Last week, I wrote about how I upgraded my PC. After a week, I can safely say I’m highly satisfied with the choices I made on this. However there would be a few changes I wish I did before going in.
With a new AMD Ryzen 5 3600 under the new and new electronics to support it, I’m surprised at the speed it’s running. Despite of a bit of a bottleneck with having 2 hard drives spinning up from time to time, the 16 GB of RAM loads things fast. Not lightning fast, at least I won’t be hanging long on loading screens in video games. Surprising thing about it is I usually suffer sweating it out with my PC during the summer. This thing I think is running a bit cooler than usually despite recent temperatures being near or above 40 degrees celsius which would put my room in the mid-40’s easily. It sits well under 40 while idle and under 45 under load, though “load” would be running games that are indie or using less intense graphics despite being set to high in the games themselves.
Though most of the other parts after from the old build, it was more like a rebuild of a system than receiving all new parts. My 750w supply is still underutilized since the AMD chip is a bit more power efficient from what I’ve read compared to the new Intel CPU’s if I chose to get an i5 or i7. So I have a lot more power I can put into other things like drives and accessories.
Few things I’m living without is solid state drives at the moment. Originally I wanted solid state off the bat so boot times would be lower. I’m still about 5-10 seconds out from a cold boot but I would like to pull it down to under 10. Aside from that, I’ve read things that small solid state drives can be used to cache data so loading programs can be a bit faster as well. If I had the money, it would be the first upgrade. To speed things up and futureproof, another 16 GB of RAM would be handy. I would like to try and push it to the limit to of the motherboard, which says 64 GB on the box though the Ryzen 5 says it’s good up to 128. Lastly though the GTX 950 graphics card from the old system, I would like to push it to the 10 series. Only thing holding me back is GTX boards are still fairly overpriced because of the cryptomining surge during the mid-decade.
But for the cost of a full budget PC, having a upgrade with mostly recycled parts is definitely a life saver for someone with a environmentally and financially conscious. If I could recommend it, I would say buy a used case starting from under 40 for a case that would’ve been about $100. Preferably a case with ATX motherboard standard since the full size is compatible with micro-ATX/mATX motherboards which have the same screw configuration as the full side variant. Shopping for a cheap power supply is an option. Now 500 and 550 watt supplies are priced, but having a bit of extra power would be helpful if you plan on expanding by adding things to stick into the motherboard like an additional graphics card or powering a large water cooling setup.
With this PC, I’ve been able to play Destiny 2 without much graphical lag (network lag is another story). Kerbal Space Program is running like a dream, no lag even when zooming in watching physics go awry. Photo and video editing is almost snappy, taking about 20 minutes and under for YouTube quality videos that I’m reinvigorated to start recording again. 100 photos is nothing with so much power under the hood though exporting is still about 5-10 minutes which beast sitting here for about half an hour.
No doubt this thing is going to last me about 5 years, 10 if everything survives to the next decade.
nawkcire 