New PC

 I built a new PC. Finally, it’s been 10 years. The last build was made with following:

Case: Lian Li PC-v359
Processor: Intel Core i7 4790k
CPU Cooler: Cryorig H7 (air cooler)
Motherboard: MSI z97 m mobo (MATX)
Boot Drive: Kingston HyperX 480GB M.2 SSD
Storage Drive: RAID 5 (3 x 1TB HDD)
RAM: Corsair 16GB DDR3
GPU: GTX 980 EVGA KingPin
PSU: EVGA 750 watt G2

I really liked the small form cases. Something different and not the usual stand up cases. The Lian Li v359 is a cube, 12in x 12in x 12in. And it fits a MATX motherboard. 

The SSD/Boot Drive is a Kingston HyperX M.2. That SSD took about 24hrs to install windows onto it, only to fail. I tried more than once over a week to have it fail every time! I think either the SSD or the motherboard needed a firmware update, then it worked fine. 

The PC as a whole was great and eventually some of these parts got upgraded. I took the RAID out of the PC and made a server. If you don’t know, a RAID is a bunch of hard drives working together as one  with the ability for one (or more) Hard Drive to fail without losing data. RAID stands for “redundant array of independent disks”.

The air cooler was a later addition. And about a year ago I upgraded the GPU. It all served me well until the last 2 years. The computer couldn’t keep up with newer Games I was playing like Street Fighter 6. Tekken 8 was 6 months away so I knew I needed that GPU upgrade. 

Then the SSD died. SSDs don’t last forever so I guess it was time. But I don’t know if the SSD just died or if something else happened. I feel like it could of been something else because certain USB ports didn’t work right and the LAN port wasn’t working. My capture card also stopped working correctly. 

Another reason for the new pc is microsoft isn’t going to support Windows 10 anymore later this year and this PC isn’t new enough to run Windows 11.

With all that going on I knew it was time for a new build.

New build:
Case: Lian Li PC-v359
Processor: Ryzen 9 7900x
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 EVO (air cooler)
Motherboard:  MSI MAG B650m Mortar (MATX)
Boot Drive: Samsung 990 EVO 1TB M.2 SSD
Storage Drive: NAS Server
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB
GPU: RTX 3080 EVGA FTW
PSU: Evga 750 watt G2

I used a lot of the old stuff, like the upgraded GPU, PSU and Case. Everything else is new. I was going to get a NEW Ryzen 7 9800x3D but it was always sold out everywhere since it came out late last year. It got really good reviews for price/performance. But it was only 8 cores. There were also issues with the CPU and compatibility with the motherboard I got. The motherboard would need a BIOS update and that’s hard to do without an older CPU. I didn’t have an older AMD CPU to put in there. This older Ryzen 9 7900x I ended up getting has more cores and I found it on sale and cheaper than the Ryzen 7. 

I want to upgrade the PSU soon. 750 Watts is barely enough. It’s doing good right now though. 

I might add a second M.2 SSD in there, I currently have a Sata SSD for some game installs. I’m thinking of a 2TB M.2 SSD. 

The only issue I have now is that the Optical Out for sound is a bit laggy? Not laggy, but it cuts out every minute or so. The DAC I use has input for Optical and USB so I’m using the USB part now. 

Other issues are installing programs. I have to reinstall a lot. A lot of newer stuff is good but I have a few old programs that need “tinkering” to work. I can’t get new versions of these because then the tinkering may not work, if you catch my drift. I will try those soon. I was also worried about game installs but steam recognized all the installs I had on a second SSD. There were certain games that were installed on the boot drive so I needed to reinstall those.

I might start streaming again when I get a new capture card.

I think I’m done rambling about the new and old PC now. Maybe I’ll ramble about server stuff in the future.