Putting It All Together
I had planned to build a new studio computer over Christmas break, but various parts shortages prevented this. I've concluded that I could probably go ahead and build the computer now, but it is not going to be cheap and I can't get all of the parts that I want anywhere from the look of things.
I want the unlocked i7 Alder Lake chip. That's available at Newegg and Micro Center, but much cheaper at the latter. I like ASUS motherboards (although not the ones that have been recalled for catching on fire), but Micro Center has nothing but DDR5 motherboards at the moment and since DDR5 memory is barely available and hideously expensive when it is, that's not an option. I need a CPU cooler and *that* might be simpler, because it seems that the ASUS motherboards are drilled to accommodate the LGA 1200 mounting bracket under an LGA 1700 socket, so the vast majority of coolers should work.
But Newegg has DDR4 motherboards from ASUS, so that would work, but I really need Thunderbolt ports and the motherboards that are available with those are hideously expensive. The only solution is to buy a Thunderbolt add-on card (available at Newegg, not at Micro Center, and cheaper on Amazon), but that will use up an expansion slot on the motherboard and I need to make sure that I will still have slots available for a video card and my existing Firewire card until I get to obsolete it out of my studio systems. So now I'm counting the number and type of expansion slots.
Normally, I would mirror the storage, but I'll be using an M2 slot here and the advice that I'm seeing says that it's really a bad idea to mirror those, so just make sure that your backup is working (which it was, the last time that I checked). That, at least, saves buying a second M2 drive.
But I need a case with an opening for an external CD/DVD drive, because I still need to burn CDs regularly. And it turns out that you can't get those at Micro Center, but Newegg has the case that I want, although it *might* be cheaper on Amazon. And one of *these* fully modular power supplies should work and there are *lots* of choices there, some of which are surely better than others, but who knows?
And I can just move the video card from the old machine to the new machine, because *everyone* knows that you really don't want to buy a video card right now if you have a choice.
My brain hurts.
Maybe I should just go do some recording...
I want the unlocked i7 Alder Lake chip. That's available at Newegg and Micro Center, but much cheaper at the latter. I like ASUS motherboards (although not the ones that have been recalled for catching on fire), but Micro Center has nothing but DDR5 motherboards at the moment and since DDR5 memory is barely available and hideously expensive when it is, that's not an option. I need a CPU cooler and *that* might be simpler, because it seems that the ASUS motherboards are drilled to accommodate the LGA 1200 mounting bracket under an LGA 1700 socket, so the vast majority of coolers should work.
But Newegg has DDR4 motherboards from ASUS, so that would work, but I really need Thunderbolt ports and the motherboards that are available with those are hideously expensive. The only solution is to buy a Thunderbolt add-on card (available at Newegg, not at Micro Center, and cheaper on Amazon), but that will use up an expansion slot on the motherboard and I need to make sure that I will still have slots available for a video card and my existing Firewire card until I get to obsolete it out of my studio systems. So now I'm counting the number and type of expansion slots.
Normally, I would mirror the storage, but I'll be using an M2 slot here and the advice that I'm seeing says that it's really a bad idea to mirror those, so just make sure that your backup is working (which it was, the last time that I checked). That, at least, saves buying a second M2 drive.
But I need a case with an opening for an external CD/DVD drive, because I still need to burn CDs regularly. And it turns out that you can't get those at Micro Center, but Newegg has the case that I want, although it *might* be cheaper on Amazon. And one of *these* fully modular power supplies should work and there are *lots* of choices there, some of which are surely better than others, but who knows?
And I can just move the video card from the old machine to the new machine, because *everyone* knows that you really don't want to buy a video card right now if you have a choice.
My brain hurts.
Maybe I should just go do some recording...