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Skybuck Flying's Super PC design for 2023, Draft 1.
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Skybuck Flying
Feb 12, 2023, 6:55:51 PM2/12/23
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Hey People,
Designing a new (super) personal computer in 2023 is hard !
Lot's of junk out there that need to be side stepped.
It costs a lot time and energy to review/research and dive into the latest and greatest technologies for personal computers/desktop computers.
I have given it my best shot... the last thing I need to do is find a good solid state disk. I have no experience with SSD or very little. Lately there has been some rumor about samsung SSD's losing their health fast ?! What is that all about ? So I could use some suggestions for good SSD's which will last a long time, speed is less important.
If you want to comment on any of the other components be my guest. However make sure to google them and mention if they have any issues or driver issues etc or design issues.
For example many keyboards out there have very strange keyboard layouts. They keyboard which I selected is one of the few which actually has a normal keyboard layout where the { is above the [ this is very important for programming, in case I have any doubt if the shift key is to be used or not.
I don't like the keyboard where the { and [ is next to each other.
Furthermore all motherboards with an intel ethernet controller are to be avoided, because the intel ethernet controller chip does not work well in 2.5 gigabite mode, it can work in 1 gigabit mode but will be slow like 500 megabit.
Furthermore care must be taken when selecting a DDR5 kit for AMD processors, to fast and it might not even boot/work.
The PC case that selected, I am a bit worried about it, it can only mount 2 harddisk and 2 solid state disks on the chassis, and m2 slots in the motherboard. This PC case worries me a little bit, it looks very cool/nice, but maybe I should pick one with more harddisk support. Most motherboards support 4 sata connections, some might support 6. So basically even if a bigger case was available, the motherboard would not have enough sata connections, so it might be pointless, unless there is some SATA extended board available or other options ? Maybe connect harddisk to USB ? but that might take away USB ports for other purposes.
The case has nice USB ports on the front which will be usefull for connecting external drives to it, nice and fast ports.
I am still waiting for the CPU to come out. Having 3D/V-Cache on one of the core compute complexes sounds like a dream come true, or will it be a stuttering nightmare in gaming ?! Time will tell, waiting for reviews to come out on it ! ;) =D
The memory kit I selected seems very cool with the light, it's not the fastest, might have to be replaced with G-Skill, the selected DDR5 kit might also be too high for the air cpu cooler, I am not sure yet.
I am also not sure yet if I want to go with EK water cooling for the CPU and GPU, this PC case is suited for it though with an EK water block.
The ASUS monitor is very dangerous, and very big, if it's firmware is upgraded it might be bricked/unusuable, but the panel seems to be one the best 4k panels out there similiar to LG C2 panel. However the asus has active cooling more suited for gaming to prevent OLED burn in.
The ASRock steel legend motherboard is the only ATX motherboard with a PCI Express 5.0 slot which can truely do PCI Express 5.0 x16 the rest of the motherboards mostly have PCI Express 4.0 x16 capability which can be reduced to x8 if in bifornication... so that is only 1/4 of the speed of this port of the steel legend as long as no other pci express port is used.
There are no graphics cards on the market yet which have pci express 5.0 x16, but in the future they might and therefore this motherboard should be "future proof" if it works ! ;)
The bios is nice and simple and has many options, including being able to disable/enable TPM and also SMT and other things which might be missing in other bioses ! ;)
The harddisks I am not sure yet, seems similiar model, one is for data center, the other is for server/enterprise like quality. One is cheaper the other more expensive... The expensive one is bigger and does give true 20 terrabytes of space while the other only gives 18 terrabyte of space.
It might be smarter to only buy one harddisk and then wait till bigger become available, however with the looming war between china and taiwan this might be very risky and buying it now might be smarter/better in case war breaks out... one harddisk could be replaced in future with bigger one.
The more expensive harddisks seem to be more vibrating resistent, not sure how much thruth is in there, these newer harddisk use a new technology with energy assisted heating to write to harddisks, not sure how reliability that is, seems to be reliable and the future, but not sure/no experience with it...
The power supply is tiny, but the first ATX 3.0 power standard available on the market, apperently designed by a well respected power supply designer in taiwan I believe in collobration with MSI/MPG(?). Perhaps this tinier model might actually push out the heat better, because less room for heat to en-masse in corners/back pockets of bigger power supplies.
The ATX 3.0 power standard is necessary for 100% 24 hour gaming/personal computing otherwise the high transient/power spikes of RTX 3000 and 4000 series might shut down the computer because they trip wire breaker/power breakers of older power supplies.
Shame I cannot safely pick my favorite brand Seasonic :(
So selecting a good power supply is a gotcha ! with these new graphics cards ! ;) Basically it was like that in 2006 as well, had to make sure power supplies had good power on the rails, older power supplies couldn't do it and I can confirm that myself ! ;)
I already mentioned the keyboard, it's amazing how many few good keyboards there are out there with the proper keyboard layout, just good old cherry/qwerty keyboard. I do want a keyboard with lights on it. I type a lot so I would prefer a keyboard which is somewhat more quiet but also easy to type on, I have some doubt about this keyboard because they mention it types a bit "mushy"... not sure what that is supposed to me, this keyboard is very configurable though, the reaction time of the keys can be adjusted, which sounds kinda cool and interesting to try out, it also has LED display... not sure what it's for, probably to configure the speed of the keys.
"Sounds" nice to go along with the configureable dominator RAM set, where lights can be configured... (if you into configuring things ! ;) :))
The mouse is nice and simple, does come with a nice light on it, could be handy in the dark to have lights on keyboards and mouses...
I wonder if the lights can be tuned down to not shine as bright, this might be necessary or I might turn them off.
I might prefer a mouse button without the side buttons, then again sometimes I might miss them, but side buttons can be annoying, I hope they can be turned off in windows 11 if it really bothers me, I don't want anything fancy pancy mouse, I don't want any holes in em where dust and stuff can get stucky, the mouse should be able to open and clean after maybe 7 years or so, you might not believe how much dust I found in my old G3 which was an amazing mouse, though I just accidently clicked the side buttons while grabbing it, which is a risk with these mice. I am lucky/glad it did not screw up this text, that would have pissed me off ! ;) I hate re-typing text because of this, also in webgame agar.io it can sometimes accidently lead to resetting the game to menu and such which is annoying. Fortunately most forum software out there guards against text loss, but perhaps not all, pretty sure this was done because of these side buttons... hmmm... a side effect ! ;)
The CPU cooler is a bit ugly and might not fit the nice RGB of the rest, it might also obstruct the dominator leds. It might also collide with the RAM, not sure yet if there is sufficient clearance.
If this CPU cooler is truely capable of cooling this CPU remains to be seen, it at least has two radiators/fans so that should be enough, the manufacturer uses it's own rating system and not watts or TDP, so it's hard to tell what it's true cooling capabilities are. So far this is their best/high end model...
I have not yet made a selection for the graphics card, except knowing that it will be an RTX 4080, the RTX 4090 seems too hot and too risky and performance overkill, another reason is too expensive... 2000 dollar for a graphics card is pushing it a bit... the RTX 4080 is already expensive enough.
I'll probably select some ASUS model, but I am open to suggestions.
It might also be an EK model or one suited for EK water block in case I go that route.
Concerning the EK water cooling, it needs maintance and it's website mentions that fluids will look out of the tubes and will evaporate slowly over time. I wonder what kind of health implications this will have.
It also needs anti-biological chemicals inside of the water to prevent bacteria developing into it... and it also needs some anti corossion, I have no experience with these chemicals and it does concern me somewhat for health reasons. It mights nothing about how often the water/fluids would need replacing? Anybody know ? I have heard even some vague story about once in 6 months ? That seems way too soon for my taste ?!?
Having cpu and gpu air coolers on top of this expensive hardware does concern me somewhat, dust and dust bunnies can build up around it... not sure if that is safe with these hot systems of today...
The graphics card could be mounted vertically with the riser cable, this could have a big adventage to keep the first m2. slot cooler.
If both the graphics card and m2 slot are used in default positions they can affect each other heat-wise, this could even damage the m2 device or vica versa or reduce performance. I am not sure if this issue would persist if water cooling block used on GPU, but perhaps...
Other things I have read/heard is that the fans of the GPU could be set higher to give more cooling across the motherboard, but for now I will take this with a grain of salt, because the thing would be up-side down anyway in it's default position, then again, perhaps they main to cool it's own slot somewhat.
The idea that a 450 to 600 watt graphics cards is up-side-down in it's default position concerns me somewhat. It's a clear sign that the PC standard needs to be updated and these graphics card turned so that they heat can flow up instead of press against itself ? Or does this not make a difference ?! Hmmmmmmm...
Another slight bit of concern is the position of the harddisks in this case. I consider the harddisks the most important component of the entire build and should get premium air cooling, unfortunately this case does not really do that and doesn't recgonize the importance of cooling harddisk nice and cool, but there should be some airflow coming in from the front and going down into it ?! Then again... the harddisks seems tightly fitted to each other, perhaps there might not be enough airflow and the chips on the harddisks might overheat and might lead to data loss. This might be a serious reason/consideration to look for another case.
The lack of a 1 terrabyte RAM system frustrates me but for now 1 terrabyte for consumer hardware is out of reach. The 64 GB ram limitation for top speed on AMD ryzen is even more frustrating... and 64 GB isn't really enough for what I would like to do with such a new system which is open up many web browser tabs. I'd like to keep many open. I have seen situations where only having 6 or 10 tabs open in Firefox can already consume 5 gigabytes of ram. So with this new system in this 64 GB configuration it would only allow 50 to 60 webppages which is still a very low ammount of webpages... One time I was trying C# development and had 100 to 300 webppages open or something, it felt like it anyway.... but even during "normal" development or just normal activities the web pages numbers are high during my daily activity, granted sometimes I forget to close them or should close them, but I also do like having them open in case I need to go back to them.
There is the possibility of upgrading to 128 GB and at least purchasing maximum ammount of RAM so that upgrade path is instant and can be used as needed without buying with time, or war scenerios. Assuming 500 megabyte per webpage, 256 webpages can be opened, which should be more than sufficient for now assuming webpages don't grow above 500 megabytes, but they probably will on 4K monitors, bigger advertisements videos, more graphics etc, still, 128 webpages of 1 gigabyte should still make me somewhat happy/sufficient.
Though ofcourse I may also like to load a lot of music, have development environments open, maybe even a game, graphics or video editor and such so that can take away a lot of memory as well, I have not yet discussed the possibility of a virtual machine for testing purposes, under those conditions, memory consumption sky rockets pretty fast... then there is discord, maybe other streaming things like tik tok or instagram as it scrolls down it starts to consume more and more memory which is a bit risky.
I intend to keep size of pagefile.sys to an absolute minimum for maximum operational speed of the computer. Perhaps I might develop a little taskbar notification/icon tool which alerts me if real RAM usage is about to hit it's peak so I can slow down or start closing things. I would prefer this over the CPU icon which taskbar shows now, or maybe even both.
I would love it if windows 11 builds this in by default, so more icons on the taskbar to be able to see what my computer is doing.
An extra icon for GPU processing usage or GPU memory usage would also be appreciated.
Perhaps even an icon for DISK usage, that be pretty awesome as well.
The icon can either fill up or even change color depending on how close it is to maxizing out, perhaps changing color might be a better way to do it, might be more visible on a 4k monitor... then again, if multiple icons chosen then an individual color per component might also be nice and then the filling technique might be "cuter". Or they could all change color and just remember which icon box represent what hardware but this might be a little bit tricky to do, another idea could be to change the shape of the icon to match a certain hardware look, or maybe in the form of a letter:
C=CPU processing usage, G=GPU processing usage, M=CPU RAM usage, S=GPU RAM usage(secondary) and D=Disk bandwidth usage.
Finally E=ethernet speed usage, though usage is usually super low, so not worth the icon space, but if you want to be complete, it should be configureable, which icons I do want on there and which I don't, in the right bottom tray... that be beautifull/perfect. I hope it helps ! ;) =D
Then again I am not even sure if the tray is still there in windows 11 I believe so, however the start button has moved to the center... hmmm. Another nice trick of windows 11 would be to "BAN" certain icons from the tray to make space/clean up. For example VCL media player puts itself into the tray, I am kinda used to it, but it doesn't really belonw there, cause it's also on the taskbar, kinda strange/weird. Plus there are some other annoying icons in windows 7 which are basically useless. I will leave it at that for now.
I promised myself I would buy a new subwoofer if I bought a new PC, I am a little bit unsure if this would truely enhance my sound. The speakers are already fantastic, but I do miss something in Battlefield 2, not that I play it anymore, ofcourse not it's been a long time, but last time I played it I noticed the sniper shots sound completely different. Probably because of lack of subwoofer, but when I had subwoofer fixed and played some music it did not impress me that much, perhaps it was not properly fixed, I did not re-test battlefield 2, Battlefield 2 might have sounded better on windows xp because of special sound pack that might only actually work on windows xp, because of creative labs drivers which only truely work well on windows xp, I am not sure if this is true/the case, but it might be. I have said goodbye to windows xp lonnnnggg lonnnggg ago, but I do wonder if this might explain it... for now I assume a subwoofer might bring back those delicious sniper shots, however I do not plan on playing a lot of first person shooters because it bores me became to good at it and the pattern is always the same I get good and few months later cheaters come with their hacks and could ruin the game, world of warships is better in this regards, however maybe I won't play it that much but I do look forward to it, I do want to play some first person shooters solo... so then it might be worth it for the experience. In the past I used to set the subwoofer/equalier always very low, so that kinda feels weird/akward but I do know it does matter for sound quality to have a subwoofer.
As far as I can tell my gigaworks S750 speakers with titanium tweeters still sound very good and I totally love them as well as the Denon 1909 receiver, so these components will be re-used for the Super Personal Computer.
I do notice the speakers might have developed their own sound, like a person with a soar throat or something, like it has it's own structure, but that might be an adventage because of less wave cancellation, maybe it was even done by design, as far as I can tell they still sound quite nice, I am curious if meanwhile there are better speakers on the market, but somehow I doubt it somewhat and it would mostly be a waste of money, but I am always curious if there is anything better but it must be backed up with frequency analysis reviews etc... and I would need some kind of tool to measure my speakers to be sure if they still good or not, for now I think they are/fantastic so probably don't need replacing, the receiver is HDMI 1.3A capable so should be sufficient for 7.1 surround sound and should work with HDMI 2.1 cables/connectors/motherboard/graphics cards I hope, for passing the audio through to the receiver so it can pass it onto the speakers and subwoofer...
The cables for external USB devices I have not yet really looked into, except what kind of type... but not brands etc, I could probably purchase these at local media markt shop... but might be more fun to buy them anyway... if anybody has any recommendations for specific brands, types, models, I am all ears ! ;)
I am mostly interested in USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 cables cause that sounds sweet... 20 gigabit/sec, so that would be 2 gigabyte/sec this would be suited for external solid state disks, which I will probably not need for a while because of all the m2 slots and such... then again in future it could be interesting but that might be 10 or 15 or 20 years from now, I am still alive and buy another PC lol, or maybe if somebody comes to my place with his/er laptop or something but this will probably not happen ! LOL, but I could also go to somebody elses place and then maybe having some a device might be interesting.
The normal/standard USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A Cable which it has two ports on the case I believe is the most interesting, this would allow 250 megabytes/sec transfers which is basically the top speed of western digital internal harddisks, I am not yet sure if externals harddisks can reach these speeds as well. I do see one little problem: future harddisks might be able to achieve 300, 400 or 500 megabytes/sec and then this older usb standard might not be sufficient anymore to drive those external harddisk at their top speed which would be somewhat of a limitation. However 250 megabyte/sec is already very nice, so far I have been using a 20 megabyte/sec usb port 2.0 and it is amazing what I can do with it ! ;) though it does not getting used to somewhat but I do look forward to much higher speeds, like 10x would be sweet ! ;) Now I can imagine in the future same issue, further workloads might require a lot more harddisk bandwidth and then this old connector might frustrate a little bit, but you won't hear my complaining much, harddisk capacity over speed any time of day for me ! ;) =D
At the bottom I did a little estimation of what this PC would cost... "cheap version" with cheaper harddisks and "expensive version" with the expensive harddisks and slightly more capacity.
The total price surprises me somewhat. I would have expected it to be over 8000 or 9000 or 10000 euros, but it is similiar in price to 2006/2007 which is
17 years ago !
One explanation for this same price level could be that China has en-massed materials from Africa on the cheap and China is not as inflation-heavy as the West/EU/USA.
Or perhaps electronic manufacturing costs have come down, or are partially robotic and partially by hand. Probably more robotic and thus perhaps costs of robotic labor does not rise as much.
Anyway I would love to hear your theories why a "Super/Dream PC" from 2023 as about the same cost as one from 2006/2007 ? How can that be ?! :)
Are my explanations somewhat on the mark or way off ? ;) :)
Some things are still missing, I just added an important one that is still missing to the list:
18. A card reader for SD cards which go into my Canon Digital Camera Powershot SX HS 50, this would be very nice to have. I assume I can buy some external one which I can attach via usb cable, this would take one usb external slot though and would deprive me of connecting a harddisk instead, though the motherboard also has some usb ports on the back for further connections.
19. a TPM module, I don't see any need for this as the motherboard can simulate TPM in software and there seems to be no performance benefit for TPM hardware and could be a nasty point of failure. I trust the CPU to work better than some flimsy TPM module.
!!!
One very big word of caution:
!!!
After installing Windows 11, immediately DECRYPT the drive and turn ENCRYPTION of drive off, this is a very dangerous default feature of Windows 11 where it auto-encrypts the drive. If a user were to accidently reset it's TPM keys the drive would become inaccessible, such an event can occur because the user is in panic, doesn't know what he/she is doing, doesn't realize the important of TPM keys, might not know what these are, might decide to experiment with BIOS/TPM KEY RESET options and then the damage is done. Unbelievably dumb and risky feature of Windows 11, especially for Desktop personal computers. For perhaps laptops I can understand some benefit... however if PCs acquired by law enforcements or criminals they might have a way to acquire the password as well or circumvent this TPM somehow and then all this feature does is add additional data loss risk issues. Not losing data in the first place, not losing access to data in the first place, is more important than potential data theft.
One exception might be bitcoin keys, these could be stored on truecrypt volumes/special files representing a virtual disk, it does not require the entire drive to be encrypted.
Another exception might be passwords to online accounts.
And very maybe e-mail clients.
However the risk assesment should be left to the user, not done by default by Microsoft this is way too dangerous in case of TPM key lost.
So there are now multiple points of failure:
1. Not only harddisk mechanical failure/scratching but also:
2. TPM Keys lost.
3. Software faults/bugs screwing the encryption. Recently windows 11 had such an occurence where the whole TPM/encryption thing became a mess.
Introducing multiple points of failure/risks in Windows 11 is not better, but much worse. Don't become victim of it. TAKE CONTROL and decrypt your windows 11 drives ! Do the smart thing and don't be stupid.
It might even lead to more performance and less energy usage. Especially in Europe/The Netherlands the energy usage/costs is still uncertain in 2024... Vote for politicians who want to make energy CHEAPER instead of more expensive... Wind, Solar, it should have become cheaper but here we are, because of climate change lunatics, it's more expensive than ever before, x5 maybe up to x10 in 2024, maybe even worse in 2025, if they are not voted off... the purchase of arm-based system/laptop perhaps a surface from Microsoft might become interesting in those years, but I do prefer laptops with big/wide screens, not tiny little screens, this toshiba is a joy to work on in that regards compared to those little ones I saw in the store, I would never purchase those unless I was truely mobile and hated the weight of a bigger one ! ;) =D
The steel legend motherboard's look and feel might be somewhat out of place with it's whitetish and blackish looks but then again, maybe it will fit... it does look a hell lot more interesting than the nxzt motherboards which looked very boring in comparison... the steel legend has a more militaristic/modern day armor look, which has some coolness to it ! ;) =D
It only has 4 sata ports like most, so getting a different case might not make much sense, unless I disconnect the solid state disks to then re-use their sata connections to be able to use older harddisk to transfer data, but this may be mostly a one time thing, seems a bit silly to buy a bigger case for a one time transfer, then again it would be convenient and more safe in way... not having to remove one of the two harddisks that might already be present...
So let's some up my doubts and I will give some percentage of the doubt I have:
(I guess one could call this Consumer confidence LEVEL hehe):
Number, Component Name, Doubt percentage:
1. PC Case: 30% (can only mount two harddisks, little breathing space?, radiator locations risky, one at the top: could fall down and one at the front: could expell heat into the system and make it worse)
2. CPU: 33% (will 3D/V-Cache lead to stuttering ?, DDR5 speeds limited to 6000 MHz is already somewhat of a limitation for faster memory kits, however intel processors run how default out of the box, both processors Intel and AMD seem equal efficient in power usage and performance when given some ammount of watts/power. I just don't like intel as much because it did not innovate enough and their prices are artificially high. I kinda want to support the underdog to keep the innovation and competition alive ! =D)
3. Memory: 5% (will it collide with CPU cooler ? Corsair has long-time warranty and has honored warranty request in the past, seems very good brand ! ;) :) =D)
4. GPU: 80% (fear of overheating the motherboard/burn through, etc, but I do want butter smooth gaming of latest and greatest games at 4k preferably ! ;) in the passed NVIDIA's and XFX heatsink design failed miserably and become full with dust and dust matts/wands/bunnies and may have led to overheat/burn of motherboard, ultimately ended up removing both and went back to GT 510, later GT 1030, water cooling the GPU will probably prevent these issues, but then will have to clean radiators/fans, how easy will it be to clean these ? could be difficult to clean the one on the top of the case, it might even fall down and damage equipment ?! the front radiator of the case is also not so much fun... could expell heat into the system, I am starting to see why some people are recommending to use an external radiator ! HA ! Maybe I should take them a little bit more seriously ?! ;) though where do I place it... hmmm could become a placement issue)
Perhaps GPU can be replaced with a lot heat version in future, but I rather not damage my equipment before then... hmmmm... buy backup motherboard ? Though my backup motherboard kinda failed it was smelly/blown capacitators it was second hand though out of necessity first hand no longer for sale, it strangely detoriorated inside the closest the same why the actively used one, quite strange but I guess that is how these chemicals behave...
5. Monitor: 90% (I am not sure if I will be happy with it, seems like I will, the text should be clear many monitors have wrong/strange R,G,B like: R B G leading to bad fonts in windows 11 or have other strange issues. However this particular monitor might have some blueishness, however I have done a lot of research into this OLED monitor it seems fantastic, the bricking of the monitor through firmwire scares the shit out of me, I may also run the risk of a re-furbished one, that would be bad, don't want somebody elses mess ups, time will tell. The firmware update might be required to get the HDR working correctly, some say the monitor might look somewhat washed out but this might be dependent on color settings and/or hdr mode on/off. For the looks of it it seems a fantastic monitor and that is why I am willing to risk it, the frequency is somewhat low compared to state of the art: 120 hertz should work fine on this monitor, overdriving it to 138 is risky and might damage the monitor. I am used to gaming at 40 fps, so 120 hz seems overkill to me and I will probably play most games at 50 or 60 fps in future anyway, so this hertz race seems a bit overkill ! ;) Though the RTX 4080 can do some games at 80 or 100 hertz, not sure what World of Warships can do on an RTX 4080 ! ;) Most game developers will probably take adventage of it and up graphics quality if possible, so don't expect 120 hertz gaming in future ! ;) Though some e-sports game developers might decide differently ! ;)
I look forward to 10 bit true HDR colors for some cool movie watching I hope this monitor can do it well ! ;)
6. Motherboard: 1%, ASRock good brand for motherboards, I had one before though it did quick because of miss placement of usb card reader connection 1 pin beside it connecting the ground to +5 volt. ASRock motherboards do not come with proper headers around the USB ports so be carefull connecting those USB plugs ! ;) ASRock does have special overheat protection circuitry/patents, not sure if it's included on this motherboard. The bios software is a bit old/classic/simple/boring but that is kinda a good thing, kinda used to this, don't need to learn a new bios layout. The many options does excite me somewhat and there are some new features as well ! ;)
Plenty to play with it, I do not intend to play much with the bios, just want to run my system and software etc ! ;)
7. Harddisks: 5% The only real doubt I have is: Do I safe money and go with the cheaper one, or do I go all out and get the ridicolous expensive one ? I am kinda hoping it comes down in price somewhat by the time I have to make the purchase decision. I think the cheaper one uses a different recording technology but I am not entirely sure, seemed to be same models, but not sure anymore... I hope that both technologies are well tested and won't lead to many troubles down the road ?!? Any data loss down the road would be horrible... hmmm... but such is life with new technology... though I have never had a harddisk fail on me by itself, never had true data loss, unless I intended it as a test, kicking the old pentium 166 to see how long it would take to fail, the older drive failed pretty quickly after some hard kicks ! ;) =D
8. Power supply: 10% The power supply is kinda tiny but it's one of the few ATX 3.0 power supplies out there... the brand is a bit shady, but so far they seem to be the new kid on the block, kicking some ass, their motherboards/bios incredibly buggy, though there case and power supply seem nice... bit of a risk with this brand, unknown/new brand for this type of device, though the company behind it is well known and good brand, but still... maybe they screwed them... maybe their glue will go bad... time will tell hehe... probably not such a thing could kill people... but who knows... the world is full of crazy !
9. Solid State Disk: 100% MISSING, samsung has had some bad publicity lately for their SSDs otherwise I might have picked them. Also SSD bad reputation for now, I see plenty of people mentioning failed SSDs, overheat issues, wear and tear issues and now this samsung issue... hmmmm...
I am interested in M2 slot versions (for very fast PCI Express 5.0 versions) and also SATA versions (for mounting inside case) and also USB versions (for external versions)
10. Keyboard: 7% Unknown brand to me, don't know how it will type... quality seems good according to reviews etc.
11. Mouse: 1% Logitech good brand for mouse, very little doubts that this mouse should perform well. High DPI good for precision during gaming.
12. CPU cooler: 5% Not sure about it's size and look, seems one of the best and quietest cpu air coolers out there, well known brand, good reviews of this thing, at least it's fully black, big improvement from the brown versions.
13. Subwoofer: Review some long ago, perhaps there are better now on the market... hmmm... haven't really looked into it yet...
PC COST ESTIMATION 29 JANUNARY 2023:
(price of keyboard was since 12 february 2023):
1. PC CASE: MSI MEG Prospect 700R € 449,00
2. CPU: AMD 7950X (I kinda want the 3D cache version, not out yet !!!) € 625,00
3. MEMORY: (2x32 GB) Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB CMT64GX5M2B6000Z40 € 439,71
4. GPU: RTX 4080 with 16 GB RAM € 1500,00
5. MONITOR: ASUS OLED PG42UQ € 1823,95
6. LOW END MOTHERBOARD: ASRock B650E Steel Legend WiFi € 294,90
OR
6. HIGH END MOTHERBOARD: Gigabyte AORUS X670E XTREME € 787,00
7. PRETTY DAMN GOOD HARDDISK 1: 20 TB WD Ultrastar DC HC560 € 389,99
7. PRETTY DAMN GOOD HARDDISK 2: 20 TB WD Ultrastar DC HC560 € 389,99
OR
7. STATE OF THE ART HARDDISK 1: 22 TB WD Gold, 22 TB hard disk (WD221KRYZ ) € 639,90
7. STATE OF THE ART HARDDISK 2: 22 TB WD Gold, 22 TB hard disk (WD221KRYZ ) € 639,90
8. POWER SUPPLY: MEG Ai1300P PCIE5 € 390,00
or
8. POWER SUPPLY: Seasonic Vertex PX-1200 € ???,?? (not released yet, price unknown, not reviewed yet)
10. KEYBOARD: SteelSeries Apex Pro Mechanical Gaming Keyboard € 197,50
11. Mouse: Logitech G203 LIGHTSYNC gaming muis € 25,00
12. CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black € 126,00
Still missing:
9. SOLID STATE DISKS/STICKS Risky bussiness as hell, cause of overheating/damage risks...
13. SUBWOOFER Bonus not really necessary but I kinda promised myself to get one, though I might have to reconsider just taking up space.
14. USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 cable Absolute must have for external devices.
15. USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A Cable Also very nice to have for external devices.
16. PCIe Riser Cable Seems like good idea to mount graphics card vertically, most be strong, latency risks though.
17. MAYBE EK WATER COOLING BLOCKS AND STUFF/RADIATORS... rather not, risky, for PC and user health ?! and cumbersome...
18. Card reader for SD flash cards for Canon Digital Camera Powershot SX HS 50
CHEAP VERSION:
1. € 449
2. € 625
3. € 440
4. € 1500
5. € 1824
6. € 295
7. € 390
7. € 390
8. € 390
10. € 198
11. € 25
12. € 126
+-------------
€ 6.652
EXPENSIVE VERSION:
1. € 449,00
2. € 625,00
3. € 439,71
4. € 1500,00
5. € 1823,95
6. € 787,00
7. € 639,90
7. € 639,90
8. € 390,00
10. € 198,00
11. € 25,00
12. € 126,00
+----------------
€ 7643,46
Bye for now,
Skybuck Flying !
The one and only ! =D
Designing a new (super) personal computer in 2023 is hard !
Lot's of junk out there that need to be side stepped.
It costs a lot time and energy to review/research and dive into the latest and greatest technologies for personal computers/desktop computers.
I have given it my best shot... the last thing I need to do is find a good solid state disk. I have no experience with SSD or very little. Lately there has been some rumor about samsung SSD's losing their health fast ?! What is that all about ? So I could use some suggestions for good SSD's which will last a long time, speed is less important.
If you want to comment on any of the other components be my guest. However make sure to google them and mention if they have any issues or driver issues etc or design issues.
For example many keyboards out there have very strange keyboard layouts. They keyboard which I selected is one of the few which actually has a normal keyboard layout where the { is above the [ this is very important for programming, in case I have any doubt if the shift key is to be used or not.
I don't like the keyboard where the { and [ is next to each other.
Furthermore all motherboards with an intel ethernet controller are to be avoided, because the intel ethernet controller chip does not work well in 2.5 gigabite mode, it can work in 1 gigabit mode but will be slow like 500 megabit.
Furthermore care must be taken when selecting a DDR5 kit for AMD processors, to fast and it might not even boot/work.
The PC case that selected, I am a bit worried about it, it can only mount 2 harddisk and 2 solid state disks on the chassis, and m2 slots in the motherboard. This PC case worries me a little bit, it looks very cool/nice, but maybe I should pick one with more harddisk support. Most motherboards support 4 sata connections, some might support 6. So basically even if a bigger case was available, the motherboard would not have enough sata connections, so it might be pointless, unless there is some SATA extended board available or other options ? Maybe connect harddisk to USB ? but that might take away USB ports for other purposes.
The case has nice USB ports on the front which will be usefull for connecting external drives to it, nice and fast ports.
I am still waiting for the CPU to come out. Having 3D/V-Cache on one of the core compute complexes sounds like a dream come true, or will it be a stuttering nightmare in gaming ?! Time will tell, waiting for reviews to come out on it ! ;) =D
The memory kit I selected seems very cool with the light, it's not the fastest, might have to be replaced with G-Skill, the selected DDR5 kit might also be too high for the air cpu cooler, I am not sure yet.
I am also not sure yet if I want to go with EK water cooling for the CPU and GPU, this PC case is suited for it though with an EK water block.
The ASUS monitor is very dangerous, and very big, if it's firmware is upgraded it might be bricked/unusuable, but the panel seems to be one the best 4k panels out there similiar to LG C2 panel. However the asus has active cooling more suited for gaming to prevent OLED burn in.
The ASRock steel legend motherboard is the only ATX motherboard with a PCI Express 5.0 slot which can truely do PCI Express 5.0 x16 the rest of the motherboards mostly have PCI Express 4.0 x16 capability which can be reduced to x8 if in bifornication... so that is only 1/4 of the speed of this port of the steel legend as long as no other pci express port is used.
There are no graphics cards on the market yet which have pci express 5.0 x16, but in the future they might and therefore this motherboard should be "future proof" if it works ! ;)
The bios is nice and simple and has many options, including being able to disable/enable TPM and also SMT and other things which might be missing in other bioses ! ;)
The harddisks I am not sure yet, seems similiar model, one is for data center, the other is for server/enterprise like quality. One is cheaper the other more expensive... The expensive one is bigger and does give true 20 terrabytes of space while the other only gives 18 terrabyte of space.
It might be smarter to only buy one harddisk and then wait till bigger become available, however with the looming war between china and taiwan this might be very risky and buying it now might be smarter/better in case war breaks out... one harddisk could be replaced in future with bigger one.
The more expensive harddisks seem to be more vibrating resistent, not sure how much thruth is in there, these newer harddisk use a new technology with energy assisted heating to write to harddisks, not sure how reliability that is, seems to be reliable and the future, but not sure/no experience with it...
The power supply is tiny, but the first ATX 3.0 power standard available on the market, apperently designed by a well respected power supply designer in taiwan I believe in collobration with MSI/MPG(?). Perhaps this tinier model might actually push out the heat better, because less room for heat to en-masse in corners/back pockets of bigger power supplies.
The ATX 3.0 power standard is necessary for 100% 24 hour gaming/personal computing otherwise the high transient/power spikes of RTX 3000 and 4000 series might shut down the computer because they trip wire breaker/power breakers of older power supplies.
Shame I cannot safely pick my favorite brand Seasonic :(
So selecting a good power supply is a gotcha ! with these new graphics cards ! ;) Basically it was like that in 2006 as well, had to make sure power supplies had good power on the rails, older power supplies couldn't do it and I can confirm that myself ! ;)
I already mentioned the keyboard, it's amazing how many few good keyboards there are out there with the proper keyboard layout, just good old cherry/qwerty keyboard. I do want a keyboard with lights on it. I type a lot so I would prefer a keyboard which is somewhat more quiet but also easy to type on, I have some doubt about this keyboard because they mention it types a bit "mushy"... not sure what that is supposed to me, this keyboard is very configurable though, the reaction time of the keys can be adjusted, which sounds kinda cool and interesting to try out, it also has LED display... not sure what it's for, probably to configure the speed of the keys.
"Sounds" nice to go along with the configureable dominator RAM set, where lights can be configured... (if you into configuring things ! ;) :))
The mouse is nice and simple, does come with a nice light on it, could be handy in the dark to have lights on keyboards and mouses...
I wonder if the lights can be tuned down to not shine as bright, this might be necessary or I might turn them off.
I might prefer a mouse button without the side buttons, then again sometimes I might miss them, but side buttons can be annoying, I hope they can be turned off in windows 11 if it really bothers me, I don't want anything fancy pancy mouse, I don't want any holes in em where dust and stuff can get stucky, the mouse should be able to open and clean after maybe 7 years or so, you might not believe how much dust I found in my old G3 which was an amazing mouse, though I just accidently clicked the side buttons while grabbing it, which is a risk with these mice. I am lucky/glad it did not screw up this text, that would have pissed me off ! ;) I hate re-typing text because of this, also in webgame agar.io it can sometimes accidently lead to resetting the game to menu and such which is annoying. Fortunately most forum software out there guards against text loss, but perhaps not all, pretty sure this was done because of these side buttons... hmmm... a side effect ! ;)
The CPU cooler is a bit ugly and might not fit the nice RGB of the rest, it might also obstruct the dominator leds. It might also collide with the RAM, not sure yet if there is sufficient clearance.
If this CPU cooler is truely capable of cooling this CPU remains to be seen, it at least has two radiators/fans so that should be enough, the manufacturer uses it's own rating system and not watts or TDP, so it's hard to tell what it's true cooling capabilities are. So far this is their best/high end model...
I have not yet made a selection for the graphics card, except knowing that it will be an RTX 4080, the RTX 4090 seems too hot and too risky and performance overkill, another reason is too expensive... 2000 dollar for a graphics card is pushing it a bit... the RTX 4080 is already expensive enough.
I'll probably select some ASUS model, but I am open to suggestions.
It might also be an EK model or one suited for EK water block in case I go that route.
Concerning the EK water cooling, it needs maintance and it's website mentions that fluids will look out of the tubes and will evaporate slowly over time. I wonder what kind of health implications this will have.
It also needs anti-biological chemicals inside of the water to prevent bacteria developing into it... and it also needs some anti corossion, I have no experience with these chemicals and it does concern me somewhat for health reasons. It mights nothing about how often the water/fluids would need replacing? Anybody know ? I have heard even some vague story about once in 6 months ? That seems way too soon for my taste ?!?
Having cpu and gpu air coolers on top of this expensive hardware does concern me somewhat, dust and dust bunnies can build up around it... not sure if that is safe with these hot systems of today...
The graphics card could be mounted vertically with the riser cable, this could have a big adventage to keep the first m2. slot cooler.
If both the graphics card and m2 slot are used in default positions they can affect each other heat-wise, this could even damage the m2 device or vica versa or reduce performance. I am not sure if this issue would persist if water cooling block used on GPU, but perhaps...
Other things I have read/heard is that the fans of the GPU could be set higher to give more cooling across the motherboard, but for now I will take this with a grain of salt, because the thing would be up-side down anyway in it's default position, then again, perhaps they main to cool it's own slot somewhat.
The idea that a 450 to 600 watt graphics cards is up-side-down in it's default position concerns me somewhat. It's a clear sign that the PC standard needs to be updated and these graphics card turned so that they heat can flow up instead of press against itself ? Or does this not make a difference ?! Hmmmmmmm...
Another slight bit of concern is the position of the harddisks in this case. I consider the harddisks the most important component of the entire build and should get premium air cooling, unfortunately this case does not really do that and doesn't recgonize the importance of cooling harddisk nice and cool, but there should be some airflow coming in from the front and going down into it ?! Then again... the harddisks seems tightly fitted to each other, perhaps there might not be enough airflow and the chips on the harddisks might overheat and might lead to data loss. This might be a serious reason/consideration to look for another case.
The lack of a 1 terrabyte RAM system frustrates me but for now 1 terrabyte for consumer hardware is out of reach. The 64 GB ram limitation for top speed on AMD ryzen is even more frustrating... and 64 GB isn't really enough for what I would like to do with such a new system which is open up many web browser tabs. I'd like to keep many open. I have seen situations where only having 6 or 10 tabs open in Firefox can already consume 5 gigabytes of ram. So with this new system in this 64 GB configuration it would only allow 50 to 60 webppages which is still a very low ammount of webpages... One time I was trying C# development and had 100 to 300 webppages open or something, it felt like it anyway.... but even during "normal" development or just normal activities the web pages numbers are high during my daily activity, granted sometimes I forget to close them or should close them, but I also do like having them open in case I need to go back to them.
There is the possibility of upgrading to 128 GB and at least purchasing maximum ammount of RAM so that upgrade path is instant and can be used as needed without buying with time, or war scenerios. Assuming 500 megabyte per webpage, 256 webpages can be opened, which should be more than sufficient for now assuming webpages don't grow above 500 megabytes, but they probably will on 4K monitors, bigger advertisements videos, more graphics etc, still, 128 webpages of 1 gigabyte should still make me somewhat happy/sufficient.
Though ofcourse I may also like to load a lot of music, have development environments open, maybe even a game, graphics or video editor and such so that can take away a lot of memory as well, I have not yet discussed the possibility of a virtual machine for testing purposes, under those conditions, memory consumption sky rockets pretty fast... then there is discord, maybe other streaming things like tik tok or instagram as it scrolls down it starts to consume more and more memory which is a bit risky.
I intend to keep size of pagefile.sys to an absolute minimum for maximum operational speed of the computer. Perhaps I might develop a little taskbar notification/icon tool which alerts me if real RAM usage is about to hit it's peak so I can slow down or start closing things. I would prefer this over the CPU icon which taskbar shows now, or maybe even both.
I would love it if windows 11 builds this in by default, so more icons on the taskbar to be able to see what my computer is doing.
An extra icon for GPU processing usage or GPU memory usage would also be appreciated.
Perhaps even an icon for DISK usage, that be pretty awesome as well.
The icon can either fill up or even change color depending on how close it is to maxizing out, perhaps changing color might be a better way to do it, might be more visible on a 4k monitor... then again, if multiple icons chosen then an individual color per component might also be nice and then the filling technique might be "cuter". Or they could all change color and just remember which icon box represent what hardware but this might be a little bit tricky to do, another idea could be to change the shape of the icon to match a certain hardware look, or maybe in the form of a letter:
C=CPU processing usage, G=GPU processing usage, M=CPU RAM usage, S=GPU RAM usage(secondary) and D=Disk bandwidth usage.
Finally E=ethernet speed usage, though usage is usually super low, so not worth the icon space, but if you want to be complete, it should be configureable, which icons I do want on there and which I don't, in the right bottom tray... that be beautifull/perfect. I hope it helps ! ;) =D
Then again I am not even sure if the tray is still there in windows 11 I believe so, however the start button has moved to the center... hmmm. Another nice trick of windows 11 would be to "BAN" certain icons from the tray to make space/clean up. For example VCL media player puts itself into the tray, I am kinda used to it, but it doesn't really belonw there, cause it's also on the taskbar, kinda strange/weird. Plus there are some other annoying icons in windows 7 which are basically useless. I will leave it at that for now.
I promised myself I would buy a new subwoofer if I bought a new PC, I am a little bit unsure if this would truely enhance my sound. The speakers are already fantastic, but I do miss something in Battlefield 2, not that I play it anymore, ofcourse not it's been a long time, but last time I played it I noticed the sniper shots sound completely different. Probably because of lack of subwoofer, but when I had subwoofer fixed and played some music it did not impress me that much, perhaps it was not properly fixed, I did not re-test battlefield 2, Battlefield 2 might have sounded better on windows xp because of special sound pack that might only actually work on windows xp, because of creative labs drivers which only truely work well on windows xp, I am not sure if this is true/the case, but it might be. I have said goodbye to windows xp lonnnnggg lonnnggg ago, but I do wonder if this might explain it... for now I assume a subwoofer might bring back those delicious sniper shots, however I do not plan on playing a lot of first person shooters because it bores me became to good at it and the pattern is always the same I get good and few months later cheaters come with their hacks and could ruin the game, world of warships is better in this regards, however maybe I won't play it that much but I do look forward to it, I do want to play some first person shooters solo... so then it might be worth it for the experience. In the past I used to set the subwoofer/equalier always very low, so that kinda feels weird/akward but I do know it does matter for sound quality to have a subwoofer.
As far as I can tell my gigaworks S750 speakers with titanium tweeters still sound very good and I totally love them as well as the Denon 1909 receiver, so these components will be re-used for the Super Personal Computer.
I do notice the speakers might have developed their own sound, like a person with a soar throat or something, like it has it's own structure, but that might be an adventage because of less wave cancellation, maybe it was even done by design, as far as I can tell they still sound quite nice, I am curious if meanwhile there are better speakers on the market, but somehow I doubt it somewhat and it would mostly be a waste of money, but I am always curious if there is anything better but it must be backed up with frequency analysis reviews etc... and I would need some kind of tool to measure my speakers to be sure if they still good or not, for now I think they are/fantastic so probably don't need replacing, the receiver is HDMI 1.3A capable so should be sufficient for 7.1 surround sound and should work with HDMI 2.1 cables/connectors/motherboard/graphics cards I hope, for passing the audio through to the receiver so it can pass it onto the speakers and subwoofer...
The cables for external USB devices I have not yet really looked into, except what kind of type... but not brands etc, I could probably purchase these at local media markt shop... but might be more fun to buy them anyway... if anybody has any recommendations for specific brands, types, models, I am all ears ! ;)
I am mostly interested in USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 cables cause that sounds sweet... 20 gigabit/sec, so that would be 2 gigabyte/sec this would be suited for external solid state disks, which I will probably not need for a while because of all the m2 slots and such... then again in future it could be interesting but that might be 10 or 15 or 20 years from now, I am still alive and buy another PC lol, or maybe if somebody comes to my place with his/er laptop or something but this will probably not happen ! LOL, but I could also go to somebody elses place and then maybe having some a device might be interesting.
The normal/standard USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A Cable which it has two ports on the case I believe is the most interesting, this would allow 250 megabytes/sec transfers which is basically the top speed of western digital internal harddisks, I am not yet sure if externals harddisks can reach these speeds as well. I do see one little problem: future harddisks might be able to achieve 300, 400 or 500 megabytes/sec and then this older usb standard might not be sufficient anymore to drive those external harddisk at their top speed which would be somewhat of a limitation. However 250 megabyte/sec is already very nice, so far I have been using a 20 megabyte/sec usb port 2.0 and it is amazing what I can do with it ! ;) though it does not getting used to somewhat but I do look forward to much higher speeds, like 10x would be sweet ! ;) Now I can imagine in the future same issue, further workloads might require a lot more harddisk bandwidth and then this old connector might frustrate a little bit, but you won't hear my complaining much, harddisk capacity over speed any time of day for me ! ;) =D
At the bottom I did a little estimation of what this PC would cost... "cheap version" with cheaper harddisks and "expensive version" with the expensive harddisks and slightly more capacity.
The total price surprises me somewhat. I would have expected it to be over 8000 or 9000 or 10000 euros, but it is similiar in price to 2006/2007 which is
17 years ago !
One explanation for this same price level could be that China has en-massed materials from Africa on the cheap and China is not as inflation-heavy as the West/EU/USA.
Or perhaps electronic manufacturing costs have come down, or are partially robotic and partially by hand. Probably more robotic and thus perhaps costs of robotic labor does not rise as much.
Anyway I would love to hear your theories why a "Super/Dream PC" from 2023 as about the same cost as one from 2006/2007 ? How can that be ?! :)
Are my explanations somewhat on the mark or way off ? ;) :)
Some things are still missing, I just added an important one that is still missing to the list:
18. A card reader for SD cards which go into my Canon Digital Camera Powershot SX HS 50, this would be very nice to have. I assume I can buy some external one which I can attach via usb cable, this would take one usb external slot though and would deprive me of connecting a harddisk instead, though the motherboard also has some usb ports on the back for further connections.
19. a TPM module, I don't see any need for this as the motherboard can simulate TPM in software and there seems to be no performance benefit for TPM hardware and could be a nasty point of failure. I trust the CPU to work better than some flimsy TPM module.
!!!
One very big word of caution:
!!!
After installing Windows 11, immediately DECRYPT the drive and turn ENCRYPTION of drive off, this is a very dangerous default feature of Windows 11 where it auto-encrypts the drive. If a user were to accidently reset it's TPM keys the drive would become inaccessible, such an event can occur because the user is in panic, doesn't know what he/she is doing, doesn't realize the important of TPM keys, might not know what these are, might decide to experiment with BIOS/TPM KEY RESET options and then the damage is done. Unbelievably dumb and risky feature of Windows 11, especially for Desktop personal computers. For perhaps laptops I can understand some benefit... however if PCs acquired by law enforcements or criminals they might have a way to acquire the password as well or circumvent this TPM somehow and then all this feature does is add additional data loss risk issues. Not losing data in the first place, not losing access to data in the first place, is more important than potential data theft.
One exception might be bitcoin keys, these could be stored on truecrypt volumes/special files representing a virtual disk, it does not require the entire drive to be encrypted.
Another exception might be passwords to online accounts.
And very maybe e-mail clients.
However the risk assesment should be left to the user, not done by default by Microsoft this is way too dangerous in case of TPM key lost.
So there are now multiple points of failure:
1. Not only harddisk mechanical failure/scratching but also:
2. TPM Keys lost.
3. Software faults/bugs screwing the encryption. Recently windows 11 had such an occurence where the whole TPM/encryption thing became a mess.
Introducing multiple points of failure/risks in Windows 11 is not better, but much worse. Don't become victim of it. TAKE CONTROL and decrypt your windows 11 drives ! Do the smart thing and don't be stupid.
It might even lead to more performance and less energy usage. Especially in Europe/The Netherlands the energy usage/costs is still uncertain in 2024... Vote for politicians who want to make energy CHEAPER instead of more expensive... Wind, Solar, it should have become cheaper but here we are, because of climate change lunatics, it's more expensive than ever before, x5 maybe up to x10 in 2024, maybe even worse in 2025, if they are not voted off... the purchase of arm-based system/laptop perhaps a surface from Microsoft might become interesting in those years, but I do prefer laptops with big/wide screens, not tiny little screens, this toshiba is a joy to work on in that regards compared to those little ones I saw in the store, I would never purchase those unless I was truely mobile and hated the weight of a bigger one ! ;) =D
The steel legend motherboard's look and feel might be somewhat out of place with it's whitetish and blackish looks but then again, maybe it will fit... it does look a hell lot more interesting than the nxzt motherboards which looked very boring in comparison... the steel legend has a more militaristic/modern day armor look, which has some coolness to it ! ;) =D
It only has 4 sata ports like most, so getting a different case might not make much sense, unless I disconnect the solid state disks to then re-use their sata connections to be able to use older harddisk to transfer data, but this may be mostly a one time thing, seems a bit silly to buy a bigger case for a one time transfer, then again it would be convenient and more safe in way... not having to remove one of the two harddisks that might already be present...
So let's some up my doubts and I will give some percentage of the doubt I have:
(I guess one could call this Consumer confidence LEVEL hehe):
Number, Component Name, Doubt percentage:
1. PC Case: 30% (can only mount two harddisks, little breathing space?, radiator locations risky, one at the top: could fall down and one at the front: could expell heat into the system and make it worse)
2. CPU: 33% (will 3D/V-Cache lead to stuttering ?, DDR5 speeds limited to 6000 MHz is already somewhat of a limitation for faster memory kits, however intel processors run how default out of the box, both processors Intel and AMD seem equal efficient in power usage and performance when given some ammount of watts/power. I just don't like intel as much because it did not innovate enough and their prices are artificially high. I kinda want to support the underdog to keep the innovation and competition alive ! =D)
3. Memory: 5% (will it collide with CPU cooler ? Corsair has long-time warranty and has honored warranty request in the past, seems very good brand ! ;) :) =D)
4. GPU: 80% (fear of overheating the motherboard/burn through, etc, but I do want butter smooth gaming of latest and greatest games at 4k preferably ! ;) in the passed NVIDIA's and XFX heatsink design failed miserably and become full with dust and dust matts/wands/bunnies and may have led to overheat/burn of motherboard, ultimately ended up removing both and went back to GT 510, later GT 1030, water cooling the GPU will probably prevent these issues, but then will have to clean radiators/fans, how easy will it be to clean these ? could be difficult to clean the one on the top of the case, it might even fall down and damage equipment ?! the front radiator of the case is also not so much fun... could expell heat into the system, I am starting to see why some people are recommending to use an external radiator ! HA ! Maybe I should take them a little bit more seriously ?! ;) though where do I place it... hmmm could become a placement issue)
Perhaps GPU can be replaced with a lot heat version in future, but I rather not damage my equipment before then... hmmmm... buy backup motherboard ? Though my backup motherboard kinda failed it was smelly/blown capacitators it was second hand though out of necessity first hand no longer for sale, it strangely detoriorated inside the closest the same why the actively used one, quite strange but I guess that is how these chemicals behave...
5. Monitor: 90% (I am not sure if I will be happy with it, seems like I will, the text should be clear many monitors have wrong/strange R,G,B like: R B G leading to bad fonts in windows 11 or have other strange issues. However this particular monitor might have some blueishness, however I have done a lot of research into this OLED monitor it seems fantastic, the bricking of the monitor through firmwire scares the shit out of me, I may also run the risk of a re-furbished one, that would be bad, don't want somebody elses mess ups, time will tell. The firmware update might be required to get the HDR working correctly, some say the monitor might look somewhat washed out but this might be dependent on color settings and/or hdr mode on/off. For the looks of it it seems a fantastic monitor and that is why I am willing to risk it, the frequency is somewhat low compared to state of the art: 120 hertz should work fine on this monitor, overdriving it to 138 is risky and might damage the monitor. I am used to gaming at 40 fps, so 120 hz seems overkill to me and I will probably play most games at 50 or 60 fps in future anyway, so this hertz race seems a bit overkill ! ;) Though the RTX 4080 can do some games at 80 or 100 hertz, not sure what World of Warships can do on an RTX 4080 ! ;) Most game developers will probably take adventage of it and up graphics quality if possible, so don't expect 120 hertz gaming in future ! ;) Though some e-sports game developers might decide differently ! ;)
I look forward to 10 bit true HDR colors for some cool movie watching I hope this monitor can do it well ! ;)
6. Motherboard: 1%, ASRock good brand for motherboards, I had one before though it did quick because of miss placement of usb card reader connection 1 pin beside it connecting the ground to +5 volt. ASRock motherboards do not come with proper headers around the USB ports so be carefull connecting those USB plugs ! ;) ASRock does have special overheat protection circuitry/patents, not sure if it's included on this motherboard. The bios software is a bit old/classic/simple/boring but that is kinda a good thing, kinda used to this, don't need to learn a new bios layout. The many options does excite me somewhat and there are some new features as well ! ;)
Plenty to play with it, I do not intend to play much with the bios, just want to run my system and software etc ! ;)
7. Harddisks: 5% The only real doubt I have is: Do I safe money and go with the cheaper one, or do I go all out and get the ridicolous expensive one ? I am kinda hoping it comes down in price somewhat by the time I have to make the purchase decision. I think the cheaper one uses a different recording technology but I am not entirely sure, seemed to be same models, but not sure anymore... I hope that both technologies are well tested and won't lead to many troubles down the road ?!? Any data loss down the road would be horrible... hmmm... but such is life with new technology... though I have never had a harddisk fail on me by itself, never had true data loss, unless I intended it as a test, kicking the old pentium 166 to see how long it would take to fail, the older drive failed pretty quickly after some hard kicks ! ;) =D
8. Power supply: 10% The power supply is kinda tiny but it's one of the few ATX 3.0 power supplies out there... the brand is a bit shady, but so far they seem to be the new kid on the block, kicking some ass, their motherboards/bios incredibly buggy, though there case and power supply seem nice... bit of a risk with this brand, unknown/new brand for this type of device, though the company behind it is well known and good brand, but still... maybe they screwed them... maybe their glue will go bad... time will tell hehe... probably not such a thing could kill people... but who knows... the world is full of crazy !
9. Solid State Disk: 100% MISSING, samsung has had some bad publicity lately for their SSDs otherwise I might have picked them. Also SSD bad reputation for now, I see plenty of people mentioning failed SSDs, overheat issues, wear and tear issues and now this samsung issue... hmmmm...
I am interested in M2 slot versions (for very fast PCI Express 5.0 versions) and also SATA versions (for mounting inside case) and also USB versions (for external versions)
10. Keyboard: 7% Unknown brand to me, don't know how it will type... quality seems good according to reviews etc.
11. Mouse: 1% Logitech good brand for mouse, very little doubts that this mouse should perform well. High DPI good for precision during gaming.
12. CPU cooler: 5% Not sure about it's size and look, seems one of the best and quietest cpu air coolers out there, well known brand, good reviews of this thing, at least it's fully black, big improvement from the brown versions.
13. Subwoofer: Review some long ago, perhaps there are better now on the market... hmmm... haven't really looked into it yet...
PC COST ESTIMATION 29 JANUNARY 2023:
(price of keyboard was since 12 february 2023):
1. PC CASE: MSI MEG Prospect 700R € 449,00
2. CPU: AMD 7950X (I kinda want the 3D cache version, not out yet !!!) € 625,00
3. MEMORY: (2x32 GB) Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB CMT64GX5M2B6000Z40 € 439,71
4. GPU: RTX 4080 with 16 GB RAM € 1500,00
5. MONITOR: ASUS OLED PG42UQ € 1823,95
6. LOW END MOTHERBOARD: ASRock B650E Steel Legend WiFi € 294,90
OR
6. HIGH END MOTHERBOARD: Gigabyte AORUS X670E XTREME € 787,00
7. PRETTY DAMN GOOD HARDDISK 1: 20 TB WD Ultrastar DC HC560 € 389,99
7. PRETTY DAMN GOOD HARDDISK 2: 20 TB WD Ultrastar DC HC560 € 389,99
OR
7. STATE OF THE ART HARDDISK 1: 22 TB WD Gold, 22 TB hard disk (WD221KRYZ ) € 639,90
7. STATE OF THE ART HARDDISK 2: 22 TB WD Gold, 22 TB hard disk (WD221KRYZ ) € 639,90
8. POWER SUPPLY: MEG Ai1300P PCIE5 € 390,00
or
8. POWER SUPPLY: Seasonic Vertex PX-1200 € ???,?? (not released yet, price unknown, not reviewed yet)
10. KEYBOARD: SteelSeries Apex Pro Mechanical Gaming Keyboard € 197,50
11. Mouse: Logitech G203 LIGHTSYNC gaming muis € 25,00
12. CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black € 126,00
Still missing:
9. SOLID STATE DISKS/STICKS Risky bussiness as hell, cause of overheating/damage risks...
13. SUBWOOFER Bonus not really necessary but I kinda promised myself to get one, though I might have to reconsider just taking up space.
14. USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 cable Absolute must have for external devices.
15. USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A Cable Also very nice to have for external devices.
16. PCIe Riser Cable Seems like good idea to mount graphics card vertically, most be strong, latency risks though.
17. MAYBE EK WATER COOLING BLOCKS AND STUFF/RADIATORS... rather not, risky, for PC and user health ?! and cumbersome...
18. Card reader for SD flash cards for Canon Digital Camera Powershot SX HS 50
CHEAP VERSION:
1. € 449
2. € 625
3. € 440
4. € 1500
5. € 1824
6. € 295
7. € 390
7. € 390
8. € 390
10. € 198
11. € 25
12. € 126
+-------------
€ 6.652
EXPENSIVE VERSION:
1. € 449,00
2. € 625,00
3. € 439,71
4. € 1500,00
5. € 1823,95
6. € 787,00
7. € 639,90
7. € 639,90
8. € 390,00
10. € 198,00
11. € 25,00
12. € 126,00
+----------------
€ 7643,46
Bye for now,
Skybuck Flying !
The one and only ! =D
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