Equipment

13 minute read Published: 2026-06-18

Sharing my personal hardware equipment, I'm using for everything I do digitally.

Adding small mini-reviews and opinions about the devices I use and explaining the why.

Table of Contents

Foreword

I decided to document my PC setup, including peripherals and dependencies, excluding cables and USB hubs.

Information on websites and prices are always Germany-based if available or whatever was available to me at the time of purchase.

Personal Computer

  • PSU - MSI MPG A850GS PCIE5 850W
  • Motherboard - MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi
  • CPU - Ryzen 9 9950X3D with be quiet! Dark Rock Elite
  • GPU - Zotac GeForce RTX 5080 AMP Extreme INFINITY ULTRA
  • RAM - Corsair Vengeance RGB 64GB Kit DDR5-6000 CL30
  • Case - Lian Li Lancool III RGB White

I chose this configuration, because I wanted a really beefy PC for gaming and especially enthusiastic for development, including local compilation etc., hence the most powerful consumer CPU availble, at the time of purchase.

Of course, the most important quality indicator of your self-built PC will always remain the PSU. So, I got the beefiest PSU I could find in terms of what features it has and how future proof it is. It offers the newest technology regarding safety and powering e.g. graphics cards.

It's very unfortunate, how difficult it is, to get a proper motherboard with enough USB slots. There was barely any choice and once you want a couple more USB slots, you are suddenly in the premium sector of motherboards, paying way more, than technically necessary for most important stuff to run on a high quality level. Same situation for SATA ports. Please, stop enforcing Apple stupidity everywhere...

I can truly recommend this line of PC cases for lazy self-setuppers, like me. It's so easy to maintain your PC with this one. It has many openings and slots for very easy and fast access. This is the second case I use from this line of models and it's great. Truly recommending it.

Storage

  • 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD Samsung 9100 Pro - Master for all programs, WSL, development, Gaming and whatever needs the most speed
  • 12TB HDD - Gaming Bulk
  • 12TB HDD - Data
  • 12TB HDD - Data Backup
  • 8TB HDD - Media

These are the master drives, I use daily. There are other storage and backup drives, that are attached to servers etc., so I don't count those here.

Peripherals

Mouse - Swiftpoint Z2

Soon to be Swiftpoint Z3.

The Z2 is the best mouse I ever used and probably will stay with Swiftpoint for the foreseeable future, unless they start to enshittify things, like all companies eventually, I hope not, though!

For years in the past, I had used some old generation of the typical Logitech G502. Note, that the linked mouse is a much newer version. Of course, they named it the same way, instead of providing an iterative number scheme for future generations. At some point, it got some technical issues. I do not remember, wether it was double-clicks on single-clicks, but it was a common one.

I had switched to Steelseries Rival 500, because it was one of those revolutionary mice, due to having very smart button placement and even additional thumb buttons as the thumb rest. You could also set this to static, non-pressurable. It was very useful, played a lot of HITMAN (2016) with it and used all those buttons for in-game actions. Really amazing mouse. Unfortunately, it got sick at some point with double-clicks and some buttons straight up stopped working. Tried to re-buy the same thing, but it was not only discontinued, but also sold out for good.

Finally, I browsed Kickstarter at some point and found the Swiftpoint Z2.

Seemed like the perfect mouse, since it was also usable with smaller hands - many mice are way too large and it serves no purpose other than excluding lots of users - and is even optimised for Fingertip Grip users, which are often forgotten, as everybody else only talks about Claw and Palm users.... Well, always been a Fingertip user and this campaign made me realise, why the other generic mice available never really addressed me properly.

Obviously, this mouse has amazing features, including a gyroscope for the purpose of optionally being able to use a small HOTAS-like device. :) Strongly recommend, checking out the feature list. The most important innovation from my perspective and for my use case are the four fingertip extra keys. This move was genius and still is ingenious. Loving that. Such a great feature and after seeing this, it actually seems like a no-brainer now. Yet, this is the only mouse I ever saw, that had any extra keys like that, at all.

After successful usage and no technical issues so far, I pre-ordered my Z3 and am excited for it!

The New Zealand guys behind these products are truly great.

Ergononmic Support

Just recently got the Carpio G2.0. It solved the problem I had with the Fellowes one. The Carpio models are extremely expensive for what they are, but well, there are no proper alternatives, so there's no choice but to swallow that.

Mousepad - Razer Firefly V2

I needed a hard mousepad and wanted to see, whether the RGB on a mousepad can be of any use at all and who would've guessed, it is useful, if you are willing to set it up. The price was very acceptable, considering there are tons of gamer mousepads with almost the same price, which did not have any technology inside them, at all. For example, the most obvious no-brainer is using it for Discord notifications. You can silence audio notifications from Discord and still notice new messages easily through coloured visual notifications displayed through the mousepad. Can be used for other stuff, too. Really useful, if you put some effort in finding the right use case for you.

Keyboard - Dygma Defy

Well, almost. Still using my Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB since ~2019, as I got used to it so much, it's difficult to switch away. Although, it's already falling apart.

It's not a bad keyboard and for the price it's pretty fine. The configuration software is also fine. You can even save the configuration files in plain text and back them up that way. That's really open and good for consumers. However, for a high quality product, I expected it to live longer. It's still usable, but it became unreliable and the wear & tear reached the first maximum. To be fair, it definitely has been used for extreme amounts of time over the years.

Over time standards grow with experience though and I needed something better, something much more ergonomic, much more powerful. That's how I got to Dygma Defy through Kickstarter.

Just check out the features it has. I got the full version, with all optional features enabled. The most notable standout feature for me personally is the extreme tilt functionality, that it has included. It's actually sturdy and works great. Am greatly satisfied with it.

Macropad - VSD Magtran M3

Pretty nice. Works well. More water resistant than it looks like - I was forced to check that myself by accident.

Downside is, I still did not get to setting it up properly. Currently, not in active use. I want to use it, but setting it up is not that fun.

Got it on Kickstarter.

Special Input

For learning how to drift like a Japanese Drift Master in Assetto Corsa and other simulators.

Visual

Over many years, I have used multi-monitor setups only. I had used many kinds of setups with various amounts of displays at once with various sizes, etc. and now I'm settled. I have tested usability over the years and I got to the conclusion, that the minimum amount of displays I need for maximum productivity, without extra optional fluff, is four. Everything beyond four is nice to have, but not absolutely necessary.

That said, the more monitors are in use, the more into trouble you get. Once you exhaust the output slots your dedicated graphics card offers, you start getting issues, as using the integrated unit combined with the dedicated one can become flakey and on Linux systems it usually hadn't worked at all. You also max out on what the graphics card can handle, in the first place. There is only so much resolution and Hertz it can take.

Auditory

I had used the Steelseries Arctis Pro Wireless for years. Recently switched to Steelseries Nova Pro Wireless. They are an obvious no-brainer, because their battery is brain dead simple to switch and replace. I have many batteries for the predecessor, in case the battery would've broken at some point, yet ironically, despite extrem usage over the years, the original single battery I use all the time was still in use until very recently and still works fine. Amazing.

If you don't know what wireless headset to get, just get this one. It's an absolute no brainer. The Nova also fixes the biggest issue of its predecessor, which is the headrest, which always gets more and more uncomfortable, the longer you use it, due to its material, that streches to infinity over the years of heavy usage.

Webcam

A short while ago, I got the Elgato Facecam Mk.2, used it for a while professionally and was so in love with the face/head tracking, that I stepped it up even further and got the Insta360 Link 2 Pro, which is even more extreme. After trying this one out, I also noticed the genius of it, after the fact. For example, due to being able to control where it looks at through software, it even has a desktop view mode. It can pretty much instantly switch to showing your desk, when you are working on something with your hands, like e.g. a Single Board Computer.

The Elgato Key Light Neo is a game changer. I tried to up my professional online display, as I mostly work from home and need to compensate for not seeing people I talk to in person. I really wish, I had bought this earlier. It is so flexible in many ways, it's not only very usable and useful for its original intended purpose but it also makes for an excellent desk light. It's truly game changing. Cannot recommend enough. It's pretty expensive for a light, yes, but considering the effect it has and how much it improves life, it's truly worth it. After I purchased it, I immediately wanted to get an additional one, however the it wasn't discounted anymore, so I decided to wait. Will get another one, as soon as it's discounted, again.

Security

Most open source, yet established. No-brainer.

Internet

FRITZ! has been doing a good job since a long time now. This is the flagship model with everything a normal household might wish for. So, here we go.