Had to build a new computer

[John Rogers]

Over the past 4 or 5 months I have been getting the Windows 10 Blue Screen Of Death or BSOD and there seems to be about 8 different error messages and I was writing them down as looking for answers but when they started to repeat themselves I decided it was time as my PC was a little over 5 years old. Sooooo here is what I had and how I upgraded:
CPU: AMD X8 -> Intel I9 12900
RAM: 16GB -> 64GB
Motherboard: ASUS 64 bit -> MSI with 128 bit internals
Cooling: fan sitting on CPU -> Liquid pump with 2 huge fans with LEDs
Case: Large case with an extra cooling fan -> Ginormous case with 2 huge and 1 medium fan
Video Card: Reused as it is FAST
Power Supply: 500Watt -> 1000Watt with larger case and fan.

All my drives (8 total) were reused although the SSD boot drive decided to not boot for us (computer store guys) so they installed a temp OS of Windows 10. When I got home I did a reinstall of 10Pro and with this mother board and BIO I could upgrade to Windows 11 for free. So I got all the drives, applications and such working I went ahead and did the upgrade to Windows 11 last evening and so far no weirdness or crashes or ?????. The interface does look much better and 11 allows more configuring of what screen setup you want and what colors ETC, ETC.

The extra hard drives are for digitizing my movies (dat tape) from my race car and a 30 minute session in 1080P makes for large files so I have 2x 8TB drives in an external docking station and 2x 4TB drives in another one and they go to sleep when not being accessed. My 2 Pugs like the changing colors of the cooling fans and other parts which the old computer did not have
John

[masraum]

Sounds like a heck of a build! Good stuff!

[LWJ]

Wow!

[John Rogers]

It is SPEEDY!
John

[john70t]

With the bitcoin slowdown, presumably, prices may be coming down on components:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2022/08/29/amd-ryzen-7000-pricing-leaks-and-its-good-news-for-pc-gamers/

[stevej37]

It makes my 12 year old Dell laptop look like a toy.

[id10t]

Built my last one about 10 years ago, gave it up last year (couldn't get it to recognize new/more RAM even though it was same type, brand etc....). Since the local schools don't take our old machines any more I was supposed to get a nice 27" iMac for $100 from work... but then covid hit, so they loaned 'em out to students. In the mean time I found out that they wouldn't be selling off our developer machines they were replacing, but were instead paying $25 each to have them disposed of. So I got permission, signed off by just about every level of administration up to the VP over my area (ok, so that is only 3 levels above me but still) and took home my old work machine.

Dell Precision workstation, 8 core i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60GHz, 32gb of RAM and two Nvidia Quadro K620 cards (I only run two monitors, but some devs run 3 and we have the option for 4!). Apparently mis-configured or something 'cause instead of the single 1tb drive I expected there were two 512s that were RAID-0'd together. Even had a few months left on the next-day-on-site parts replacement warranty.

It runs Linux much better than it did Windows. Split the dumb RAID-0 in bios to make 'em stand alone drives, use one for OS and one for /home and both get rsynched via cron job to a RAID-1 array that acts as general storage/backup.

[Fast Freddy 944]

I never build anything, I fix what I got...FJB

[Bob Kontak]

How much coin did you drop?

I see your CPU is 1/3 the price of the I5 I have in my 14 year old build. But probably ten times faster.

[John Rogers]

The speed is way faster than the AMD X8 I had but what I like is the number of "cores" or the ability to start an application then go into the admin part and tell the CPU to only use 3 or 4 or however many you want to mandate spreading the load. Keeps just one application from going to 100% of the power. Very handy when I am making my digitized videos. Between the CPU and an updated mother board I was able to upgrade to Windows 11 which so far has proved nice for once.
John

[Bob Kontak]

Originally Posted by Bob Kontak

I see your CPU is 1/3 the price of the I5 I have in my 14 year old build.

I did not pick up you upgraded to the I9 12900. I though you were saying the AMD X8 is comparable to the I9.

That bad boy is in the $500+ range today and my first version I5 in 2008 was maybe $350-$400. The I7 was $500 back then and it was the boss at the time.

I'm officially jealous.

[John Rogers]

Thank you, I think that while prices seem to have not gone down as they did 10 or 12 years ago, the power and speed and ability to multitask has jumped by huge amounts. I thought my AMDX8 was fast as I had upgraded before that one and each time the speed jumps and ability to read/write files has also jumped enough to actually be able to feel it when using the new machine.

Sort of like when I went from a big four in my vintage racing 914 to that 2.8L six with a 9K rev limit the feel coming out of turn 9 at Willow Springs was amazingly exciting!
John

[jyl]

OP, your computer sounds awesome!

I haven’t actually *built* a PC in many decades. The last one was a dual processor machine with a Tyan motherboard and four or six SCSI hard drives. It was fast and the last PC I had for a long time, as I then got sucked into Macs which were so freaking easy - forget building your own PC and tearing your hair out with IRQs and drivers, just let Apple do everything! That’s all I remember about it.

Nowadays I occasionally get to “build” a PC by checking boxes on an order page . . .

Thinking about getting a new work machine next year, when prices should be lowish. I refused to buy one last year or this year, prices too high. Looking at a dual CPU workstation, 64 GB RAM, two video cards.