m pretty happy now with my build, and I managed to come in under budget.

I probably should have waited for the prime-day sale that happened about a week later, though. Hindsight is a valuable and wonderful thing!