Bought another computer today

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It was a steal on facebook. 200$ came with a monitor and speakers.

I ponied up though I probably shouldn’t have… all the same my tower died on me the other day and recently I was looking to extend my hardware profile for redundancy and the sake of friends who might need a machine down the line.

I am pleased with my purchase… Dropped on of my solid state drives in there and it really sped up performance. I had never actually seen the hard drive being the bottleneck in system performance, but that old HDD wasn’t keeping up at all… everything else was hovering at 5 to 25% utilization while the disk was maxed out at 100% the whole time…

So yeah, the guy had it on the web for about a month there. I don’t think he knew what to do with it. I’m glad I was able to get it in gear. If I dropped my 390 into it I could keep on playing fallout just like I was.

Anyways, waiting until next month when I have some money and some debts paid to make the next move in my hardware expansion plan.

1st thing up is repairing my old rig so a friend can have a PC that can handle Halo 5 and other current titles… I’m also getting a huge box case:

They’re great for testing out components just by being more accessible… Let’s one take their time in getting everything into a new case while being confident it all works…

The computer I’m using now was meant to be a spare Power Supply/ MoboCPU combo… as it is one of those things that went out on my other system…

So round and around it goes… throughout next year I’ll be building a new rig… Going with mini ITX on the 1151 socket… ram limited to 32 gigs… only one PCIE 3.0 lane… but those boards frequently come with A/C wifi and blutooth right on the mobo… and I just upgraded my home network so it’s a more comprehensive step forward.

I’ve made probably around 400 or 500 last year helping people with computers… Grandma bought one, a friends mother in law needed a lot of help, my mother’s friend has needed help… another friend of mine needed help.

So I’m setting myself up to have more parts on hand and more tools to coordinate repairs and new builds…

At some point I want to build a server, but that’ll be pointless if I haven’t moved to a place that has reasonably priced and balanced broadband… Like a neighborhood with FiOs

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why build mini Itx? I love the small computer concept but it does you in in temperatures especially if your overclocking and then there’s the redundancy in only certain things fit…

You’ve done some good things today…I build ATX at minimum…cost you more but give you some headroom and your can do more things for the upgrade path…As I say…mini itx is cool but your selling yourself short if you want a console!

I’m currently running a 7700k @ 4,9…Crappy chip…on a Asus IX hero with a H100i v2. M2 ssd and a decent corsair 850 hxi…

Do you need to run so small? if not move up to medium build…lots of good cases and they’ll be better builds!

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Here’s a case! Got this a few years ago, never going to need another. I got the artic white one.

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Is it a gaming one …

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I’ve got the medium build going… I was going to go for an i7 but only the xxxx-k model operates at the 95 watt range.

Heat is becoming less of an issue…

I’m done overclocking… overclocking is what crippled my other rig… it was cool getting DDR3 up to 2000+ speeds with my old processor… but I’m moving onto a new socket and a new i7… got a good friend who will benefit from having my old one.

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was supposed to be but it’s specs really aren’t that great…

Got a radeon 240… which is super basic… the processor is alright, just outdated…

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neat… that’s pretty comparable to that Cooler Master I linked to

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Anyone try those new amd chips, I’ve heard good things about price / performance

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U can add up gtx1080 ti …if it support …!!!

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it would but that card is out of my price range… and oddly enough the 390 has held up just fine regarding keeping up with new cards… So I’m good… really this PC is just meant for casual use and spare parts… I’ll get to repairing my old one soon!

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Amd is good too…!!!

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Yeah AMD is more the brute force approach to processing. Really cheap, plenty of power, very inefficient…

They don’t hold up to Intel’s top end stuff… but if you’re in the mid range anyway… AMD is probably the way to go.

Intel keeps changing sockets up every few years… AMD has had the same AM3+ for some time now… I remember my first PC used the AM3+ and that was 5+ years ago…

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hey…not being critical…you do what you need to do. Just mini itx is limited in a lot of respects! I know it’s good for some builds and it’s a way to go for a lot of folks…It’s all good. You just never ever know!

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Yeah I’m a fan of small pcs… it’s just neat to me to see the small ones running games on ultra…

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Not anymore with the new Ryzens and the upcoming Epycs.

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Have you looked into buying off-lease workstations? I swung a good deal on some used Dell Precision T3600s. Xeon Octacores with 32 GB of RAM each and RAID controllers. Also came with a 2 GB video card (I’m not a gamer so the video is zippy enough for me). Drop in a pair of striped SSDs and they boot Win 10 in about 5 seconds.

They’re big and heavy, but, man. You get whole lot of computer for not that much dosh up front.

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I’ll keep that in mind… there was a time when I was looking at a dell workstation, but that was years ago and it did need repair.

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I just got a 4K monitor for my setup an I gotta say it’s amazing I thought it was gonna be a waste of money but it looks great.

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I’d kill for one. Got two off-lease Full-HD monitors from Dell also. $75 for the pair and they’re 22 inches each. I’ll have to wait until the next thing beyond 4K comes out, I guess.

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I started using a solid state drive and I was impressed with how much faster it was. So far it was only for a game. But in the future I will put more games on it.