Building Gymskin’s Dream Gaming PC: Behind the Scenes With Konstantin

There are definitely worse ways to spend a day than building a gaming PC with Gymskin while Konstantin films the whole thing.

This one came about after I’d been speaking with Kon about Build My Rig and the sort of custom systems we put together. When the opportunity came up to build the PC for Gymskin’s new setup, I obviously jumped at it.

The original plan was fairly simple: build the PC as part of the wider setup project Kon was putting together for Gymskin.

What I wasn’t really expecting was to end up quite so involved in the video myself.

Before I knew it, we were filming the build properly at Kon’s studio, Gymskin was getting hands-on with putting the machine together, and most of the process was being streamed live on his Kick channel at the same time.

Not quite the same as building one in the Rig Room on a normal Tuesday.

The brief wasn't just “build the most expensive PC possible”

One thing that’s important to make clear with this build is that the brief was never just to throw the most expensive parts we could find into a case.

Gymskin wanted the PC to be an investment in his new setup.

It needed to handle the games he plays now, particularly Fortnite and Granny, be ready for GTA 6 when that eventually lands on PC, and give him a machine he could comfortably game, stream and create content from for years.

Streaming was obviously a big part of it too.

The system needed enough performance to game at a really high level while running the rest of his setup around it, including the camera and capture hardware he uses on stream.

That gave us a pretty clear direction.

We wanted something properly high-end, but every part still needed to have a reason for being there.

The final Gymskin PC specification

This is where we ended up:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
CPU Cooler: Lian Li HydroShift II LCD-C 360mm
Motherboard: ASUS TUF Gaming B850-PLUS WIFI
Memory: TEAMGROUP T-Force Delta RGB 32GB DDR5-6400
Storage: WD_BLACK SN7100 2TB NVMe SSD
Graphics Card: MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Shadow
Power Supply: be quiet! Pure Power 13 M 1000W
Case: Antec C5 Curve
Capture: Elgato internal PCIe capture card

And yes, it looks every bit as ridiculous as that spec sounds.

Why we went with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and RTX 5080

The CPU choice was actually pretty straightforward.

For a machine where gaming is the priority, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D makes a huge amount of sense. You get the benefit of AMD’s 3D V-Cache architecture without paying extra for a load of cores that are unlikely to make any meaningful difference to the way the PC is actually going to be used.

Pairing that with an RTX 5080 gives the system a huge amount of graphics performance for high-resolution gaming, high frame rates and streaming.

It also gives the build plenty of headroom for future games rather than creating something that only makes sense today.

That was really the theme throughout the build.

We could have gone further.

There are more expensive processors. There are bigger memory kits. There are plenty of ways to make a spec sheet cost more money.

But that doesn't automatically make the PC better for the person using it.

I'd much rather build around what somebody genuinely needs than add expensive parts simply because the budget allows it.

32GB of RAM was enough... and that's the point

This is a good example of that.

We used 32GB of DDR5-6400 rather than automatically jumping to 64GB.

For gaming, streaming and normal content creation, 32GB gives Gymskin plenty of memory for the PC to do what it needs to do.

If the brief had been heavy professional video editing, rendering or another workload that regularly eats through huge amounts of memory, that decision might have been different.

But it wasn't.

Again, it's about building the right PC rather than just the biggest number.

Building it at Konstantin's iKon studios

This was easily the most different part of the whole thing for me.

Normally when I'm building a customer's PC, I'm in my own workspace, I've got everything exactly where I want it, and I'm getting on with the job without several cameras pointing at me.

This time I walked into a proper studio setup with cameras, lighting and everything else going on around us.

Gymskin got properly involved with the build too rather than just turning up for the finished reveal.

I was there guiding him through it and explaining what we were doing as we went, while Kon captured the whole thing.

At one point it somehow went from us filming the PC as part of the setup video to filming a separate standalone build video as well.

Then there was the small matter of Gymskin streaming most of the build live to thousands of people.

No pressure then.

Probably the most stressful bit was towards the end when it was time to install the RTX 5080.

Watching somebody else handle the graphics card you've spent the day building a system around definitely hits differently when you're the one responsible for making sure everything works at the end.

Thankfully, everything survived.

More than just making it look good

The Antec C5 Curve worked really well for this build because it gave us the panoramic look we wanted without compromising the practical side of the system.

The Lian Li HydroShift II LCD-C 360mm takes care of cooling the 9800X3D while adding another bit of personality to the system, and the RGB setup gives the whole build a really clean finish without every single part fighting for attention.

But once the build looks good, the important part still comes afterwards.

Every Build My Rig system is built to actually be used.

That means making sure the hardware is configured properly, the cooling is doing what it should, the system is stable and everything works together before it becomes somebody's everyday PC.

That's even more important when that PC is going straight into a streaming setup.

Seeing it become part of the full setup

The PC was only one part of what Kon was putting together.

The following day he brought the rest of Gymskin's setup together, with the finished PC sitting front and centre as part of the room.

That's probably the bit I enjoyed most about the whole project.

You spend hours thinking about individual components, cable routing, cooling and all the little details during a build.

Then suddenly you see the finished machine in the environment it was actually built for and it all makes sense.

For me personally it was also a pretty surreal project.

Build My Rig started with me building PCs for friends and family on the side.

Fast forward a year and I'm stood in Konstantin's studio, in front of the cameras, building a PC for Gymskin that's going into a full creator setup.

It's definitely one of those moments where you realise things have moved quite quickly.

Watch the full build

If you want to see how the whole thing came together, you can watch the video with Konstantin and Gymskin below.

You'll see the build itself, the thinking behind the parts and Gymskin getting involved in putting the PC together.

There are a few moments where I look slightly more nervous than I'd like to admit.

Want us to build yours?

You definitely don't need an RTX 5080 or Gymskin's budget to get a PC that's properly built around what you play.

That's the whole point of Build My Rig.

You can choose one of our existing gaming PCs and customise it, or tell us what games you play, what you'll use the PC for and roughly what you want to spend.

We'll help work out the rest.

Whether that's a £900 machine for Fortnite or something considerably more ridiculous for 4K gaming and streaming, the approach is exactly the same:

Build the right PC for the person who's actually going to use it.