PC Building Thoughts 2020

Prior to rebuilding my PC with new parts, my custom PC was assembled in 2007.

For a system to run a Core 2 Quad for 10 years, I have to give kudos to the manufacturers and my local and now defunct parts store for assembling. At the time, all PC’s were all just behind opaque cases and kept aside. Now custom built PC’s look more like gawdy, over the top cars with accent lighting and radiators. I’m old school. It runs, it is efficient, it doesn’t give up. Though with the introduction of new technology I feel more confident that systems get more powerful but will still lack in many ways.

When I built my PC in 2007, liquid cooling was more of those people who want to experiment with mineral oil, distilled water and nitrogen. Now all-in-one liquid cooling is common and custom liquid loops are an amateur’s reality. But for me, I’m tried and true with the air coolers. A heat sink strapped onto of a CPU with a fan cooling the entire thing. Simple as possible, very few parts to worry and it works in a lot of conditions. AIO coolers to me is still fairly new despite maturing in the last 8 years or so. A closed loop with liquid, a pump and a radiator. The only problem I see is quality, how reliable is that pump? How much will the radiator can wick? Biggest question since there is liquid involved, will it leak? Leaks can total an entire system by shorting out. That’s as I understand, which means I could lose hundreds of dollars on a system. While air cooling is cheap and does the same job with less parts. Living in Canada, the heat here isn’t so bad and water cooling is only if you want to push every single amount of performance to to the point where you are willing to void a warranty or two to get it. Which isn’t that smart especially living on a budget. This computer is the only computer I have to play games and do most of my work on. My laptop is used for portable work things when I can but I don’t use it as an everyday device to get the job done because I can’t game on a laptop.

Storage solutions now are pretty amazing. They’re fast and massive. My first PC before going custom was 40 GB in hard drive storage. My first custom at the start was 500 GB. Now there are drives a tenth of the size that carry 500 GB and can boot up in 10-30 seconds rather than 30-60 seconds. They’re about the same price as I bought my 500 GB hard drive but these solid state drives are more resilient to magnetic disturbance. If I put a magnet to my hard drive, my hard drive will probably no longer exist. Though the implementation of SSD’s, we not have more use for onboard memory. Which is a neat concept to have a compact storage drive integrated to the motherboard. However I still prefer have an accessible part to swap. When the day manufacturers make an SSD bay that’s like a hard drive, it would be revolutionary to me. Now a hard drive bay that can be disassembled and replace each SSD and plug it back in as one hard drive. For now, they’re provided as an integrated circuit or a box traditionally like a hard drive. Not much in between unless you get into third party and custom boards. I have a drive slot on my motherboard but it’s underneath a CPU cooler and a graphics card and I’m not fond of poking around these parts to install a drive. Unless they put the integrated slot to a port of the board that’s unused for anything or have it as a drive bay!

Boards, especially motherboards, aren’t growing into the enthusiast role as they were before. They were standardize to meet with cards and cases. But what I’ve found is graphics cards are outgrowing the space they sit in, taking up 2 and 3 slots at time. Meaning if I want accessories on my back panel, I cannot use the PCI slot because the cooling unit on the GPU would block that slot. Though I have a mATX in a ATX case, I have 2 slots but only one is populated by my graphics. My case is old so I can’t just side-mount anything and the space between the connector and the cooler won’t fit risers or extenders. So one of my slots will forever be unpopulated so long as I use a graphics card. For the cost of the motherboard, it’s not worth it unless it’s purely all gaming on this tiny board. So either graphics cards needs to be slimmed down for their performance or motherboards need to predominately build cheaply to the ATX case format if you want more accessories. But in my configuration, I could get a smaller case but I don’t due to cost.

I’m stuck in my old ways but the old ways still work. PC building has gotten easier and less can fail. Anyone can build a PC nowadays with a little know-how and a YouTube video to watch about it. But sometimes hardware limitations still gripe me because of the lack of design or compatibility which feels like we’re going back than going forward.

Rounding up the summer

Been about two weeks and it’s been fairly busy. Firsty I’ve achieved something I’ve been wanting to do since I was a teen.

After over a decade, I finally dye my hair to a shade of purple. I’ve admire the hairstyles of a few people in passing, but this little modification was something I want to do to my mane. After talking to a few people I know and looking into it, I have to admit my wallet took a heavy hit and I wish I did this in July rather than waiting on August. A haircut and a 2 hour bleach and dye job in a salon chair later, it was like looking into a parallel universe where I ended up in a different path in life. From people who are close to me and myself, all positive reviews on the purple’y hair. Purple was the choice because that colour the represented the changes recently and over the past decade. Though my second choice was red and violet, something dark works well for my natural dark brown hair.

On the PC side of things, I’ve been kind of been trying to get back into recording gameplay and playthroughs. It’s kind of rough since most of the games I have on the back catalogue have been played over the summer. There are still some I’ll play while recording but at least some of these games will still be new to me. At the same time I’ve noticed my CPU cooler is overkill for my CPU so I might attempt an overclock at some point. I’ve been also considering a few minor upgrades once I get back to work. Yep, that would be the top news in my life – getting back to work. My part time jobs have all emailed me and I’ll be working shortly.

Upcoming things I want to do is upgrade my PC and get a photo box lighting set up in my room to sell some of my stuff on ebay. It’ll give me a platform to try product and stills photography. Priority I’m hoping is the stills work since it will free up space in my room.

So another trip to the salon before heading back to the buzzcut life I had because of the cleaner and efficient haircut. Might be a long time before I see purple again in my hair. Better enjoy it!

Gotta Go Fast

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.

Love Is Strange

On the week of Valentine’s Day, I started to play the new prequel to Life Is Strange. I was completely blown away at what they’ve done with the old characters while introducing new characters.

As someone who played the first game, there are a bunch of references. While I know what happens in the first game, I did my best to think about this as the “first” game in the series. I’m not completely done but it is so far really entertaining. There are a lot twists and lots of moments where it’s fun and sad. Life Is Strange played with my heart but Before The Storm really feels like a heartbreaking game.

Chloe and Max are probably the two characters in any video game yet that reflects how I perceive the concept of love. It’s a difficult subject to grasp and no one would every get it right, but we all understand it in out own way. What it means to us and what it matters to be with and without.

The game feels so much shorter than the first but I can’t wait to finish the 3rd episode and wait for the bonus episode.

Easy September

The past week has been filled with some ongoing things happening. Aside from the sleep and the much relaxation, I’ve been trying to get back into recording more Stardew Valley on my channel. I’ve recently upgraded my 8 year old PC. Nothing too in depth, installed a new GeForce 950 GTX to replace the 430 I had and a 2 TB hard drive. After a week running the new GPU through her paces, I’m starting to think my entire PC is under powered for the new GPU. Power is running great but I think the CPU might be having a tough time catching up with processing some games. I don’t know exactly is the problem, let me know in the comments what you think stuttering and “lag” might be. The new hard drive is working fine, I’ve managed to transfer my game files from Steam to the new drive without hiccups. All save files are functional thankfully so I don’t have to restart a new Stardew playthrough.

The original intent was to buy a new PC, but an old buddy of mine convinced me to upgrade the GPU and save the $600 of new PC parts. But the cheap guy I am, I decided to upgrade this PC; hopefully one last time. When I started up Insurgency to play, I had a few problems with servers that were located out west. Then I realized I was lagging from local servers too. Of course I had to pull off something stupid to expend the $600 I saved. Luckily at the time, a local airsoft store had a P90 in stock. I’ve been looking into buying a P90 since I started playing airsoft and now here it is with only an hour ride out and a few days of waiting for the shop to open. Of course the day came and I bought it under budget, still pricey for a airsoft replica. Nonetheless, it was less than 600 with a spare magazine. Along with the Cyclone impact BB grenade and spring shotgun, I have a few things to try out. Of course I’m giving my pistol another go even though I’m shearing the feeding lips every time I’m using it. If I get a chance at the end of the month to play, I’ll definitely give it a go.

Other than that, happy with my new purchases for fall. Maybe enjoy it as much as I can until I can find something to complain about or something to talk about.

First 12 hours Windows 10

Yesterday, I finally dipped my toe in the most recent develop with Windows. I decided to install Windows 10 to give it shot. Since my desktop is still my gaming and recording PC, I’m not willing to lose data over something I’m not certain of; so I chose my laptop that’s good for nothing but the Internet and doing blogs.

Like with Windows 7 when I upgraded from XP, the installation of fairly straightforward with little input from me. Then the one and continuing obstacle comes to me; upon being asked to create an account, the system allows me to connect online using my Microsoft account. Innocuous at first, I hesitantly put in my log in information. Definitely the first time looking at the innovations from Windows 8 and 8.1 and coming from Windows 7, Win 10 looks very impressive and fresh. The desktop design remains very familiar, much like a signature of the brand. Along with the translucent and bold contemporary design, it feels very new as if the developers want to be away from their predecessors while maintaining functionality. Opening up the Start menu, I encountered the same layout with a small added addition; tiles that was previous implemented in the Windows 8 series. Tiles that worked more like a glorified icon which can stream a service, such as the current weather conditions and who is sending you tweets on their Twitter app. Much like mobile phones, I was surprised Windows now has an app store where I can purchase applications. I’ll talk more later after this, but overall it looks very vacant in terms of actual apps. For me as a transitioning Windows user, I can see some similarities to other operating systems.

Of all the features I have a problem with, I’ll start with the user friendliness of the entire interface. Yes, the entire interface. The problem I have is I’m well use to using scrolling to move up and down lists. At the moment, I have to use arrow keys to move through these lists as well as options. I do like I don’t necessarily need to use my trackpad to navigate, as a internet laptop I’m use to scrolling and tapping with my pad. Next is the difficulty to find settings and options through its supposed straightforward interface. Every is so simplified to the point where there are some things I want to turn off but would turn off other things. Aside from a “settings” visible at the Start button, it took me some doing to produce the old Control Panel which I’m well versed in using. If anything, this Settings button is superfluous to what the Control Panel can do. Onto the apps and the app store, the system will automatically install some applications like Skype, a mail client and other proprietaries from Microsoft. After peaking through these apps, there are many others I can download which surpass the usefulness. The applications I would like on there is not even on there. At the time of this post, I use Tweetdeck while there is an application to display it’s streaming capabilities. Though nifty as this Twitter application is, it’s space in my hard drive to load the interface while Tweetdeck is done all online. Meaning I don’t have to load it and I can do much more than just view and write tweets. We’re not even in the store yet, but it’s more frustrating than you think.

The store does contain a lot of games and applications at my finger tips; but as I browse through the catalog, I started to look into the sizes of these “apps”. Most of the applications are about 14KB to about 10MB which in this day in age seems small for apps. The largest are the games but for the most I’ve seen, most hover around 20 KB. From what I remember, a shortcut on your desktop is somewhere around the same size as well which makes me wonder if this should even be called an “app store”. Along with these, some of the titles do give away what they’re intended for; mostly to promote a website or periodical. Which makes me wonder if these are just glorified bookmarks; in which case, it’s not innovated but more of a waste of space. Perhaps in time, they would moderate and regulate the store but it does seem more of a grab for an audience and competing with these false bits of hope.

Performance is another problem I have with it. I understand my laptop is aging and it could be edging off the minimum requirements. Compared to old reliable Windows 7, she’s a bit hefty and slow. Loading and shutting down is slow as well as initializing a program. It could be the fact it’s new so it’s creating temporary files for indexing. It could be the fact some of the apps are continually requesting updates. In which case, it’s a poor excuse to trade off performance for convenience. The app store is also nothing new to desktop PC as some Linux distributions do have their own stores where actual programs are placed to download. Which makes Windows 10’s store worse than Blackberry’s app store in my opinion even though not many user use their products by comparison.

As a technological society, we are pushing towards a more mobile world. It doesn’t really mean we are readily connected, just means we want to carry a silicon and plastic brick everywhere we go. Agreeable some places have cheaper internet, but the majority of the world is still catching up. In an operating system, it’s not about being cutting edge and well known; to me, I need something light and fast that supports my needs and not the needs of the company. Even at a $100 and over price tag, it should offer piece of mind as well as in-depth customization. Though simplicity can help a beginner; I feel a bit outed by the next generation of Windows users because they want everything at a click of an icon.

Open Letter – Microsoft

Dear Microsoft,

As a long time user of your operating system, I’ve found it very adequate for my needs. The interface is fairly archaic but classic and the program variety is immense, it’s safe to say you are very versatile when it comes to PC computing. The only problem I have with your product is how much I have to pay to access the games and programs.

Whenever anyone buys a copy Windows, I doubt they are looking for a new experience or how it looks. Rather they buy it because of the programs classically synonymous to the platform. Originally it was the main way to get to the internet through the archaic Internet Explorer. To play Flash games, you would’ve needed Adobe Flash Player. In the current state, you are in a stalemate with Apple’s operating system for user accessibility and aesthetics in an operating system (close second is every Linux distro). To be honest besides from changing how you look, there isn’t much left you can really push for an an operation. It’s a heavy price to pay to play and use the programs I like which is why I scour the seedy parts (pardon the pun) of the Internet for a copy. The last copy I bought I had to wait really long for a price drop, even then it was pricey for the update.

I don’t use any programs that you make any more aside from your operating system. VLC over Media Player, Paint.Net over Paint, Firefox over Explorer. Third party has got you covered, all you have to do is facilitate their use. You really have nothing going for yourself anymore. So I don’t really see the point in trying to reinvent something you have perfected You new interface on Win 8 was a dud when people demanded the old desktop layout for PC. The only thing they seems to be going great is the Microsoft hardware. You have the tablets and the XBone, they need you there; but the bulk will be the millions of laptops and desktops. They need you to be space saving but robust, Windows. For the price, we expected you to be pretty good but all you are is a disappointment.

You totally suck for a $200 operating system since all you do is waste space and catalog my personal files. My only beef is you are way too damn expensive that I rather pirate than buy you. You can stop compensating for the price with software that don’t work as well as third party and slim it down your need for secure yourself from pirates. If you made it yourself affordable, there wouldn’t be much of a need to steal it.

Just some food for thought, Microsoft. Stop gouging for an online operating system and go back to make a helpful experience. Otherwise, I might be looking for Ubuntu. I’m starting to hear good things about them.

Sincerely,

Eric

Blogger, Windows 7 user