PC Build 2026

This build has been a years-long project that started in 2023 around an Intel Core i9-13700K paired with an RTX 4090 — a high-end pairing by any standard. The original home was a Lian Li 216, a spacious ATX mid tower case that made cable management effortless but commanded a serious footprint on the desk.

Three years on, the priorities shifted. The 2026 refresh is about going smaller without giving up meaningful performance. The 13700K made way for an AMD Ryzen 7 9700X3D — a more efficient chip with AMD's 3D V-Cache stacked directly on the die, delivering strong single-threaded and gaming performance in a much lower power envelope. Paired with an ASUS mATX motherboard, the platform swap also opened the door to the real centrepiece of this refresh: the Lian Li DAN A3.

The DAN A3 is a compact mATX case that cuts the footprint dramatically compared to the O11 216, while still accommodating a full-size GPU and a 240mm AIO radiator for cooling the 9700X3D. It's a tight build that rewards careful planning — every component placement matters when space is at a premium.

The rest of the system rounds out with 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 8TB of NVMe storage spread across four 2TB drives. Having four M.2 slots on an mATX board isn't a given, so the ASUS board selection was deliberate. The storage array covers OS, applications, and a growing library of games and project files without compromise.

Specs

Case	Lian Li DAN A3 (mATX)
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 9700X3D
Motherboard	ASUS (mATX, AM5)
GPU	NVIDIA RTX 4090
RAM	32GB DDR5
Storage	4 × 2TB NVMe SSD (8TB total)
Cooling	240mm AIO Radiator

Previous Build (2023)

Case	Lian Li O11 216 (ATX)
CPU	Intel Core i9-13700K
GPU	NVIDIA RTX 4090