PC Upgrade 2025 / Rob Crocombe

In 2020 I jumped ship from Intel and upgraded my CPU to the Ryzen 7 5800X. And now, about five years later, it felt right for a new upgrade. I would also be switching case for the first time.

I had several reasons why now felt like the right time to upgrade. The Fractal Define R5 case was getting very hot in the summer, mainly due to the limited airflow through the front. I really wanted another case with a solid top, to prevent dust and liquids falling through, but it seemed really hard to find a decent modern case with this feature, especially as I’d prefer to stick with Fractal, as I like their style.

I went with the black Meshify 3 with a solid side panel and no RGB. Surprisingly, there’s no RGB on any of my components now, which seems unusual in 2025, but welcome.

Another reason to upgrade was Wi-Fi. For whatever reason, my Wi-Fi card was only getting 20 MBit/s and plugging in ethernet was becoming impractical. The new motherboard came with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth built in, which was a huge improvement.

It was also a chance for a new OS install. I was still on Windows 10, which is about to reach end-of-life support. A new computer meant I could do a fresh Windows 11 install while also retiring my ageing 250GB SATA SSD.

Oh, and my power supply blew up. It was about nine years old, so had done a fine job. But perhaps a good sign I needed something new and, err, safe to use!

So here are the new specs:

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE CPU fan
MSI MAG B850 Tomahawk Max WiFi motherboard
Crucial Pro 32 GB (2x16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 RAM
MSI RTX 4070 VENTUS 3X graphics card, purchased in 2023
Fractal Design Meshify 3 case
Seasonic Focus GX ATX 3.1 750W Modular PSU

I found the Meshify 3 nice to work in, mainly because the top is completely removable, giving much more room to route cables. I was surprised how short the case is, coming from the Define R5. For a moment it looked like my graphics card wouldn’t fit, but fortunately everything did without issue.

One thing I was unreasonably excited for was the new PCIe release button. I noted on this very blog last time that it was far too difficult to remove the graphics card due to the tiny latch for the PCIe slot on the motherboard that was really hard to get to.

Thankfully MSI have changed this to a mechanism that locks via an easily reachable button above the slot. Much better! This already came in handy when I had to install an NVMe drive that arrived after the build was complete.

Speaking of which, I moved entirely to NVMe storage to make the build cleaner. I’m very happy not to have all the extra drive cables hanging around and it feels much more modern to have everything on the board.

GPU, drives, fan, and PSU saved from the old PC

I reused the Noctua 120mm CPU fan from the old case and an extension cable from the front, placing the fan at the back since the Meshify 3 only comes with 140mm front fans.

I believe I’ve done an acceptable job with cable management. The plastic clips and cable cover on the Meshify 3 help hide the mess.

The Noctua fan kinda spoils the all-black look, but that’s the beauty of having a solid side panel, right? So far, it’s been running nice, quiet, and cool — a big upgrade overall.