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Evolution Complete!

Charlotte
May 14, 2018
2 min read

The moment I have been waiting for has arrived! My new computer is complete. And the best part? It's nothing fancy to look at. I opted for minimal visual and audible noise. Meaning, I eliminated the majority of RGB elements and bought a sound dampening case. However it is still quite loud when I stream due to my dual Radeon 6970s. These are very old cards at around 10 years old. Additionally, my stock cooler for the Rzyen 7 CPU is audible as well.

Depicted: RGB stock cooler for Ryzen 7, Dual 6970s, Corsair AX1200 PSU within the Dark Base Pro 900

I will be upgrading the GPUs to a singular GTX 1180 TI when it releases in July. It's going to be pricey but it will be worthwhile on the whole. That singular card can outperform my two Radeons and with a smaller voltage and audible footprint. When that time comes, I will also look at a closed loop water-cooling solution.

My old dirty PC with notably horrendous wiring. I couldn't wait to start gaming. I like to think that I've matured and learned delayed gratification.

The argument between air vs water-cooling has been debated for a long time. In the current state of things, air and water-cooling is generally interchangeable on the performance front. Especially, if you're not overclocking. However the innate properties of water-cooling is the ability to reduce audible noise. Therefore, I will consider it when I acquire the new GPU.

My old computer was a AMD 3.2ghz Hexacore with 24gb of DDR3 ram (forgot the frequency and timings), dual 6970s and the 1200w Corsair. I ran using a Revo 3 PCI-E disk drive. I replaced it when it failed I switched to a Samsung 500gb SSD. It still ran quite well, but over the past year there has been minor artifacting.

I have upgraded to 3.7ghz Octacore with 16gb of DDR4 ram running at 3200mhz (forgot timings again!). I bought into the M.2 craze with a 500gb Samsung. I'll be grabbing another in the case that I need more space. However, it would be housed without a cooling solution.

The plate in the center (shown vertically) is the heatsink for the M.2 drive.

It would have been nice if ASUS included another heatsink for a second M.2 drive. Anyways, so this is the current state of things. I'm awaiting for new parts to release and we'll see how my computer will shape thereafter. In the meantime, it can stream at 720p @ 60fps or 1080p @ 30fps. It can stream at 1080p @ 60fps with some minor hiccups due to being bottlenecked by my internet speed. Since that is not something I plan to upgrade soon, I am content with 720p @ 60fps. Since this is a streaming setup, I want to remain accessible to users who're watching my stream on the go and I feel 720p is the best compromise. FPS is many times better than resolution in almost all cases.

Thanks for reading my nerdy post. Check me out on Mixer and Twitch @LittlesTV