PC planning
We don't upgrade computers very often. When we do, we tend to go excessive. This is mostly a case of applying Vimes Boots Theory to PCs, and going big just to give ourselves room to grow. Our current machine was a "holy crap, what are you ever even going to play that would require even a fraction of these specs" purchase when we got it. Our current machine is also named COYOTE, after my fursona's species at the time. The fact that I just got a warning message prompt in Excel re: "Hey, you do realize we're going to end-of-life this in a couple months because it's Office 2010 and that was ten years ago, dipshit" should tell you something about how long this thing has been hanging in there. And to be honest, since my gaming habits are mostly things on the level of itch.io indie nonsense and/or Istaria, our machine can still handle 95% of the things we throw at it just fine, even today. However, three recent to semi-recent developments have led to the poor dear finally starting to show its age:
1) VR, though.
2) Not that I was seriously intending to get for-real into Final Fantasy XV, but that time I ran the benchmark out of curiosity and it was like "lol, uh, maybe if you want it to look like the N64 version I guess" kind of hurt my feelings.
3) (Most importantly) this system is starting to struggle with very large images. We recently bought a certain furry comic that came with the high res images (4000x5500, roughly 32 MB or so per page) and our system seems to choke so hard even so much as navigating into the same folder as them in file explorer (well, Directory Opus but shh) and doing all the thumbnail/icon generation/space calculation/etc. that sometimes the process outright fails and randomly corrupts a page or two. I keep the original .zip files on hand to re-extract and replace them as necessary.
Still a champion other than that, and we still don't need to upgrade, but it's finally getting to the point where maybe I just kind of want to anyway. We came up with this build, which is ridiculous but see above about wanting to splurge and bask in the feeling of being overpowered for now and then not have to do this again for a while. Posting it here for kinkshame our PC "Hey does this look good, are we missing something obvious, etc." purposes.
Breakdown of the various parts and the reasoning behind them:
AMD vs Intel: I kind of don't care about this issue as much as a lot of people seem to. Like, I kind of defaulted to an Intel build early on but a lot of people I showed the early list to had OPINIONS about this and I was like... o-oh, uh, okay I guess. Really, I just want whichever one is currently on top, which... appears to be the 3900X for now? I guess? (Well, technically the 3950X if you want to go into the "twice the cost for a very slight improvements in very specific circumstances, no one actually needs this unless they work for Pixar" tier of the bleeding edge, but we had to draw the line somewhere.) Anyway this one seems fine.
Hard drives: The idea behind the hard drives is that the SSD will have the operating system, games, programs, and basically anything and everything one would install, and is a single drive instead of a mirror RAID to save some money and because I'm told SSD RAIDing works a bit differently and generally isn't as necessary anyway, especially if I back up to the storage drive regularly. The two magnetic drives will be for a mirror RAID, which will join forces to become the aforementioned storage drive, which will then house all the pictures and music and saved video files and generally anything that isn't a verb. In theory, I could cut the price of those in half by going with WD Blue drives instead of Black; there's room to question (even by our "make an overpowered build on purpose" standards) whether I need WD Black-level performance just for the storage drives where all the furry porn media goes. But, uh. Point #3 above makes me nervous about this, so I don't want to take chances.
Case: The case was not easy to find, even if I wasn't being picky about wanting one in pink, because apparently external drive bays are going the way of headphone jacks as far as, like, technology that They have decided we don't need anymore and are phasing out now even though I kind of disagree. Like, I'm sure even if you want an (apparently increasingly optional these days) optical drive, which I do, you can just get external USB ones now, but... that just feels weird, somehow? I don't know. I do know that we need a very specific old model off eBay for CD-i dumping and archival purposes anyway, and finding something that still has room for them after all these years may let us get away with cannibalizing a part or two to save some money.
Plus, this case is a killer price and it looks like Barbie's Dream PC. I mean, come on. In what universe were we not destined to own this?
(I do have some concerns about whether an ATX Mid Tower will fit the big fancy cooler and whatnot, but somehow it's even less possible to find an ATX Full Tower that fits our needs anymore, so whatever.)
Motherboard/PSU: The motherboard I'm not particularly attached to; I just wanted something that has enough slots and isn't like a thousand dollars and that one came recommended in some best-motherboard listicles so sure whatever I guess. Likewise, PSU is literally just, like, that site picked one for us and I have no reason to object.
Other parts to consider, not on this list:
Optical drives: will hit up eBay for the old CD-i-intended one, probably pick up an adapter of some sort for it as well, and we might possibly consider getting a second actual-new optical drive for everything else, though this case gives us room and the option to cannibalize the current one if we'd rather be cheap less wasteful.
Capture card: I own a great one already and that one will definitely be moved over. I just need to look into, like, what slot architecture it uses and whether the new motherboard will have room for it after everything else, etc.
Probably stuff I'm forgetting: Does anyone use sound cards for anything anymore? More fans, maybe? Does the case come with enough fans? I dunno.
More research and brainstorming required, this is probably not the 100% final list, but it's getting close enough to start shopping around for input like this. This is a cross-posted entry that originated from https://kjorteo.dreamwidth.org/471338.html. Please leave all comments there; I am no longer actively maintaining my LiveJournal blogs.
1) VR, though.
2) Not that I was seriously intending to get for-real into Final Fantasy XV, but that time I ran the benchmark out of curiosity and it was like "lol, uh, maybe if you want it to look like the N64 version I guess" kind of hurt my feelings.
3) (Most importantly) this system is starting to struggle with very large images. We recently bought a certain furry comic that came with the high res images (4000x5500, roughly 32 MB or so per page) and our system seems to choke so hard even so much as navigating into the same folder as them in file explorer (well, Directory Opus but shh) and doing all the thumbnail/icon generation/space calculation/etc. that sometimes the process outright fails and randomly corrupts a page or two. I keep the original .zip files on hand to re-extract and replace them as necessary.
Still a champion other than that, and we still don't need to upgrade, but it's finally getting to the point where maybe I just kind of want to anyway. We came up with this build, which is ridiculous but see above about wanting to splurge and bask in the feeling of being overpowered for now and then not have to do this again for a while. Posting it here for kinkshame our PC "Hey does this look good, are we missing something obvious, etc." purposes.
Breakdown of the various parts and the reasoning behind them:
AMD vs Intel: I kind of don't care about this issue as much as a lot of people seem to. Like, I kind of defaulted to an Intel build early on but a lot of people I showed the early list to had OPINIONS about this and I was like... o-oh, uh, okay I guess. Really, I just want whichever one is currently on top, which... appears to be the 3900X for now? I guess? (Well, technically the 3950X if you want to go into the "twice the cost for a very slight improvements in very specific circumstances, no one actually needs this unless they work for Pixar" tier of the bleeding edge, but we had to draw the line somewhere.) Anyway this one seems fine.
Hard drives: The idea behind the hard drives is that the SSD will have the operating system, games, programs, and basically anything and everything one would install, and is a single drive instead of a mirror RAID to save some money and because I'm told SSD RAIDing works a bit differently and generally isn't as necessary anyway, especially if I back up to the storage drive regularly. The two magnetic drives will be for a mirror RAID, which will join forces to become the aforementioned storage drive, which will then house all the pictures and music and saved video files and generally anything that isn't a verb. In theory, I could cut the price of those in half by going with WD Blue drives instead of Black; there's room to question (even by our "make an overpowered build on purpose" standards) whether I need WD Black-level performance just for the storage drives where all the furry porn media goes. But, uh. Point #3 above makes me nervous about this, so I don't want to take chances.
Case: The case was not easy to find, even if I wasn't being picky about wanting one in pink, because apparently external drive bays are going the way of headphone jacks as far as, like, technology that They have decided we don't need anymore and are phasing out now even though I kind of disagree. Like, I'm sure even if you want an (apparently increasingly optional these days) optical drive, which I do, you can just get external USB ones now, but... that just feels weird, somehow? I don't know. I do know that we need a very specific old model off eBay for CD-i dumping and archival purposes anyway, and finding something that still has room for them after all these years may let us get away with cannibalizing a part or two to save some money.
Plus, this case is a killer price and it looks like Barbie's Dream PC. I mean, come on. In what universe were we not destined to own this?
(I do have some concerns about whether an ATX Mid Tower will fit the big fancy cooler and whatnot, but somehow it's even less possible to find an ATX Full Tower that fits our needs anymore, so whatever.)
Motherboard/PSU: The motherboard I'm not particularly attached to; I just wanted something that has enough slots and isn't like a thousand dollars and that one came recommended in some best-motherboard listicles so sure whatever I guess. Likewise, PSU is literally just, like, that site picked one for us and I have no reason to object.
Other parts to consider, not on this list:
Optical drives: will hit up eBay for the old CD-i-intended one, probably pick up an adapter of some sort for it as well, and we might possibly consider getting a second actual-new optical drive for everything else, though this case gives us room and the option to cannibalize the current one if we'd rather be cheap less wasteful.
Capture card: I own a great one already and that one will definitely be moved over. I just need to look into, like, what slot architecture it uses and whether the new motherboard will have room for it after everything else, etc.
Probably stuff I'm forgetting: Does anyone use sound cards for anything anymore? More fans, maybe? Does the case come with enough fans? I dunno.
More research and brainstorming required, this is probably not the 100% final list, but it's getting close enough to start shopping around for input like this. This is a cross-posted entry that originated from https://kjorteo.dreamwidth.org/471338.html. Please leave all comments there; I am no longer actively maintaining my LiveJournal blogs.