Seriously though, your local Microcenter is worth the extra ‘cost’ in tax or whatever — it’s nice to be able to return stuff. That’s a convenience worth paying for. [Note that their prices are pretty consistently competitive with NewEgg these days anyway.]
Anyway, it’s time for a new(er) setup. I wanted to try one of the new Ryzen CPUs from AMD and why not toss in an Nvidia-based GPU, too? [First time in like 10 years or so for an NVIDIA GPU for me — a pretty solid run. [I’m pretty sure I had a 7600GT in a little Antec setup that kept eating PSUs… a story for another time.]]
Well, a couple of pieces remained from build-to-build:
Corsair Carbide A540 (black) case, Corsair HX750I PSU, Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO HSF, a pair of Corsair AF140 Quiet Ed Fans, and a SanDisk 240GB SSD. Technically, the NZXT Grid+ V2 controller was in the case, too, but wasn’t ever set up.
The build was surprisingly straightforward and almost… simple. Getting Windows 10 re-authorized was probably the most time-consuming part, as it ended up being necessary to talk to Microsoft, do a little remote conferencing and then provide documentation of the new purchase. [Which, given a smart phone and Google Drive, isn’t hard, even if all one has is a paper receipt.]
The new hardware is thus:
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X CPU, ASUS ROG Crosshair VI Hero motherboard, Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3200 PC4-25600 RAM, MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X 6GB GPU, 2x Toshiba 4TB HDDs, and an updated bracket for mounting the EVO 212 on the new AM4.
Lastly, a Corsair K70 clicky-switchy (Cherry MX switches) keyboard rounded out the upgrades; the old Logitech G110 was getting a little squishy and tired from too much Diablo 3 (the excuse I’m going to go with anyway).
Haven’t really done any benchmarking, or indeed, even installing any of the ‘fancy’ drivers from the mobo disc, since everything basically figured itself out and is functional audio and LAN and so-forth-wise.
Some 7 Days to Die and Path of Exile later, it’s definitely an improvement.
Maybe try a little OCing via the ROG software, or perhaps replace all the fans? Who knows…