this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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I think one of the most impactful choices in my last build was choosing a fast SSD. Not all SSDs are the same! Nowadays you can get NVMe drives that operate over PCIe instead of SATA which provide much higher throughput.
You can either get an M.2 form factor that plugs into a special socket on the motherboard and takes up minimal space, or a PCI card that plugs into the same type of slot as a graphics card. (Note that some M.2 drives / sockets are SATA, not NVMe, so watch out for that distinction.)
There is also some difference between NVMe implementations depending on which PCIe version they support. And you'll want a motherboard that implements the same PCIe version. This applies to both M.2 and PCIe SSDs.
This stuff might be old enough that you've already encountered it. But it was new to me when I built my last PC in 2020. Other than that building was pretty much as I remembered from previous decades.
GPUs got a lot bigger and more power-hungry. So you need to check the PSU and it's 8/16 pin GPU connector as well as space in the case.
I always tend to over size my power supplies. I ran my own wiring in my house, so I actually have access to 220V power there! I bought a LR-30 to C13 power cord a while back (https://www.amazon.com/NEMA-L6-30P-C13-Power-Cord/dp/B004WODG6A/) so I could run my PC on 220V. I'm not sure it actually saves me anything, but I like the idea of having my electrical panel balanced a little better.
I was a bit confused reading your comment, given that the vast majority of the world has 220V everywhere 😅
But actually a ATX PSU steps down the the power to 12V anyway, so I doubt 110V or 220V makes much of a difference.
Supposedly 220V is a little more efficient to step down than 110V? I've read a lot of articles about data mining where they run the mining rigs off of 220V in the USA instead of 110V and they gain something like 5% efficiency. They're doing it with entire shipping containers full of PCs though. On my single PC, I'm not sure I can tell the difference at all. But I'm an Electrical Engineer by trade, so it makes me feel better that I'm more power efficient and have my panel balanced. I was running the 220V for my server rack anyway, so it wasn't a lot of effort to pull one more circuit for my Desktop PC.