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new PC build

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

About 18 months ago I wrote a piece about building an old PC into a modern workstation. When in Toronto earlier this month, I tore down my previous build - from 2017 - and brought virtually all of the components to Tokyo. As soon as I got back I ordered a new system case and have now made a mashup of the two systems.

Toronto system contributions: motherboard; CPU & cooler; RAM; power supply & cabling; BRD burner. Parts I brought but didn't use: two old hard drives that turned out to be blank; two systems fans; some minor cables.

Tokyo system contributions: data hard drives; GPU; PCIE USB 3 adapter. Retired: motherboard; CPU & cooler; RAM. Also the case, which I'm now going to dispose of. One component that didn't make the switch was the boot drive. This is a fair set-back but I was able to restore a bunch of things like my configuration of the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

The result is a system that has all of my data but the much improved modern components and vastly quieter running. I can barely hear the new system - for reference it makes about as much noise as the crickets and the breeze outside.

There's one more component available, and that's an M.2 NVME boot drive that's sitting in my wife's disused old Dell laptop. Sadly my five-year-old system doesn't support "Key B" NVME cards. Maybe it'll go in The Boy's gaming rig.