The Last Build

For several years I have been contemplating building a new desktop computer. Looking back through my Newegg order history, I found that I had  been using the Intel Quad core Q9300 since May 2008!  Time flies ever faster these days.

The Last Build has been a wish-list on Newegg for at least two years; this May, with some heavy data analysis for CATOE on the horizon, I decided to pull the trigger, on an almost no compromise machine. That didn't include going crazy with whizzy graphics card, but did include:

• AMD Rayzen 7 1700X 8 core processor
• 64GB of RAM 
• Water cooling
• 960MB M.2 SSD (and no Winchester (mechanical) disks!) 
• Mint 19.1
• GIMP 2.10 (which supports 16 bit image files)

Issues so far include a problem with keyboard lag which for the moment is solved by plugging the mouse's USB receiver (!) into the front rather than the back of the box, Code::blocks crashing every 3 minutes or so, and the DVI-display port cable not working.

Otherwise the system is fast and quieter then the old machine. I am not going to overclock and have no case fans other than the two on the radiator, all in the interests of lowering the background noise. 

This configuration should last me at least until retirement (and probably the rest of my life). That's a sobering thought.