Sunday, November 24, 2013

Coming Soon… New Workstation

I rebuilt a 4year old Dell Precision almost 2 years ago that computer is now 6 years old. I was able to improve the performance on it by around 400%, not too shabby.  I found a buyer for it and with the money I’m going to build a new computer. For over 20 years every desktop computer I have ever had I built myself, until this Dell. Part of what I do for a living requires I keep up with computer technology, which isn’t easy considering how fast it moves forward so I fell behind the curve. It’s just not financially feasible to do it and I’m at an age where I refuse to keep up buy continually building new equipment, it’s not worth it.

However, it would be nice to be closer to current generation, not 3 behind so I sold my reliable Precision and also a few other computers to fund this project. No cash is coming out of my pockets to build the new one.

Out goes the Dell Precision T5400.

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I have begun the research phase of of the project but a few parts are locked in. The case will be the Corsair Carbide Air 540, the CPU will be the Intel i7-4770K, the memory will be 16gigs of Corsair Vengeance low latency memory and the hard drives will be Intel 3500 series 300gig SSD’s in RAID 0. I will also be carrying over the video card which is an MSI Frozr II AMD 6950, not the fastest out there by a long shot but it does support all 4 monitors I use and I can upgrade when I’m ready.

So if all that’s locked in what’s left? A very important piece, the motherboard. Intel is getting out of the full size motherboard market and their latest Z87 is kind of a mess so I have ruled them out (sorry Matt!) so I’m looking at Asus, Gigabyte and MSI, all three offer high end units built to provide what I need. I just need to research each one and decide, the one I’m leaning towards is the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD5H, we’ll see. I plan on waiting until I deliver the computers before purchasing anything so hopefully the prices come down a bit. Pricing for many of the components has gone up by as much as 20% in the past few months, how ridiculous is that!

Here is the Corsair Carbide Air 540 case, a behemoth and worthy of the components I’ll be building it with. It’s a dual chamber design built for the best air cooling and water cooling. I’m not big into side windows and lights but I like the window in this one and I plan on showing off the goods inside with lighting that won’t be obnoxious. Stay tuned!

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36 comments:

Anonymous said...

I find it ironic that you post about how bad your life is and your family is then you brag about new rvs new laptops new phones and now new computers.

Erik's RV Blog said...

Anonymous, I don't know what blog you're reading but this blog does not contain posts about my life being bad or my family being bad.

If posting about buying something on my own blog is bragging, then guilty as charged I guess. Not sure what you would expect me to blog about but honestly, I don't care, I don't answer to you.

If you don't like what you see, then please by all means leave and find another person to whine at.

I have a rhetorical questions, why is it some people only comment if they see a blog about Obama but not about anything else? Why is it some people have to go to a persons blog only to whine and complain?

I have theories but seriously, it's just a blog... who cares.

Anonymous said...

So you don't remember complaining about your family or how shitty your life is?

Ronda said...

Funny...hmmm...I went thru some of his past posts and except for asshat I haven't seen anything bad about family or how bad our lives are. We actually have it pretty good. Not bragging, just saying we are able, healthy, working and paying our bills. We have wonderful friends and family and a strong support group surrounding us and we are truly blessed by God to be here and to be able to help others when help is needed. God is in our lives every day helping us to help others. By those means we are also getting help when needed. By Erik posting some of the stuff he's posting, it's more informative than anything. Taking it any other way isn't his fault. I would stop reading into things and just read it for what it is OR...just don't read it all and go away. ;-)

Erik's RV Blog said...

Either way, whoever it is needs to seriously not worry about what I'm doing.

If me building a computer, replacing an old cell phone or replacing a 14 year old RV is that bothersome then I don't know why they choose to obsess about it.

Anonymous, complaining about something is not the same thing as life or family being "bad" or "shitty".

Sheeesh.

Bob said...

Well, I'm just going to say, "You're no help!" And by that I mean, I have to decide on a new computer, but I couldn't even begin to make the choices you've made, due to the lack of depth of knowledge.
I think *once* I added a hard drive to a PC. Once. And that had me damned near crappin' my pants. It worked. But that was about four computers ago.
Problem is, I don't even KNOW what I want. *sigh*
Oh and, I don't think I've ever heard you complain. Well you know, by "heard" I mean "I've read", or something.
Haters gonna hate.
I don't accept anonymous comments any more, even though they were mostly trying to sell me something.

Erik's RV Blog said...

Bob - I'd be happy to help you with figuring out your new computer, just let me know what you're looking for and your budget and I'll help you figure it out. ;)

I allow anonymous comments because a few friends post that way and I don't want the few that post their dribble to win.

I have posted a few family situations on my blog and after I vented I deleted them. I don't remember those posts as hating my life or my family in fact I posted that I love all of them and this person knows this.

I think some people are just perpetually pissed off, I don't get it.

Anonymous said...

Erik, I enjoy your posts. I've been following your blog for some time now; I stumbled across it when doing a Google search for rv shows and you posted about one at the Lake County Fair grounds. I'm submitting this anonymously because I don't have a blog (yet). I don't know if I would have enough interesting things to write about. Anyway.... maybe the (other) anonymous poster got your blog mixed up with your brother's?
Vic

Erik's RV Blog said...

Anonymous - I never thought of that, I haven't read my brothers blog for quite some time so I don't know but anything is possible I guess.

Go ahead and start a blog, it's not about what people find interesting, it's what you feel about posting.

I don't blog to be interesting (duh right?) I do it to vent, like I did today and to track events going on in our lives so we can look back down the road.

Start the blog, you'll be happy you did.

Big Matt said...

I would have suggested Asus anyway, as they're basically the OEM that has taken over the high end board models we used to build. MSI is a good second, I built a system for my folks using their Third Gen I core board, I forget the Z series number that it uses.

Technologically in PCs, the third gen I series CPUs are the only thing that really changed as they created a new type of transistor for the CPU that hadn't been used in the previous generations, but can still be used in Gen 2 Boards, gen 4 is just the continued progress onwards from there.

Given that the model names haven't even changed (x770k has pretty much been the sought after top ender i7 since it was just the i7-770k. The first number simply designates generation, the last three and the letter designate the actual CPU model :p).

Erik's RV Blog said...

Matt - Was that class for me? Dude, been in this game a long time, know it well. :)

Hey, if you happen to have either the 3930K, 4930K or 4960X laying around... they could go into a good home! :)~

Big Matt said...

Sorry, just me given an automated response :p. Successfully got myself sick during this weeks furlough.

I play with Xeons these days, usually in just about every OEM system that comes around, though I have a permanent hate for blade servers.

Erik's RV Blog said...

Matt - No worries. Hey Xeons are fine, I'll take them as well!

I'm actually looking at either an HP Z620 or Z820 as well. I love their designs but they're expensive.

I understand your feelings about blades, truly I do.

Big Matt said...

My favorite so far has been a quad Xeon 8 Core (32 cores total) Dell Rack Server, followed by the classic T620 dell Ghostrider tower (For stability, its been the best in the lab) with 16 cores of processing power.

Erik's RV Blog said...

Matt - The T620 is a nice box, I have never used one yet though.

Erik's RV Blog said...

Matt - Do you know where I can get an X5690 without getting bent over for it?

Big Matt said...

Cheapest is usually Newegg, if they even have it. I'd stay away from anything that's for less on Ebay, as there's a good chance it may be stolen testing hardware that was supposed to have been ground up and likely not very stable.

I touch basically every product the OEMs make, currently work on Intel's Network Adapter Validation team, so I've worked with just about every OEM product out there.

Our lab either owns one or two of it, or we have the OEM send us one or two on "loan" until the hardware is too old to be of any use (FW updates usually render some of the earlier hardware inert as the parts are not production coded).

Erik's RV Blog said...

Matt - Agreed, I did find a guy selling a "confidential" X5675 CPU for an insanely low price. I think I'm going to go with my original plan and use the 4770K, it opens my options and is plenty powerful for my duties and I can clock it up a bit as well.

Big Matt said...

Amazon has a few from a reseller on there for about 1,600, it looks like Intel discontinued or rebranded the Westmore-EP Series of CPUs.

Erik's RV Blog said...

Matt - Yeah, for that kind of coin I can build a system based on the 4960X. I'd love to go twin E5-2690 V2's, can you imagine the fun that would be?

Big Matt said...

Quite epic :).

Erik's RV Blog said...

We're such geeks...

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