December is always a month full of work. I guess it’s like that for everyone, regardless of one’s job. Everyone wants to get everything finished so they can enjoy Christmas!
So I’ve been sitting at my ten-year-old PC for a fortnight working like crazy and not writing anything here.
Speaking of my old desktop computer (which sits, by the way, under my desk on the floor – so it would be best called a floortop computer), it was not in its best shape already, and the phasing out of Windows 10 has accelerated its demise.
The various parts of my soon-to-be PC had been getting familiar with my small office for a couple of months, probably wondering if they would ever be fed by a fresh stream of electricity at some point. So I decided to find some time to assemble them into a full-grown floortop computer.
The last time I assembled a PC was nearly a decade ago, and the previous machine was pretty humble and modest. This new one, however, is kind of a beast, and I found myself wondering where the ever-growing number of connectors should go. On top of that, the motherboard I bought in the first place was DOA, and I spent a considerable amount of time investigating whether the MoBo, the RAM or the CPU was the culprit.
By the way, I guess everyone knows that a MoBo is not a person living in a mobile home, as opposed to a hobo who lives in the street. But, DOA? Dead On Arrival? Really? I had to Google it to find out, and now I can say I’m rightfully a nerd.
What about the build?
Ah, right! The build. Here’s my new floortop computer.
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7900X with 12 cores / 24 threads – whatever a thread is,
- MoBo: Asus TUF Gaming B850M-Plus WiFi – that has replaced a dead MSI MAG B650M Mortar WiFi,
- Cooler: Thermalright Frozen Edge 360 – whose pump head is now drowning in a pond of thermal paste Grizzly Duronaut (the very best I could buy according to both ChatGPT and Gemini),
- RAM: Crucial Pro DDR5 64 GB kit 6000 MHz CL40 EXPO – bought right before Micron decided to kill Crucial and right before prices skyrocketed,
- GPU: ZOTAC GeForce RTX 3090 with 24 GB of VRAM – bought second-hand,
- Drives: a nice Lexar NQ790 2 TB for Windows 11, and a gigantic WD Black SN850X NVMe SSD 8 TB for my data – because storage is never enough,
- PSU: Corsair RM750e ATX Modular Gold – but it’s not actually made of gold,
- Fans: 3 ARCTIC P12 Pro – all black! No disco lighting for me!
- Case: Asus Prime AP201 mATX – because I needed something not too huge to store all the stuff.
The previous PC was a small all-black box, and its name was BlackBox.
The new one is – again – black and I thought of calling it BlackBoxEvo at first. But in the end, I went for Eclipse.