*To address the elephant in the room, YES this is a long post and I’m fully aware of that. NO, you don’t have to respond to absolutely every single question I pose in this post.
*Please don’t feel obligated to respond to absolutely everything I say and ask in this post–let alone read all of it. You clicking on this post and giving it a chance already means a lot to me 🙂.
Specs:
CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 7600
GPU - XFX Speedster QICK 319 Radeon RX 6750XT
Motherboard - MSI MAG B650 Tomahawk Wifi
RAM - 32GB (2x16GB) Kingston Fury 5600MT/s CL36
CPU Cooler - iCue H100i RGB ELITE (AIO Liquid Cooler)
Storage - Samsung 990 Pro M.2 SSD 2TB; MP44L M.2 SSD 1TB
Power Supply - MSI MAG A850GL
OS - Windows 11 Home
Case - iCue 4000X RGB
Monitor - Gigabyte GS27QA
Hello everyone,
I come here seeking guidance and wisdom. More specifically, I want to know if there is anything major that I haven’t done for my PC yet that I should do, amongst other inquiries.
To give some quick context, I recently built my PC back in December 2025 with computer parts that were originally bought back in the middle of 2024 kept inside their original packaging the whole time. Don’t ask why it took me so long to actually start building it… On the plus side I did eventually have the experience of building it with my own two hands and have developed an amateur understanding of pc hardware and all my components. Let’s just hope I won’t have to do TOO much troubleshooting in the future.
Haven’t stress tested my build yet because I want to have my fan curves dialed in and ready. I haven’t tried gaming on it either because I haven’t stress tested yet... So you can kind of see the flow chart here: fan curves → stress test → then gaming. So what I’m essentially asking is: CAN YOU PLEASE GIVE ME SOME RECOMMENDED FAN CURVES, or like a general template or something, pleeeeaaassse? I’ve heard that an exponential curve works best, but again I don’t know any specifics or like a general ballpark or even whether I should stick to using the BIOS fan settings, or instead use software like fan control for example.
All I’ve basically done thus far is use this PC as a glorified web browser and the occasional productivity task with Google Docs, etc… Yeah I know that’s pretty pathetic. It goes to show just how badly I need some help here from people who are much smarter than me when it comes to this hobby and field.
How the build went
After watching some comprehensive building guides religiously from some more prominent YouTubers (Linus Tech Tips, Austin Evans, JayzTwoCents, PC Builder just to name a few) and amassing a YouTube playlist of over 40 videos, I would say I did ok. I sweated bullets when attempting to seat the cpu in the motherboard socket though because I knew how delicate the AM5 motherboard pins are and how one false move can ruin everything. It ended up being fine, although I was so worried and anxious that I used a couple drops of isopropyl alcohol to give it a gentle wipe to remove all the sweat particles and skin oils afterwards.
Inserting the RAM sticks was surprisingly more challenging than I had previously thought. From the tutorial videos that I watched, they all stressed that you have to apply a decent amount of pressure and so I may have gone a little overboard with the force I applied to get the retention arms to click in. Oddly enough, I had to click each side in separately and not together simultaneously.
Aside from the minor RAM problems and the SSD installation being a bit finicky, I fully seated all the cables from the power supply, the case front io, etc., and didn’t have too much trouble with the other steps. The AIO installation was kind of tricky because I had to awkwardly hold the fans in place while screwing them to the top of the case. I was also pretty uncertain for how much to tighten the cooling block; based on how the CPU temperatures are stable around 40 degrees celsius, I THINK–emphasis on think–applied sufficient mounting pressure.
I did get it to POST on the first attempt, so I was pretty ecstatic about that.
Programs I’ve installed:
- AMD adrenaline
- MSI Center
- iCue (much to the chagrin of many PC enthusiasts lol)
- HWiNFO 64
- Cinebench 2024
- Revo Uninstaller
- OBS
- Chrome (Microsoft Edge came pre-installed I think–should I just uninstall it?)
I know some may consider MSI Center completely unnecessary but I only use it for MSI Mystic Light for some of my RGB and some simplified hardware monitoring as well. As for iCue: 3 preinstalled case fans and my cooler rely on it for their RGB, so yeah.
What I have done so far
- Updated Bios to latest stable version
- Enabled XMP/EXPO for my RAM
- Installed windows (using the bypassNRO method to use an offline account because of the build version I had)
- Toggled off some BIOS settings that are mainly for overclocking (e.g. precision boost overdrive, core enhancement [or something like that], etc.) that would raise CPU temperatures.
- Installed all the fundamental drivers people recommend (i.e. chipset, graphics, bluetooth, wifi, ethernet, audio)
- Am fully up to date on all the most recent windows updates.
- Configured some common individual settings people recommend (e.g. refresh rate, other display settings, power, etc.), as well as some lesser known, additional security settings.
Some obvious problems I’ve encountered
- Missing brightness slider on the bottom right pop-up menu from the speakers and internet status toolbar. My solution to this is having the “night-light” feature enabled all the time so the brightness doesn’t hurt my eyes.
- I can’t connect my Sony XM5 Wireless headphones via Bluetooth 🙁–let alone anything to bluetooth…
- I watch YouTube a lot, and over the months I’ve noticed that for such simple graphical tasks like rendering/loading YouTube video thumbnails on the homepage and the like, my PC struggles to do that (not all the time but frequently enough for it to be noticeable) and I have to refresh the page once or even a few times.
- I think I just have a lot of driver-related issues overall and I really don’t know what to do about that. Like I know people often say to do a clean install for new driver updates, but I am really out of my depth on how to do that.
P.S : If this post is too burdensome and overwhelming, then even just giving one tip I could implement would be much appreciated.