--- title: Switching from Mac to PC date: 2020-05-17T00:00:00+01:00 author: John Henry Donovan canonical_url: "https://johnhenry.ie/blog/2020/05/switching-from-mac-to-pc" section: Blog --- Browse by categoryAll PostsWeb DevelopmentDesignLifestyleMusic & FilmTutorialsSpottedSpeakingReviewsFound FoodRecipesIreland [](/blog) # Switching From Mac To PC Posted on 17th May, 2020 I worried every day about my iMac. I worried about the creaks, the moans and the fans spinning out of control. It was a refurbished model as I already had one die on me a few years previous, the logic board rendered it useless. As I pursued replacements, I worried about the cost of replacing it as my main workhorse. ## Why move back? I have had experience building PCs, but the last one I built was maybe 10+ years ago. I always loved how I could repair them myself. I thought now was the right time to spend my budget on a new PC rather than wait on my iMac to die and be locked into a box I had no way of repairing myself. I set my budget and began researching and learning. Carefully ordering parts as I could afford them and letting them pile up in the corner of my room. There was definitely a nostalgic aspect of this for me. I also missed PC gaming. ## Case & Motherboard I wanted a large case that didn’t compromise on space, had good cable management and something that looked exceptional. NZXT I came across through gaming forums and it caught my eye immediately. The case I sprung for was the **NZXT H710i ATX Mid Tower Case.** The motherboard had to meet my specs of storage, memory and how it fitted into the case. There was cooling, cables etc to think about when choosing a board, not even to begin researching the performance. I went with the Gigabyte X570 AORUS MASTER ATX AM4 Motherboard** which is a fairly high-end board but was not a letdown. Looks and performs great. ## Processor and Cooling I was a fan of AMD previously so decide to stick with it. I choose the **AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor**. It was one of the things that based on price and budget led me to stick with the 3900. For cooling, I went with the **NZXT Kraken X72 Liquid CPU Cooler** which complimented my case nicely and has been excellent ever since. ## Storage & Memory So many things had changed over the years regards storage, smaller and faster. This one took a bit of research and my final setup was 2 **Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB M.2 – 2280 NVME Solid State Drives**. One for my Windows 10 install and the other for my games so both were completely separate from each other. I have quite a bit of photography and files from over the years so decided on 2 x **Western Digital Black 4 TB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drives**. This gave a nice complimentary storage setup where things were isolated onto their own drives and their speed and capacity matched the context of what I was putting on them. For memory, there were, of course, plenty of options. I had 4 slots but I know I didn’t want to fill 2 of these with something I later wanted to upgrade so opted on 2 x **Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32 GB 16 GB DDR4-3600 Memory** sticks. ## Graphics Card & Screen The GPU I went with was an **Asus GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB STRIX GAMING Advanced Video Card** although expensive, it was a lot less than the 2080 and felt I wasn’t going to get much more for what wanted it for. It suited me for the casual gaming and 3D work I often did. Choosing a monitor was difficult as this area had certainly expanded since I originally explored it. The influx of gaming monitors made finding something that would find the right balance between gaming and work hard. If I wanted one for work then I would have gone solely with an IPS monitor. The **LG 27GL850‑B 27.0″ 2560×1440 144 Hz Monitor** seemed to strike a balance between IPS and a gaming monitor. It was hard to track down and reviews often mentioned of panel glow in certain areas fo the screen. I seemed to strike lucky with mine and absolutely love it ## Software Most of what I used on my Mac was now available for windows. I use **Mamp Pro**, **VCode**, **Tower** and **TablePlus** all the time and these were available on Windows 10. I am still stuck in a monthly Adobe relationship for photoshop but I also use **ON1** and **Capture One** for photography. I let go of Sketch and also have **Affinity Publisher** and **Affinity Design** at my disposal. I don’t really miss anything from my Mac except for font smoothing. Wow, such a difference. We really are spoilt on how fonts look on Apple products. While I have gotten used to it now, it was very jarring at first. ![A desktop computer with a transparent side panel reveals internal components illuminated by purple and blue LED lights. The visible parts include a cooling fan, graphics card, and various cables. The computer is situated on a wooden floor.](data:image/png;base64,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) You can see my final list of components here [https://​ie​.pcpartpicker​.com/li…](https://ie.pcpartpicker.com/list/QW87p8) Have any of you considered moving to PC or have done recently? If so how did you find the experience? ### Share this link via ###### Or copy link Copy [ Previous Blog Post Build Conf Entire Archive Of Talk…](https://johnhenry.ie/blog/2020/05/build-conf-entire-archive-of-talks-online "Previous Blog Post") [Next Blog Post Epic Games' New Unreal Engine 5 L…](https://johnhenry.ie/blog/2020/05/epic-games-new-unreal-engine-5-looks-amazing "Next Blog Post") I'm a no-nonsense, experienced website developer who works with Content Management Sytems and specializes in Craft CMS. [Lets Talk Today!](https://johnhenry.ie/contact)