// Personal website of Chris Smith

Things I Use

In the vein of uses this and following on from my post about how I get things done, this is a list of things I use that I’ll try to keep up-to-date.

Last updated: 5th April 2025

Computer hardware

I built a new PC in March 2025. I use it for both work and gaming. It travels with me to LAN events, so it’s as small as I can make it. The build is:

Component Product Specs
Case Fractal Design Terra Silver
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 8-core, 104MB cache, up to 5.2GHz
Cooler Thermalright AXP90 X47 Full
Graphics Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070XT PCI-E 5, 16GB GDDR6, 3060MHz
Memory Corsair Vengeance 64GB, 6600MHz, CL32
Storage Crucial T705 NVMe SSD 2TB, Gen 5
Motherboard Gigabyte B850I Aorus Pro
Power supply Cooler Master V750 SFX Fully modular
Fractal Design Terra Case
Fractcal Design's Terra Case

Previously I was using a Dell G15 Special Edition laptop, with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060. This was handy while I was travelling more, but the 3060 was struggling and the inability to upgrade the major components was annoying.

This is the first computer I’ve ever built with an AMD processor and graphics cards. All my old ones have been Intel and NVIDIA builds, but it feels like both companies have made major missteps recently while AMD is doing very good things.

Despite the small form factor, the build was straight forward. The Terra is a nicely designed case, providing lots of access that make up for the tiny volume you have to work in.

Along with the PC, I use:

Alienware AW3423DWF monitor
The oh-so beautiful Alienware AW3423DWF QD-OLED monitor

The Alienware monitor is gorgeous. QD-OLED is an amazing display technology and just makes everything pop. I went to a LAN event where someone had one of these monitors and within weeks four of us had purchased our own.

The Cloud Alpha Wireless headphones have an amazing battery life. We’re talking weeks of near constant use. Whoever optimised the power draw on them to get such a good battery life should get a medal.

The Nanuk case makes it easy to cart a PC around with me (as opposed to a laptop that just goes into a backpack). It fits the PC, keyboard, mouse, headset and cables. I’m hoping to get a slim monitor that will fit as well, so it can provide a complete LAN setup in one box. Nanuk provide full 3D models for all their cases, which is great if you might want to 3D print things to fit in them.

Other hardware

I don’t really like Apple’s walled garden, but as I’ve written before I’d rather go with the company that makes money by producing shiny phones, than the company that makes money by shoving adverts down my throat.

I would’ve gone with an older iPad, but the 10th gen was the first with a real USB connector instead of lightning.

Software and services

General

The Arch Linux logo
Arch, btw.

I prefer self-hosted and open source where possible for services, but there’s a lot of cases where that’s not feasible for one reason or another.

Making things

Development and sysadmin-y things

Screenshot of IntelliJ IDEA while editing this page
This page being edited in IntelliJ IDEA, Inception-style. The font is Berkeley Mono, and theme is Darcula Darker.

This list could probably go on forever. I’ll refrain from listing programming languages, libraries, frameworks, etc.

Games

Allplay board game bag, in blue
The Allplay board game bag. Holds many board games. Then weighs a tonne.

I won’t really bother with video games on other platforms, aside from the occasional free-standing MMORPG. Steam works amazingly on Linux, is generally not user-hostile like a lot of other places, and Valve have done great things for making games actually work.

Tools

Makita DTD157 impact driver
DTD157 impact driver. Capable of applying many ugga duggas.

My preference for tools is basically Makita for power tools (both because they’re good and to keep a consistent battery system), Wera for anything screwdriver adjacent, Engineer for anything delicate, and Knipex for anything that falls through the gaps.

Miscellaneous