PC upgrade one more time
The front USB panel on my nine-year-old PC is no longer working properly because the ribbon won't stay properly seated on the motherboard. And that the sound hasn't consistently worked since at least when I upgraded to Windows 11 last year. For the past two years I've been running on an upgraded CPU (that I bought used). Today I found an upgrade path that leaves the existing case, RAM, cooler, etc as is, but replaces the motherboard and CPU. I will finally have USB-C for peripherals, PCIE 4 for my GPU, will be able to boot off an M.2 drive, and will triple the CPU aggregate performance while cutting 25% of the power draw. On the whole, I'd rather not be extending this old x86 system but at ¥43,000 it is far more effective than alternative that will keep me in photo and movie editing form.
One interesting thing that happened with this purchase was that Claude.AI was able to advise me on not only the parts but where to find them at a good price in Japan/China. It saved me ¥20,000, or about eight months of Claude invoices.