A 1st generation Ryzen system sporting a 1st generation Pascal nVidia graphics card, we're now well into the 3rd generation Ryzen and a few incremental products from nVidia, but it's good to know that my initial system design continues to perform well and handle all I want to throw at it. The design choices I made were twofold - a PC which would last me for a good while whilst also providing a good upgrade path, though I suspect I'll still be lauding basically the same beast in another two years. Surpassing my old PC (a Core 2 Duo.. yep THAT old) by a mile, I've been enjoying some modest gaming, DVD transcoding, along with artwork and video editing experiments thrown in for good measure. All water off a ducks back, in stark contrast to the performance of its predecessor, which made quite a meal of such tasks, frequently choking on them.
I haven't had the need to upgrade anything essential, save for a few tweaks as it fell out of its boxes on testing day.. the monitor stand, the speakers and the Corsair keyboard/mouse combo. The keyboard was to have been a K63 with basic red illumination - perfect to raise its profile in the dark yet not excessive enough for it to become an "RGB vomit" peripheral. The price difference between that and the keyboard I did end up with was significant, but a silver lining from the misfortune which consumed the high street electronics store Maplin was me landing the K65 (RGB vomit) model, owing to a lack of K63's in lieu of it's more expensive brother on display at only £10 more (as opposed to £60 RRP). Overall I'm glad I got it, even if it has been broadly set to that same red colour (by way of the iCUE/wallpaper engine setup in this case, which interestingly takes advantage of the RGB keys to physically mirror the wallpaper). The mouse only got replaced because I got heartily sick of a motion glitch, but the replacement is also a lot more comfortable to use. It made sense to go for a Corsair, in keeping with the ecosystem.
The speakers too had an upgrade, from an old 2.0 Creative set which I'd had for over twenty years and which still work to this day (albeit in the budget sphere of performance), I elected to explore my options, descended upon Currys/PC World (pretty much the only store of its kind left now) and took a peek at Logitech before (ironically) landing again upon Creative. They were however a more significant investment than my original pair, and you can hear it.
The speakers too had an upgrade, from an old 2.0 Creative set which I'd had for over twenty years and which still work to this day (albeit in the budget sphere of performance), I elected to explore my options, descended upon Currys/PC World (pretty much the only store of its kind left now) and took a peek at Logitech before (ironically) landing again upon Creative. They were however a more significant investment than my original pair, and you can hear it.
Software-wise, aside from the old usual suspects, I've thrown Affinity Photo and Designer at it.. no problems. It laughs in the face of DOOM and scoffs at the likes of Rocket League and Final Fantasy. So confident is it in its multi-core hyperthreaded-ness that it juggles Wallpaper Engine across two monitors in the palm of one hand whilst enjoying breathing space to rule the rest of the galaxy. Benchmark software - Cinebench, Heaven, Valley.. loves them! The old beast used to have a coronary just looking at them.
I may have done some future casting about upgrades in a blog here before now but somewhere on the horizon there will almost certainly be a change of CPU cooler - it's managed wonderfully with the stock unit (which is measurably superior to the stock Intel equivalent - well done AMD), but I think it would be nice to either squeeze a little more performance out of it or embrace efficiency and lower temps. I'm not overclocking the CPU (which is ironic almost to the point of insult since all the AMD CPU's are unlocked) but honestly I haven't felt the need to. Neither am I at this point too keen on getting giddy for water cooling. I love the aesthetic of AIO coolers, particularly NZXT, but much prefer the simple reliability and (let's be honest) absent mindedness of air cooling. I suspect I'll be looking at an external USB Bluray drive to compliment the DVD drive I already have. In my experience it still pays to have hard copies of your entertainment. Other than that the only thing I can imagine adding in the short term would perhaps be an SSD scratch disk? That might smooth out any video editing, or cover any such situations where data access at a faster rate than a mechanical HDD might be preferable. Beyond the internals and base peripherals however is the bigger goal which I had in the back of my mind as an end to the means - VR. This system is almost certainly geared up to that task but which company path to take with that is the real question at this point and I'm not even sure I have the space for room scale, but Elite Dangerous is just calling out to me.. one day.
A lot of this is just playing really though.. It continues to be a wonderful, solid system.
I may have done some future casting about upgrades in a blog here before now but somewhere on the horizon there will almost certainly be a change of CPU cooler - it's managed wonderfully with the stock unit (which is measurably superior to the stock Intel equivalent - well done AMD), but I think it would be nice to either squeeze a little more performance out of it or embrace efficiency and lower temps. I'm not overclocking the CPU (which is ironic almost to the point of insult since all the AMD CPU's are unlocked) but honestly I haven't felt the need to. Neither am I at this point too keen on getting giddy for water cooling. I love the aesthetic of AIO coolers, particularly NZXT, but much prefer the simple reliability and (let's be honest) absent mindedness of air cooling. I suspect I'll be looking at an external USB Bluray drive to compliment the DVD drive I already have. In my experience it still pays to have hard copies of your entertainment. Other than that the only thing I can imagine adding in the short term would perhaps be an SSD scratch disk? That might smooth out any video editing, or cover any such situations where data access at a faster rate than a mechanical HDD might be preferable. Beyond the internals and base peripherals however is the bigger goal which I had in the back of my mind as an end to the means - VR. This system is almost certainly geared up to that task but which company path to take with that is the real question at this point and I'm not even sure I have the space for room scale, but Elite Dangerous is just calling out to me.. one day.
A lot of this is just playing really though.. It continues to be a wonderful, solid system.
