Windoze

This was my primary Windows machine for a while but changing circumstances mean that I now have an Asus gaming laptop.

Specs

It's not a hugely powerful machine.

  • AMD Ryzen 5 3400G
  • Nvidia GeForce RT710 graphics card
  • Corsair Force MP600 500GB
  • Corsair VENGEANCE LPX 32GB RAM
  • 2TB Seagate HDD
  • Aerocool Integrator 600W PSU

In hindsight, there are better motherboard choices than the MSI X570-A PRO. It only has one HDMI port on the rear panel. Whilst it is possible to use additional monitors with via USB-C, it's not as convenient as having built in ports.

That RT710 is low end. Its purpose is to add more video outs for undemanding applications. 

32GB of RAM is more than most people will need. A lot of modern machines only come with 8GB. 16Gb is recommended by many. An additional two 8GB DIMMs didn't want to work with it. Possibly a BIOS issue.

The 2TB HDD is probably going to be moved to a NAS to consolidate HDD storage. The thinking was that didn't want to clog up SSD with files that don't benefit from the speed.

Ugly

It was built in a terrible old Evesham tower case. Evesham went bust in 2008 which gives you an idea of its age. The case has plenty of extraneous plastic on the front panel. It's dated looking. The obsolete optical and floppy drives had been removed and I couldn't find any suitable blanking plates. Whilst aesthetics aren't a huge deal, it's not something you'd want sitting in your home office.

The case does have a few good points but more deficiencies. The siting of the USB 2 and audio front panel ports is at the bottom of the case. It doesn't have USB 3. Cable management is a pain and it doesn't have a lot of places to mount fans.

I decided to rebuild it and use the case for something else.

Rebuild

I was going to rebuild the machine in a CoolerMaster MasterCase 5 that I'd purchased on eBay but I haven't been able to pick up due to knee injury. Instead, I decided to build it in a CoolerMaster Elite 335 case. The model linked to is actually the 335U which has the PSU at the bottom of the case rather than the top.

It came with a CoolerMaster 500w PSU. There's nothing wrong with it, per se, but if any of my machines is going to end with a power hungry graphics card, it's Windoze. 

Front panel USB A and USB C in a 3.5" drive bay was added because the existing front panel only provided USB 2. Motherboard only supports 10Gb/s USB 3. It's proven its worth already with USB flash drives. Read and write speeds are much faster than USB 2.

A PCIe USB 3 card was added. It was originally intended for a Linux machine but the card turned out to be Windows only. The card has a 19 pin USB 3 header which is redundant for now - not going to be adding any more front panel I/O in a hurry. It has a 4 pin Molex connector for devices that draw more power. 

It had a particularly skanky orange after market 120mm fan in it. Whilst I did clean it, the cable was too short so I replaced it with another. Cooling would appear to be adequate for now but the case will accomodate a lot more fans.

It could do with better cable management but that can wait for another day. 

Upgrades

Currently, there are no compelling reasons to upgrade the CPU, graphics or RAM at the moment. Essentially, I'm not doing anything that particularly taxes Windoze. The PC component market is changing all the time. Prices for some components have fallen and in some cases quite dramatically, especially the second user market.

More RAM is always good though. 

I don't need a high performance graphics card for gaming but maybe another low end graphics card would be useful in terms of gaining more outputs to drive more of the older monitors and projectors that are kicking around.

There is an intention to add a dual port 10 Gigabit ethernet card and attach it to a NAS. This will take care of future storage needs.

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