I built my last PC in 2012. It's considered a family heirloom by now and is affectionately known as Big Red. It's been at my son's house, my oldest daughter's house and back to my house. With me it was at my old home and then to my apartment while my new home was being built. Now, of course, it's at my new home. There's also been two builds in the same case. The last one was in 2012. Believe it or not it is still a beautiful case.
It has run day and night for most of those years. I'm using it now. I think it has an atx Abit motherboard, the latest intel chip at the time, Thermaltake 750w power supply, and two hard drives. Who knows what else. I know the GPU is so old it won't run a curved monitor. Found that out the hard way. Wire management is...well what wire management!
I played Aces High with it for several years and then started using it for business. Then I bought my first new Lenovo PC for gaming. Ironically, I only played Aces High for a few months after I bought it. I had a bunch of issues I had to deal with and dealt with them quite well. It took a while.
One of the reasons Big Red ran day and night is because the start button popped off one day. I pressed the button and when I released it shot about a foot in the air. Uh! Big Red is showing its age. The sound quit with a good ole Windows update. I had been able to reinstall the sound drivers and get it to work. Not this time. Both case fans are finally quiet after make annoying noises. Then again, they aren't turning either. The CPU fan is working thank goodness. (I just spotted a dead cricket in the case! WTH!) I'll be vacuuming.
Currently I'm getting ready to move all of the data from Big Red to the Lenovo and use the Lenovo as daily business/personal computer. Big Red may not last much longer, so I started looking for a replacement. I like having multiple computers in the house.
I've done some online searches and good ole privacy invading Google started making suggestions. YouTube videos about computer builds appeared. I hadn't even thought about building since 2012. In fact, I was so over that. However, I just had to look.
So, what has changed since my 2012 build. Technology is ever advancing for sure, faster CPUs and GPUs and no doubt advanced chip sets. What really caught my eye are the SSD drives. Just insert them into the Motherboards. Wowsers! Those SSD drives are also so much cheaper than the hard drives. No need to route the wiring and power for the hard drives. The guy I've been watching, Crater, throws out the Hard drive cages should the case even have one. He also uses at least 3 case fans. Also, some GPUs need a 16-pin connection from the power supply. Not all power supplies have that.
I realize that most of you in this forum are way savvier today than I am. For someone that hasn't even looked inside a computer for years. It's pretty impressive.
I definitely will be building a new PC. How much? I'm thinking between $500 and $1000. The $500 version used an I3 and from there mostly AMD. I did see an I5 build though that was of interest.
In a bit of side note, I just assembled an L-shaped desk in my office. That only took 3 days! It looks really good. I wanted room for at least 2 computers that I could reach from a single chair.
I haven't been on here for a good while and I hope that you all are doing well.
I may post pictures of Big Red and then new build later.
