When I built my first PC last year, the sheer terror of plugging everything in correctly almost broke me. Mistakes were made and I’m definitely not going to have a personal expert making sure I don’t do something wrong like I did back then!
That’s something I learned when I built my second PC over the summer. There’s a whole bunch of conflicting advice on how to make building a breeze, so who can I turn to?
I didn't go to a standard YouTube tutorial. I went to Robbin Snijders (known by his artistic alter ego ‘warbb’) — the mad genius who just built 'Yuga,’ a 353-pound, $34,000 cube of pure technological terror powered by dual RTX 5090s.
Meet Yuga
This has been nearly a year in the making, and as you can see from the size of it, this is a beast. So big in fact, you need to remove doors and push it into places in a crate like it’s King Kong.
It is a 32 x 32-inch cube that weighs 353 pounds — each element 3D printed to the most precise millimeter to fit together and tell this visual story of technology colliding with art. Honestly, I’d spend most of my time just looking at it, but let’s open the hood!
Inside, you’ve got two RTX 5090s, a high-end Asus ProArt motherboard to handle all that horsepower, and a 5,500 watt power supply to keep it all alive…yep, you read that right. At full load, you’ll be using the power equivalent of seven microwave ovens or 55 standard 55-inch LED TVs running simultaneously.
Keeping it cool is the largest Noctua fan I’ve ever seen at 200mm — something that I’m sure could keep me cool while I’m sleeping. In total, if you were to make this yourself with the components, the custom case and the design work, this would cost you roughly $34,000.
But how does it perform? We ran Maxon Cinema 4D, one of the most advanced 3D animation apps on the market, without a single hitch. Snijders showed me the file used to virtually build this machine, which contained over 300 layers and nothing slowed down.
Moving over to Cinebench, all that power came together to deliver a benchmark score that is roughly 3.5x faster than the fastest system we’ve ever tested at Tom’s Guide: the M3 Ultra Mac Studio.
What advice can we learn from this genius?
So before I start dreaming up elaborate heist plans to steal this system for myself, let’s be honest. The vast majority of you reading this will not get (or even need) a PC of this magnitude. But the artistry here does show off some key disciplines that you need if you want to build a tower of your own.
Because if one thing is becoming clear — in this challenging time of memory prices, going the DIY route is the best way to go for your wallet. So I spoke to Snijders about what advice he’d give to first-time builders that he used in crafting this masterpiece.
1. Build for the next generation, not just this one
In your choice of PC parts — the motherboard, the power supply, the case and more — keep upgradeability in mind," Snijders says. "One of the biggest advantages of building is the ease of turboboosting your system with the latest parts like a brand new CPU or GPU.“
"Keep the same PC case and core components for multiple generations,” he adds. “Simply swap out the GPU when you need more power.”
2. Stop obsessing over the RTX 5090
I see a lot of PC building personalities tell you to shift the budget you spend heavily into the graphics card. That’s absolutely true, but a custom PC is a long-term project. “You don’t need a top-of-the-line graphics card like a 5090 to produce professional results,” Snijders commented. Nvidia supports all the creative software on its lower-end cards too, as well as all its DLSS 4.5 goodness for gaming too. The main difference is patience for creators and tweaking some fidelity settings for players.
3. Cable manage as you go (or pay the price later)
You can see how the Yuga’s cables are neatly hidden away by the 3D-printed artistry on show. For the rest of us that may not have a 3D printer to hand, don’t leave cable management for the end! Route those cables early, tie them up as you go, and always prioritize airflow and clearance for those wires.
4. Stop buying hardware blind
What is it that you actually want to do with your PC? Take a look at what makes the games you want to play and the software you want to use tick. For example, Cinema 4D’s live viewer relies on a single CPU core rather than a GPU. Note down the demands you have and build around them to ensure you don’t come across any nasty bottlenecks slowing down your pride and joy.
5. Walk away before you break something
This is the one I needed to hear from the get-go — losing my patience when a rogue header cable was not allowing my build to turn on. Unless you’ve got some Mensa level PC building skills built over years, chances are there will be some moments of trial and error. In those moments, grab a cuppa tea, take a deep breath, and track your steps back to find the problem rather than losing your temper (like I did).
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