Hello soon-to-be friends and comrades!
Getting ready to build my third SFF PC and, with the changes to Reddit’s API in the pipeline, I figured it was as good a time as any to jump ship and start getting plugged into more focused forums.
Until then, a brief look back at my gateway into this beautiful niche of ours.
You never forget your first…
My first foray into mini ITX builds was a console build and general secondary/travel machine in the venerable Node 202. Equipped with a Ryzen 3600 and GTX 1660 Super. It was nice but didn’t match the performance output of my main rig by a mile. Nevertheless, I loved it for traveling between cities and set it up as an HTPC.
…but then you build ‘the one’
Little did I know that just a few short months into this experiment I’d be hooked. Suddenly, I just wanted ‘one rig to rule them all’ and I was willing to commit to the cause. I took the parts between my two builds and splashed them together with a newly acquired Sliger SM580, NZXT Kraken X63, and plenty of Noctua fans for good measure. This was all going down in mid-2020. Over the next little while or so, I moved house, upgraded to include additional solid-state storage, and ultimately acquired an RTX 3090 at MSRP during the peak of the chaos. I had kitted this beauty to the nines (as far as I cared to anyway).
Changing Times
Sadly, I had to let it go. I knew another, much bigger move was in store for me and I needed to get focused and declutter. To that end, I sold my PC to a family member. I’ve been without hardware to play PC games since then (until I got my Steam Deck, but that’s another matter altogether). Fast forward to now and life is great! I knew it was time to jump back in once Cities: Skylines 2 got a firm release date and can’t wait to share more of the latest adventure with you all in a proper build log soon.
No TL;DR, but if you read the entire post, my deepest appreciation for taking the time to do so. 
— Abby (she/her)
