Note: I am writing this a week and several days after my new build so consider the following post with some iodized salt.

I upgraded “huzzah” |(　ﾟ～ﾟ )|

So it finally happened, I upgraded my desktop.

Backstory: several weeks ago, my computer completely went on the fritz because it was not my power supply unit, not my CPU, video card, sound card, RAM, or any other core component that would otherwise make a computer completely stop functioning save for the very important thing, the motherboard.

After roughly eight years and a month, my computer comopletely got wasted and it died on a very inconvenient time.

Consider the fact that when I made my last post on this subject, it was just two months prior where I simply entertained the notion of having to upgrade my computer because I had the confidence that my sytem would last another three to four years. That obvioiusly did not happen.

Reasons for the motherboard having given out, I have a few and it’s a short list:

  1. Overclocked the CPU and changed voltages that made the motherboard worked hardware when I had used in the first several years the XMP profiles for RAM that operated faster than what the CPU in question was able to support, pushing the system harder than it should, operating at higher temperatures, and therefore wearing out the entire motherboard, and it’s components overall.

  2. After eight years of use and having gone through multiple changes over the years, it was simply ready to give up to the ghost.
  3. Dust accumulation after months of neglect had caused for system operation temperatures to rise on average to where even sensors couldn’t detect and therefore wore out the motherboard, components overall, to wearing and tearing faster.

Now I’m going to go with reason number two but the fact that I did have a lot of dust accumulation (my place is very dusty) and that I had been neglectful in maintaining a clean interior like the interior of middle aged man with his Porsche or Toyota Avalon sedan (you can literally eat ice cream off the leather interior), it may have caused for something, anything, to go into places that it shouldn’t have and mess around the system. Combine this with the fact that indeed I did push the system by utilizing the XMP Intel RAM profile to change the BIOS’ settings to then be able to have the RAM installed be running at advertised speeds other than what was appropriate for the CPU to begin with.

The point to all this is that there may have been something that I did or didn’t do that either, I suspect, accelerated the wear and tear of the system or that it simply it was time to go for the motherboard. But I am inclined to go with the former for the following two other reason:

  1. My Nvidia GTX 760 gave up the ghost
  2. My HT OMEGA eClaro sound card gave up the ghost.

both do not work with one card simply spinning fans and not outputting video and the other simply not allowing for the new motherboard to POST at all.

Now after updating the BIOS for the new motherboard (yes it turned out to be the ASUS x299 WS SAGE) I tried the sound card and I couldn’t get the system to get passed the PCI BUS resource assignment stage of the POST sequence to get the system to boot.

Now I have not tested either card in another computer as I don’t have a spare test unit to test them (that might change later in the near future as I plan to put together a small uATX form-factor based system)

So I’m going to say that this has come as something both unwelcome and welcomed because in one hand, the whole thing costs money, it added a cost of nearly past fifteen hundred dollars and left me with an accumulated debt of three thousand dollars on my credit card at a time when I need to be saving money instead of paying off credit card bills.

on the other hand, I’ve got a computer that is better than my previous system in almost every way considering of how I’m using the system and what games I’m playing on it at the given time.

On Vidya　ｷﾀ―――――ヽ（´ー`）ノ―――――!!!

I should make note that while the system has set me back a bit on my savings plans, it has provided me a means to now induldge on playing a few titles that I have held back on modifying extensively. There are some things that the current motherboard I can get away with in terms of storage devices that I’ll be making purchases of (m.2. and u.2 interfaces here I come!) that will allow me to focus on expanding, now traditional, SATA III storage devices by upgrading them entirely.

This means being able to play with high resolution texture, shader, mesh, and general modding tools and other quirks that I couldn’t in a wide variety of titles post 2011, as that year onward, a lot of games really started to change up on the kinds of technology and game engines they employed which made it exponentially difficult from 2015 onward to make a justification to continue playing and rather than playing them, just playing something else or doing something else entirely.

Although, considering personal circumstances, my change of gaming habits (which have been gradually less and less over time) will not be a trend I’ll be changing any time soon. But even so, I’m very happy to have a capable system that I’ll be fine-tuning on the ready to have to put to gaming use in my terms.

As for the shopping list of the replacement components and upgrade: here’s the list

  • ASUS x299 WS SAGE (Necessray - Replacement)
  • Intel Core i7 7800x (Necessary - Replacement)
  • Mushkin Enhanced Redline 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-pin DDR4 SDRAM 2666 (Necessary - Replacement, and yeah I know the 7800x only allows for using only RAM that speeds of 2400 but so what? A kit that clocked that 2400 didn’t work due to incompatability issues and I wanted to stick with Mushkin Enhanced, because sensless fanboysim.)
  • HT | Omega USB DAC/AMP (NECESSARY - because fuck on-board audio. No really, it’s great but I don’t feel comfortable having audio jobs being offloaded to the CPU. I just don’t.) I might get a Schitt setup later on but for now this baby does it all for what I need now plus DSD (　´∀｀)つ ミ
  • Great-Q PCI-e 2 x 19 pin female USB 3.0 expansion card (Necessary - because the motherboard only has one 19-pin USB 3.0 female port and I need two for the front i/o panel and a third of the motherboard’s for a card reader I’m getting soon in the near future.)
  • EVGA GTX 1060 “SuperCharged” (Necessary - The EVGA GTX 760 broke and wasn’t outputting video any longer)

This is a good start with potential upgrades with regards to storage (bigger HDDs, m.2 and u.2 SSDs) and later on something along the lines of yet, another graphics card upgrade (time to move up to the new RTX line by Nvidia because ooh-whee shiny graphics!).

I have no complaints except I’m a bit worried about money and how much I’ll end up with at the end of this year. But it is my hope that by the time I finish paying the credit card, things will be a lot smoother and I’ll be able to, bit-by-bit, get the hardware expansions I’d like to get apply and then move on to other types of hardware, like a Nintendo Switch, given that it’s likely to be made.

But honestly though, I think that, either I stay on top of keeping my system updated and in tip-top shape this time around before it kicks the bucket on time, say, by the fifth year of ownership or around there, or I make my next build an entirely mid-range system because likely I’ll be swimming on backlog games as I am now.

Alright here’s some Jessica Nigri, again.