I've got a desktop PC and not afraid to admit it thread

[Funk]

Zod said:

I last upgraded it a couple of years ago. It's an Asus Rampage V Extreme, with an i7 5820K, 32GB of DDR4, Samsung 500GB 960 Evo as the boot drive and 1080 GTX. It's currently running at 4.2 GHz (just because it can). Watercooling is mainly EK with some Aquacomputer bits.

Very similar to mine:

Asus Z170 Deluxe, i7-6700k, Corsair H100i water cooling, 16Gb Corsair Vengeance 3200, Palit 1070 GTX, Crucial 500Gb SSD, EVGA 750 G3.

[rsv gone!]

i5-2500K
8GB Corsair RAM
GTX 1070 OC
A couple of SSDs and several HDDs
All in a Coolermaster Cosmos aluminium case. It is very large and heavy but runs very cool and quiet. (It's soundproofed as standard). It also has filters, so doesn't really get dusty inside.

I used to update my PC every 2-3 years but the i5 is a classic; it still plays the latest games at highest resolutions. I've had it since 2010 or 2011. I just update the GPU every couple of years.

[Slushbox]

This unthrilling picture is my er, dinosaur silent floor-top.

Motherboard, i3-2100 cpu (was an i7-2600K) and RAM from 2011. What's in it is a 'pro-level' Quadro Graphics card that cost £450 new in 2011.

It's used for reprographics and InDesign/Publisher, with two monitors and a couple of large A3+ printers, plus some audio editing.

Has onboard PWM fan controllers so is silent and only pulls 80 watts out of the mains. Only one fan, plus the PSU fan. No heat, no noise.

I built two of these in 2011 and both are still in daily use, with over 80,000 hours on each of the hard drives. (1 TB Seagate Barracudas.) Other brands are available.

Edited by Slushbox on Saturday 1st September 08:50

[Slushbox]

Mr E said:

All the kit lives in a cupboard. Desktop runs Linux. Xbox runs games.

Edit. Can build pc and make Linux work. Can’t make thumbsnap and iPhone play.

I fixed that for you on my little pooter:

[Mr E]

Slushbox said:

I fixed that for you on my little pooter:

Unseen; knackered old NAS providing music and photo stream/backup to other devices (primarily the media pc downstairs).

Yes, I’m aware all the cool kids are in the cloud these days.

[curlyks2]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

That's six years younger than the processor in mine, which I guess makes it officially upgrade time

[bloomen]

I have a desktop with plenty of bells and whistles but to be honest I only bought it for the fun of building it. I've probably used it for less than 20 hours since then. My laptops do everything I need.

If I got into heavy video editing or something no doubt they make more sense. As for gaming I'm a bit of a philistine and can't tell the difference between your ultras and your highs so if something struggles it gets turned down a bit.

[Slushbox]

bloomen said:

I have a desktop with plenty of bells and whistles but to be honest I only bought it for the fun of building it. I've probably used it for less than 20 hours since then. My laptops do everything I need.

If I got into heavy video editing or something no doubt they make more sense. As for gaming I'm a bit of a philistine and can't tell the difference between your ultras and your highs so if something struggles it gets turned down a bit.

Tech is almost throw-away cheeps now. My i5 laptop is 'faster' then the antique graphics desktop, but the 2011 desktop refuses to die. There's a creaking NAS somewhere which backs everything up. None of this fancy-schmany 'Cloud' malarky. :-)

I guess gaming is a more demanding hobby than slowly dragging text boxes around in InDesign, but the latter pays the rent. :-)

Electricity here is now very expensive, thanks to 'free' smartmeters, 'free' home insulation, and 'free' eco-windmills. So smaller is better for me, up to a point.

When the wee tin box finally emits magic green smoke and dies, I'll probably move over to a laptop with external monitors. But not yet.

[Church of Noise]

The only desktop I have left is built into a HTPC case (Antec Fusion Remote Max).

I am quite convinced it'll be the oldest running setup of this thread, as it's based on a desktop I built in 2006 using an Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard, running an Intel Core2Duo E6600 on a Zalman 9500 cooler.
The only thing that has changed a number of times over the years (besides the HDD that was switched for an SSD) is the graphics card, current one is an Nvidia Geforce 730 GT to enable the playback of 4K stuff.

It runs Win 10 Home and is perfect for general HTPC stuff and browsing.

[Arklight]

The neatest machine i have ever owned, feels wrong somehow

Corsair 400C Clear White Case
Asus 3XS X99-A II
Intel Core i7 6800K
16Gb Ram
Corsair Hydro H100i CPU Cooler
Founders GTX 1080 Ti 11GB
RMX650 CP-9020091-UK PSU
1500GB Samsung 960 Evo M.2 NVMe
2TB Seagate ST2000DX002 SATA

[curlyks2]

Church of Noise said:

I am quite convinced it'll be the oldest running setup of this thread, as it's based on a desktop I built in 2006 using an Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard, running an Intel Core2Duo E6600 on a Zalman 9500 cooler.

Not by much... Asus P5Q Deluxe with a QX9650 here (2007 launch, so one year after the E6600).

[Church of Noise]

curlyks2 said:

Church of Noise said:

I am quite convinced it'll be the oldest running setup of this thread, as it's based on a desktop I built in 2006 using an Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard, running an Intel Core2Duo E6600 on a Zalman 9500 cooler.

Not by much... Asus P5Q Deluxe with a QX9650 here (2007 launch, so one year after the E6600).

Vintage stuff in both cases

[Funk]

Arklight said:

The neatest machine i have ever owned, feels wrong somehow

Corsair 400C Clear White Case
Asus 3XS X99-A II
Intel Core i7 6800K
16Gb Ram
Corsair Hydro H100i CPU Cooler
Founders GTX 1080 Ti 11GB
RMX650 CP-9020091-UK PSU
1500GB Samsung 960 Evo M.2 NVMe
2TB Seagate ST2000DX002 SATA

The H100i v2 looks much nicer than my H100i. Very similar to my spec, do you think the M.2 NVMe is worth the extra cost in day-to-day use over a regular SSD? My board will take one, not sure it's worth the money though...

[AlexC1981]

curlyks2 said:

Church of Noise said:

I am quite convinced it'll be the oldest running setup of this thread, as it's based on a desktop I built in 2006 using an Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard, running an Intel Core2Duo E6600 on a Zalman 9500 cooler.

Not by much... Asus P5Q Deluxe with a QX9650 here (2007 launch, so one year after the E6600).

The PC my nephew games on started life with an E6600, which I later upgraded with a secondhand Q6700. It's been upgraded with several newer graphics cards over the years, an SSD, Windows, XP, Vista then 10, but still on the same Abit AW9D-MAX motherboard from 2006/7. It still runs all the games he wants.

Windows 10 and SSDs have given these old PCs a new lease of life and they run better than a new cheap laptop. I have got some newer hardware for him to use, I just need to get around to rebuilding it for him.

My current PC is a gigantic Dell T7500 from 2010, which I only bought in January. Upgraded the twin processors to X5690s and the RAM, all cheap 2nd hand stuff again and used my existing graphics card, SSD and USB 3 card and it runs my Oculus Rift no problem.

[Arklight]

Funk said:

The H100i v2 looks much nicer than my H100i. Very similar to my spec, do you think the M.2 NVMe is worth the extra cost in day-to-day use over a regular SSD? My board will take one, not sure it's worth the money though...

Unless you are really pushing the PC its unlikely you'd notice much different, i went for the M2 as it was nearly identical in price to the SSD drive option.

I use that drive for OS purely and the rest of the gaming data is on a separate SSD, all other data is on a standard drive and movies etc are on a NAS running Plex.

[mikef]

[redacted]

[Funk]

[redacted]

[SBDJ]

Depending on the workload I wouldn’t consider the real life difference from a decent SATA3 SSD to NVMe to be hugely noticeable personally.

How anyone could recommend a spinner over SSD is beyond me. I even bought a 4Tb SSD to stick in the laptop for secondary storage!

[RobDickinson]

I have a HUGE Silverstone ft02 with 5 disks in, total monster built in 2011 lol.

Just added a synology nas to shift some data to so I can build something smaller next year..

[ajprice]

Alienware Area 51 bought from Dell outlet as a me to me birthday present a couple of years ago. Starting to think of upgrades, probably a HD first as it's getting full of Steam games I haven't played yet

i7 5930K 3.5GHz
16GB DDR4 2133MHz RAM (4x4GB)
128GB SSD
2TB HDD
SLI GTX 960 2GB
850W PSU