So this is a story about how one impulsive OLX purchase spiralled completely out of control and I regret nothing.

I spotted an RX 6600 Eagle 8GB on OLX for ₹10,000. Great deal. Couldn't say no. Bought it immediately like a responsible adult without checking if my office Dell OptiPlex could even fit it. Spoiler: it could not. Wrong power connectors, wrong form factor, wrong everything. The OptiPlex looked at my GPU and laughed.

So now I have a perfectly good GPU and absolutely nowhere to put it.

Normal people would sell it. I am not normal people.

I decided the logical solution was to build an entire PC around this one GPU I panic-bought from a stranger on OLX. My wallet had no say in this decision.

The Build:

CPU: Ryzen 5 5600F — MD Computers

Motherboard: MSI B550M-A Pro — MD Computers

GPU: RX 6600 Eagle 8GB — ₹10,000 OLX (the villain of this story)

PSU: Deepcool PL550D 550W — EliteHubs

RAM: 48GB DDR4 3200MHz( 3 x 16gb sticks) at— OLX (yes also OLX, I have a problem)

SSD: 256GB NVMe used — OLX (intervention needed)

Case: Ant Esports Mid Tower — Amazon

Monitor: MSI MAG 255F 24.5" 200Hz — Amazon

Total damage: ₹56,399

This was also my first time ever opening a PC cabinet in my life. First time touching a motherboard. First time installing a CPU cooler — and oh god the Wraith cooler. Nobody warned me about the Wraith cooler. The mounting pins need to simultaneously align, push down and twist lock in a specific sequence while the cooler sits there at a slight angle mocking you. I spent an unreasonable amount of time on this. My back hurts. The cooler is installed. We move on.

The 8-pin CPU power connector turned out to be a 4+4 pin situation that took way too long to figure out. The GPU bracket doesn't perfectly fit my budget case but it works and I've chosen to never look at it.

RAM was running at 2133MHz for an embarrassingly long time before I figured out XMP needed to be enabled in BIOS. We don't talk about that period.

Then I added a third RAM stick because why not. The PC immediately decided it no longer wanted to boot. Spent a genuinely painful amount of time troubleshooting before realizing I needed to pull the CMOS battery to reset the BIOS. Simple enough right? Wrong. The CMOS battery on the MSI B550M-A Pro is held in by a clip. A tiny, stiff, absolutely diabolical little clip that requires three hands and the patience of a monk to release without feeling like you're about to snap something on your brand new motherboard. I have never hated a piece of metal so much in my life. Removed the stick. Reset CMOS. Everything booted fine. The third stick now lives in a drawer as a spare and will never be spoken of again.

The whole reason I built this thing is to play Age of Empires 2. A game from 1999. On a GPU that can run Cyberpunk. My rig is a racecar I use to drive to the grocery store and I am at peace with this.

Late imperial 4v4 still lags sometimes but apparently that's just how AoE2 works because the engine is single threaded and there's nothing any hardware on earth can do about it. This information was not available to me at time of purchase.

200Hz monitor arriving Thursday. For Age of Empires 2.

Would I do it again? Absolutely yes. 10/10 would let an OLX GPU destroy my budget again.