Getting Spooky: Three Halloween Inspired PC Builds!

MicroCenterOfficial · October 2022

Written By @Lesaol and @Vaganza, photos by @Elliot_L

Building your very own computer system can be fun, challenging, and rewarding, especially when thinking about aesthetics and a theme. For the month of October, we put together three parts lists to fit that Halloween theme: One all-white “Ghost” theme for our gaming-focused build, one blackout “Nightmare” theme for our high-end option, and one Dragula-styled one, inspired by Rob Zombie and the Munsters! And to help us showcase parts, we enlisted our favorite undead employee, Skelly!

The Gaming Ghost

Powered by Intel’s Core I5-12600K, the Ghost build is a great build for gamers who want to play their favorite October jump-scare games like Phasmophobia and Dead by Daylight without having to shell out too many bones this season. As for some of our ghost-themed parts, we have an ASUS Z690-P Prime, 16GB of Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4 (white), and a Gigabyte RTX 3060 Vision to keep that ghostly look. For our power supply, while we chose the Corsair RM750 White edition due to its 80-plus gold certification and fully modular capabilities, it also was a perfect match to our aesthetic.

The case for our build, the Lancool 215 Snow White Edition, along with our CPU cooler, Deep Cool’s AS500 PLUS, are a good pair for our build thanks to their high airflow and amazing cooling potential. Getting good thermal paste for your CPU cooler is one of the best things you can do to make sure your system runs well, so we decided to go with Thermal Grizzley’s Kryonaut thermal paste. To store all our games, we picked the Inland Performance 1TB NVME, a dependable cost-effective Gen4 x4 PCIe SSD that will download games and transfer files at frightening speeds.

Full Parts List:

https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx?load=f74707b5-e2d9-48ad-83de-407ac0b7c3d9

Dragula: The PC

With the release of the Rob Zombie Munsters movie this year, I thought it might be fun to put the pieces together for a computer inspired by one of the George Barris custom cars: the “Dragula." Dragula is, as the name implies, a drag racer, built from a casket, coated in gold and chrome, and, importantly, had all of the pipes exposed. The interior is purple velvet, befitting a coffin. And now, with a theme decided on, it's time to choose parts.

Because this is a dragster, it needs to be fast. Ryzen 9 7900X fast. But as you don't really see a CPU behind the cooling, it's not until we get to the motherboard that aesthetics really start to matter. The ASRock Tachi x670-E motherboard features a lot of gold accents and can easily be enhanced with some nice steampunk gears. The RAM will be four silver Trident Z DDR5 RGB RAM sticks to match up with the 4 straight pipes on the Dragula car. For our GPU, we'll be going with an AMD Radeon 6950XT with a custom loop waterblock installed for that extra customization.

The case I chose here was the Fractal Design Torrent as it is a long case with a very exaggerated front grill, akin to a grill on the front of a car. This case has the space to show off a neat custom water loop using a pair of radiators and some nice clear tubing featuring purple coolant.

With all this, however, it's still far from gold enough. To compensate, the radiators at the top and bottom of the case will use three Lian Li UNI AL120 RGB fans each, all displaying that good, gold hue. Toss a flow indicator in the loop to add more of that steampunk feel.

And, for a final touch, Dragula wouldn't be complete without getting a hold of Funko Pop 868 featuring a Herman Munster dressed in the outfit seen in that iconic episode of The Munsters.

Full Parts List:

https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx?load=7429cc18-380f-473d-a19d-35402b86a618

A Nighmarishly Powerful PC

For our final build, we decided to follow a mostly blackout theme with just a hint of RGB, for that bit of spooky orange or red lighting. We'll be using AMD’s new AM5 platform, the Ryzen 9 7900X, paired with 32GB of G.Skill Ripjaws S5, and Samsungs 980 Pro 2TB SSD for a killer PC for those who want to game, work, and more without any restraints. To cool our CPU properly and also match our aesthetic, the Dark Rock 4 from be quiet along with Kryonaut thermal paste is a perfect fit for this build. Usually, with new motherboard platforms like AM5, it is necessary to check if the cooler comes with the proper mounting bracket. Luckily, the Dark Rock 4 uses the mounting system AMD provides on their motherboards, so we won’t have to worry about double-checking the box to make sure we have the right hardware. Important features like Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, as well as a plentiful number of USBs are common on higher-end motherboards, which is why we chose the ASUS X670E-PLUS. When using a high-end processor like the 7900X, a reliable and high-performing motherboard is crucial for making sure your system can meet your needs, but to power these components you also need a reliable power supply.

The Corsair RM1000e is perfect for making high-end systems like our Nightmare build a little easier to put together thanks to its fully modular design. It's also a great choice for futureproofing our build in preparation for the newer generation graphics cards that may use more power. For our case, we'll go with the Corsair 4000D, a fantastic mid-tower case with a prominent mesh front panel - perfect for keeping our graphics card, the ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 Ti ROG Strix, cool! ROG Strix graphics cards have some of the best cooling available and look amazing thanks to the RGB that is also included on their cards. The performance provided by the RTX 3070 Ti along with our DDR5 Ram and GEN 4x4 NVME SSD will easily play games at 1440P with high refresh rates.

Full Parts List:

https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx?load=1086205b-d7a3-4d5b-a4ae-557968ae781d

These spooky builds showcase just how creative you can be when designing and building your own computer, without having to sacrifice performance or reliability. It's getting easier and easier to design your own computer to your exact tastes, especially with tools like Micro Center’s PC Builder. And when you're ready to make your dream PC a reality, swing by your local Micro Center - we can even build it for you!