Hello everyone,
Not sure how much I’ll be able to put into this one because you know I tend to underplay how much things hurt sometimes ? Well I kinda wrecked my wrist and arm so if it starts pain spiking, I’ll need to hit post.
What I am hoping is that my poorly arm has enough in it for building a new computer … What’s up with the arm ? It’s been tending to RSI for I dunno how long now but I kinda crunched it on opening the car door yesterday. Like high pain level plus I’ve apparently strained a muscle in the forearm. So I’m holding off on doing more of the gaming that involves more activity, like the hauling in Elite Dangerous or the Truck Sim games do. I’ve also been looking at trains …
That’s Derail Valley, which is a train driving simulator with its own little area to play in. It’s a curious game, which sees you carrying various bits of cargo from station to station and you can build up what you haul and fix up bigger and better locomotives. There’s a link to Squirrel’s play through on youtube on the last post. But I think that’ll take too many chances with the wrist, so I’ll hold off on it.
What’s happening with the PC ?
There we go. Pizza is life especially if you’re planning to try and all nighter and can therefore don’t need to worry about the tummy not liking all that cheese.
PC ? We’re kinda being pushed into moving off Windows 10 because Microsoft are ending patch support for it, unless we pay through the nose for extended support. So after October, all those vulnerabilities that let the hackers in won’t get patched. That’s for definite. What I also suspect is that as we approach October, Microsoft will get more and more obnoxious with pushing us towards going to Windows 11 and the paranoid / experienced part of my brain also thinks they’ll push out updates that actively harm the performance of Windows 10 machines. Because that’s what they do.
The answer is to put them in the bin … You probably want to do your own research on this and whether it fits you personally with the level of knowledge and expertise you yourself know you have (and be honest with it too, it’ll save heartache later!). But it might well be worth doing the research on what alternatives are available for Microsoft (and Adobe, don’t forget them here too) products and whether you actually need to stay with them. Let’s see what I do on this desktop :
BOINC science – runs on Linux as well.
Gaming – since Steam brought out their Linux based Steamdeck, far more games are being made available either natively (without layers) on Linux or they run as well or better than on Windows via translation layers like Proton. However, if you enjoy the multiplayer online games like Fortnite and League of Legends, research very carefully whether you’d be able to play those.
Stream watching – happens on a browser …
Web browsing – yep see above there …
Picture making and memes – I use GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) for photo editing, which has a native Linux version.
Also consider that if you have an Android phone, that runs on a Linux version that’s been phone-ified.
So Bunny PC is increasingly likely to be a Linux based machine, which saves £110 which can go towards a more expensive graphics card. And I get full control over the machine, without Microsoft changing stuff on their whim, usually without making sure that it’s actually a positive change.
Enough about the bad bits though, what am I looking at getting ?
The core upgrade will be the Ryzen 7 9800x3d processor in probably another Asrock board. Meltdown’s Ryzen 5 3600 has been rock solid in its Asrock board (after I disabled the overclocking that earned it the Meltdown name), so I’ll stick with that combination. This should be maybe double or the more the cpu grunt that Meltdown had. We’ll see.
I’ll drop 64GB in there (in 2 sticks of 32GB) which is honestly excessive … but it future proofs the machine a bit more. I’d like the Bunny to last at least 6 years preferably more, with the only changes done being graphics and possibly storage. I’m likely to acquire one of these boxes for it :
That’s a Montech King 95 Pro. (Linky to Montech’s site) The advantages of that are the reports from people around the discords who have got one, it’s a very positively reviewed case. Meltdown’s Bitfenix case very nearly needed an application of the Mend Stick (hammer) to allow the PSU to be fitted, because it was supplied with a very small distortion. BAD. I won’t get the case with all the fans (maybe) but that one does have very key features – it can fit a very large air cooling fan, plus the ports are vertically on the front. A bit of learning from this case is that if the ports point upwards at all (Meltdown’s are at 45 degrees), they will trap dust and eventually not allow the plugs to go in properly.
The cooling is another direction where I have my own big opinions there … There are three main ways to go with cooling a gaming PC :
Air cooling – a big lump of metal attached to the processor with big fans to push air over it.
All in one cooling – a small waterblock goes on the cpu and moves the heat to radiators with big fans on to do the cooling. The whole thing would be sealed unit simple.
Home brew watercooling – same as above but this would be a lot more custom, where you figure out the waterblocks, the pumps, the filters, the radiators, the fans etc.
All in one and watercooling are both very well sorted now and I should probably check them out properly at some point but … I see the fans and ask if you actually really gain anything with these ? They’re more expensive, you have to consider the fluid inside (air bubbles get in, so the radiator goes at the top so the bubbles don’t go at the cpu part) and the chances of having a disaster where your expensive gaming PC gets drowned by its own cooling system.
Nah. I’ll just go for a big lump of metal and big slow fans. It’s less complicated, very little can go wrong with air cooling and it’s still very quiet if you go for the big slow fans. It’s one where opinions differ :-D. I go my way, I look at curiosity at those who go other ways, we see what we can learn from each other and mutually hope that we both get many happy gaming hours from our respective rigs.
That’s one for the rest of life too – respect each other’s choices, cheer people on and support them in the direction they go.
Note I won’t be going to a shop for the PC again. I’ll buy off the shelf laptops but … there’s too much potential for off the shelf desktops to have components in from OEMs that I wouldn’t touch with a bargepole. Or they’ll put substandard components in to save pennies, like an under specified power supply that will explode after 12 months and a day (warranty period) and take other components with it.
Oops, small eek there as I leant on the arm a bit too heavily and nearly provoked a bigger ouch.
There we go – if you’d like more of a look at what I’m lining up to get, here’s a Partpicker list link. The actual bits I get will diverge from that a little, so I’ll transfer the 2TB SSD from Meltdown and its expansion card over to Bunny. Plus I think I’ll transfer the graphics card over for the near term too, because the graphics card market is in a big state of flux right now, so it’s not a good time to buy.
(Plus politics is happening, you see too much of that everywhere else though)
I’m not ordering tonight part because it’s getting late, part because I try and avoid spending big money when I’m feeling the pain at increased levels. The other reason is that I need to transfer over all the data I want to keep to the 2TB drive that’ll go into Bunny PC.
That might take a while ! So many memes !
Nite all see you all at a later date :-).