Pondering Upgrades

I've been pondering the computer upgrades again.

I do this every once in a while, usually when something comes along that pushes the machine I have a little bit too far. Either that, or something has gone bang or got too annoying and I want to throw new hardware at the problem.

This machine has done extremely well for me actually. At about £900 6 years ago, it's been very cost effective as my desktops go. Although that doesn't include the 3 new graphics cards, 1 power supply, 1 sound card, hard disc upgrade and a couple of other things I can't remember.

It's actually still doing pretty well, the only thing that is stressing it at the moment is the video encoding, which is actually just a matter of time. If I was to do the video thing more though, I would need a beefier computer to do it. Let's see what I would get now.

First up - just the gaming. The spec below represents a pretty good gaming PC, albeit without monitor, keyboard and mouse. These items are quite subjective but I am a fan of what I have now. My keyboard is a Steelseries M300 with mechanical switches (very recommended) and mouse is a Logitech (which is ok). I have an AOC 1440p IPS panel monitor, which I would also thoroughly recommend for quality and sharpness of image. I see monitor, keyboard and mouse as things you buy separately though, as you can transfer them between old desktop and new desktop.

Most of the prices below come from Scan, although not the memory. Scan are only offering Corsair memory and I've had problems with Corsair stuff before. Memory price is from Novatech.

Bits that make it go :
I'll switch back to AMD next time with their Ryzen processor. Intel haven't made any significant progress with their processors since mine came out 6 years ago and then AMD come along with something radical again. AMD Ryzen 5 1600 with 6 cores - £188.
That goes in a motherboard and I'm happy with the Asrock I've had for this machine. Asrock B350 Gaming K4 for £102.
And those two need memory - up to 16GB of DDR4 - 2.4GHz. I'm alarmed at how memory has gone up in price. I bought 8GB for £45 six years ago, that should have reduced. Yet ... it has gone up to £70 and 16GB is £139 by Kingston.
Graphics - if I were to get one, it would be an nVidia 1060 3GB for £200. But I have one of those already so I wouldn't have to pay that this time.

That still makes the upgrade a total of £429 without the graphics card.

You need a bunch of ancillaries to make the PC though :
Power supply - Silverstone Strider 700W for £53. But bigger than my usual because it has to support more hard discs.
Hard discs - for the gaming machine only, it's a 525GB SSD by Crucial for £148 and a 2TB drive by Western Digital for £60. Windows goes on the SSD, things that need speed go on the SSD and the rest goes on the 2TB conventional drive. This is a bit over the top (a 256GB is good enough) and you could shave £££s off the total by lowering these.
Cooling - £32 for a Silverstone cooler with a 140mm fan. The bigger the fan the better, you don't really want fan noise coming through to that microphone. And this one looks like it has enough separation to allow many sticks of RAM into the machine.
And it all goes in a case - I'd choose a case by visuals or finish but .... £37 for another Thermaltake case would be good enough.
Add Windows as well for £90.

The ancillaries there come up to £320 for a total of £949 with the graphics card. That's a bit more than the £900 ish I paid last time, although it excludes a cd rom drive. These are pretty much defunct now for PC with most software coming from downloads.

To make a video making machine though, that needs a little more.

Turbocharge the hamster wheel !!!

Bits I'd change :
Graphics - I'd up this a little (but not crazily as the prices really ramp up). nVidia GeForce 1070 cards bring more power .... at double the cost. That'd be an extra £200.
Hard discs - I'd add at least one extra 3TB drive, probably two for recording on. That starts at £75 for a Toshiba and £88 for a Western Digital (ain't touching Seagate again). These would go into a RAID array spanning the two discs. The reason for getting 2 drives by different manufacturers is so that if one drive dies, the other drive should not. It's a reasonable expectation that 2 drives in the same batch made by the same people would die at about the same time if subjected to the same conditions, hence going for difference as a priority.

You see ? Different is good ! In many things :-D.

The software I've used so far is nVidia's capture software, Audacity for audio and Magix Vegas for the editing. I'm happy with all of these so far, although I'd switch it up to something like OBS if I was to do the video editing more. A second screen would be handy for that as well.

So there we have it - £429 for the core upgrade, plus £200 if I were to get another graphics card (don't need one) and £320 for the bits in the case.

I don't need to upgrade yet but .... still thinking about it :-).