So I upgraded my primary PC. Not a retro PC, not some kind of server, my actual primary rig I spend most of my time with. And it was a rather substantial upgrade. New CPU, Ryzen 7 7800X3D replacing my old Ryzen 5 1600, brand new 32 GB of DDR5, a 1TB NVMe drive and a motherboard with wifi and 2.5Gb ethernet onboard. My GPU is still relatively new, so that’s not getting replaced yet. And of course there’s a whole lot of other parts that were transplanted from the old machine as well. There’s a total of 4TB of storage not counting network attached ones, an extra USB controller and an optical drive (yes, I still use that).
The funny thing is that the upgrade was motivated by poor performance in Baldur’s Gate 3, which was pretty ok before the Act3, but when I got to the city proper the amount of people and objects on the map caused serious problems. I have not yet had the time and motivation to play it since the upgrade, choosing instead to play games released anywhere between 10 and 25 years ago.
In somewhat related news, the old motherboard and 16Gigs of DDR4 together with an old case and a new Ryzen 5 5600G and an NVMe drive went to a friend who needed a computer, so nothing in nature is lost.
The old CPU joined my little shrine of my previous machines. By a lucky coincidence I managed to get my hands on all but two of my previous computer CPUs.
- The first one, a Pentium 120MHz, was “sold” to my mom’s company to run some ancient accounting software and I rescued it from the scrap pile once it was no longer needed.
- The second, AMD Athlon 1200, was sold to a friend, he then gave it to someone from his family and it was sadly then thrown away.
- The third one, AMD Athlon 64 3000+ I had to sell back in the computer store in order to afford the upgrade (I was in my poor student phase) so there was no way of ever tracking it back after that.
- The last three were all kept close as I knew then that I wanted to preserve them.
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ went to my sister for a while after I upgraded my rig and then came back to serve as my first “server” for many years.
- AMD Phenom II X6 1075T was in a pretty rough shape after years of pretty hard work (and those who know those chips probably can confirm how hot they can run), so after a short time of serving my girlfriend’s parents and causing way too many blue screens to be of any use, I got it back.
- And of course the last one, AMD Ryzen 5 1600, served me well for the last 7 years, the longest of all of its predecessors.
I was considering buying the ones I’m missing, but that would be cheating and also, if they are still working, it is better if they were still in use by enthusiasts, rather than being stuck in my display case.
