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It's been a while. I usually leapfrog upgrade, but I did it all last time: i5-10600k, 3060Ti, an m.2 SSD. Was amazed at the size of the SSD.
I overclocked the CPU and it's held up way better than I had expected, but as raytracing stops being optional more and more, I don't know how much time my GPU has left.
A couple years ago I moved from desktop to laptop. Now I'm moving back to desktop. Building a humble sleeper in an almost new-old-stock Dell Dimension 4600 case (that black and grey one they modeled the CS Source pc after) to fit in with my pile of beige Windows 95/98/XP machines.
I recently learned that Asus still makes motherboards with green PCB's, which is amazing for this kind of build, and I just bought one today. The motherboard also has a full regular DB9 serial port on its rear I/O, a second COM port header, and a PCI slot (not PCIe... the original PCI, which is excellent because I have so many weird interesting PCI cards)... All that retro/vintage goodness, but it's rocking an A520 AM4 chipset, and a PCIe gen 3 x16 port (with 2 more x1 ports). They also make an AM5 and several iterations of Intel socket versions! The AM4 board was on sale for ~$70 USD, and I happen to have a Ryzen 7 2700 kicking around. (Which I just now discovered that isn't compatible with the A520 chipset... oops. Cheap Ryzen 5 5500 it is!)
I'm keeping the floppy drive since I actually still do a lot of work with floppies, I've got a floppy-to-USB board for that, and also picked up a SATA DVD burner, and have 1 additional 5.25" bay that will likely host a rotating cast of random vintage nonsense.
Replaced the top cover on my case for one with fan mounts. And mounted slim fans.
It's nice to have the warm air blow upwards instead of into my face sometimes
A second m.2 for trying out the switch to Linux. It went well, primary boot now.
Edit: I went with Nobara.
I just installed another m.2 for the same reason. I’m hung up on what distribution use though and haven’t made it any further.
Opensuse. There. I've picked for you.
No more excuses now. Go boot and install your favorite game.
What distro you go?
Same
That was a long time ago tho
New SSD for games and VMs.
Bought a mouse with silent clicks, so I don't disturb my partner with my raging click barrages.
Nice idea, which model is it?
Kudos to my partner for bugging me about my annoying clickety-click.
It's a simple Logitech M650, nothing special or fancy, but I don't play competitively on a level where that kind of stuff matters.
I had to buy a louder keyboard because my girlfriend enjoyed the clicking
Thanks
ARGB LED strip and three fans. Picture related:
It's only fluff. Or, like my folks jokingly say, LPAJ (luz para agradar jacu = lights to please hillbillies). But I like how it turned out.
The second last upgrade was the Radeon RX 6600, visible in the pic. I bought it juuust before all that tariffs ruckus; I had to get one because my old video card was ancient. (I remember mentioning this, but my nephew was crawling around my computer when I installed that video card. The same nephew is now studying to get into an university.)
Overall I'm rather pleased with my current rig. It isn't top grade, but I think I got a good cost/benefit.
Added a 512 SSD just for installing windows. I built a Linux only PC, but didn't have luck setting up my VR headset. So, decided I need windows just for that. I got a cheap SSD and put it in my second SSD slot. Played my VR game and haven't really touched it since.
Last week from a Ryzen 3700x to a 7800x3d, so new mobo, cooler and ram as well. The 3700x was a bottleneck in some games for my GPU. Performs well now.
My niece will upgrade from an old 7 series Intel to my old 3700x, x570 chipset mobo, Deepcool double fan CPU cooler and 32 GB ram. I will give her my old GTX1080 as well. Whole system perfectly fine for WOW classic.
A 4070 to replace my 2080S. The improvement was fairly noticeable.
The Mobile Athlon CPU, with unlocked multipliers I was able to overclock like crazy. It was something like 20 years ago.
Seriously, replaced a 2x6Tb raid1 of mechanical hdd's with 4x4tb raid 5 SSDs. Amazing update in terms of noise reduction and power consumption. As for speed, I don't care, the content is consumed over the network anyway.
This probably shouldn't count, but I diagnosed and removed a bad stick of RAM. It works much better now. Since I was running on 32Gb, I haven't really noticed the drop to 16. I'd been blaming system instability on not knowing how to properly maintain Linux and shit drivers. Turns out
Prior to that was when I bought a 2TB SSD.
My psu fan gave out and started making an awfully loud noise. (Seasonic 850fx) so I upgraded it to a corsair 1000w psu. At least I hope it is an upgrade. I actually liked the cables on the seasonic more but hopefully the corsair lasts a bit longer. The seasonic was only about 1.5 years old.
Added a 2.5gbps max network card. Still not getting the 2gbps i paid for, unsure why........
I just bought a steam deck.
Moved a 2tb SSD that was my steam library for my old rig into my new Linux PC and installed windows on it, specifically to play Minecraft and Roblox with my kiddo.
I built mine in 2023, so no hardware upgrades yet, but I recently swapped from W10 to Fedora KDE Plasma. No regrets.
My rig is close to 20 years old and I recently upgraded the motherboard, CPU and RAM which were the last original parts on it - the GPU I had replaced few years prior. Now the case is the only original part on my "PC of Thesus"
EDIT: Oh yeah and I'm also running Linux now.
Wooting 80he keeb
Before that:
4080 on runout.
Year before that I did mobo+7800x3d, 64gb ddr5, 4tb nvme for games.
Oh and C4 OLED + dual 27" 1920*1200 portrait wings.
I think I'm not touching it for a long time the way things are going
Additional storage, and installing the RTX2060 Super from my old box it was replacing. That was in 2020 when this system was new.
Oh, I did upgrade my rear chassis exhaust fan to a fancier one because the cheapo one was too loud.
I dont really play new AAA games, so it mostly does fine. When I bought it, I had planned to wait for GPU prices to return to sanity ...
a magewell capture card, I still need to figure out how to use it
installed a 120gb ssd I salvaged from the dumpster
I finally bought a 7900xtx after my gtx 1080 died.
I saved up for 8+? years to try and buy a flagship as I really didn't want to buy a low tier gpu every year.
As the SI/tech person that's built PCs for my friends and referrals for several years I've seen firsthand just how awful the gpu landscape is especially if you choose to buy whatever's the cheapest tier card.
I typically recommend saving up to buy a good gpu first as it's the most expensive and excruciatingly painful part to buy last.
A 4K MSI gaming monitor. I figured it was cheaper to sign up for GeForce Now and use my old computer than to upgrade my whole system from a 970 (10ish years old?!?)
So I still have nice graphics. GeForce Now also has a lot of games but I wish there were more.