My New Machine...

[Major Lee]

I built a new PC early last year. My old Windows 7 machine was just so slow and very old, and I really wanted to run a modern version of my video software. I researched modern parts and looked for sales. This is what I built:

Gigabyte Z790 Eagle AX motherboard

Intel i14700k cpu

Corsair Vengeance 64gb DDR5 5600mts

EVGA Supernova platinum power supply

Primary Drive: Western Digital SN850X 1TB (Windows 11 Pro, video, graphics, utility programs)

Game Drive: Gigabyte Aorus Gen4 2TB (flight sims, games, recreational programs, DLC storage)

Project and Working Drive: Cardea A440 2TB (video and picture storage, media project files, new finished projects)

TWO Seagate Firecuda 4TB HDD, 7200 rpm, 256mb, back up and storage.

Asus RTX4070 12GB video card

Soundblaster AE7 soundboard

Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 THX speakers

Arctic Freezer 36 black cooler with frame mount.

Pioneer bluray for my existing movie collection. 

The pictures below show the end result. I wanted really work on cable management and have everything clean and tidy. I got some colored power cables to help with that.  After I assembled the machine, I really didn't like the USB F-header sticking cables out perpendicular to the mobo, obstructing airflow. I thought "man, it would be great if someone made a 90° header". And then I realized I should just look on Amazon...

I really lucked out on the timing of this build. After I got it done, PC parts prices began to climb like a rocket, especially RAM. The memory I bought was $165; it is now $919 on Newegg. I guess I should have just bought RAM as an investment.

 

Edited Saturday at 03:00 PM by Major Lee
Added information

[Major Lee]

I have used the Vegas series of video editing software for many years. I wanted to run the then current Vegas Pro 22, which simply wouldn't run on my old underpowered Win7 machine. 

I did a little comparison test of my new machine and the old(!) one. I took a video project that I made in Vegas 12 Pro, and rendered it again on my old machine. This short music video of a song at a school concert was 4'11" in length. The old machine took 17 minutes to render via GPU. I ran the exact same project file on the new machine with Vegas 22 Pro. Using the CPU for rendering took about 90 seconds. Switching to the GPU, got me down to 35 seconds! So, my new machine on CPU is 11 times faster the old machine on GPU, and rendering only took 35 seconds on GPU, which is 29 times faster! I'm OK with that performance, for sure!

I installed Glarry Utilities, and got boot time down to 8 seconds. I used Rufus to strip Windows11 of corporate bloatware and unwanted features. 

[Flanker562]

My gaming laptop has an intergral CoPilot button, so I can't really get rid of it. Though I'm thinking I can try, but who knows with that embedded I may not be able to. I'd like to know what to safely get rid of, but overall I'm happy with what I have anyway.

[Major Lee]

Chris Titus Tech has a great YouTube channel with a huge volume of tech information regarding Windows. Lots of specific information regarding Windows set up and the various programs they install amd how to get rid of the garbage. 

https://youtube.com/@christitustech?si=Nqi106p5h6WAhRWh

 

[Flanker562]

Thanks, I'll look into him (subbed at least) sometime.

[Erik]

I've been thinking I need to upgrade but I'm still on the fence.

[Major Lee]

@Erik oh boy...  

 

[Erik]

I know what I have, no low-ball offers.

[GKABS]

33 minutes ago, Erik said:

I've been thinking I need to upgrade but I'm still on the fence.

I was thinking i was watching an old photo from the 2000 

[MarkEAW]

@Erik, you "might" be able to upgrade that to WinXP  Like mine!

[MarkEAW]

But anyways, Major Lee....I see you went with some real Hard Drives instead of something else. (I don't know anything really about new hard ware, just heard of SSD drives from several years ago, but I know there are other options)

So why the physical disk choice on your new system?

Edited Sunday at 08:00 AM by MarkEAW

[Wingcommanderwolf]

That PC is older than me.

[Flanker562]

SSDs are touted to be more reliable, but don't reportedly last very long (like a few years or so), so my laptop has two drives (both 2TB), one for some games, and the D Drive (the other 2TB), has DCS World on it exclusively, since it takes up some space, though they are working on map download sizes.

[Major Lee]

@MarkEAW My SSDs are listed in my description; a Western Digital SN850X 1TB for my primary OS drive, Cadrea A440 2TB for my working project drive, and a Gigabyte Aorus 2TB (SK Hynix) for games. The traditional HDDs are for backup. HDDs were half the price of SSDs, and work quite well for purpose. I did see different reviews on speeds for my SSDs, particularly from the YT channel "Tech Notice". My choice for OS drive and project drives was from info there. The Aorus drive was because it was available on sale, and plenty fast for its intended use. 

Thanks! 

[Major Lee]

This guy is a video creator and has made some seriously powerful machines for editing. His reviews are well done with lots of technical information. Seriously brilliant work by this guy!  

 

[Erik]

HDDs and SSDs both fail but for different reasons, HDDs are mechanical and SSDs are electronic and have respective failures. Today's storage media has SMART (Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) built into it which will report problems with these drives, available for both HDD and SSD storage devices. Most people won't monitor their disks and there are no idiot lights so it tends to be a complete situational awareness and loss of data for them. In my opinion an SSD's speed and storage ability far outweigh the spinning platters of yesterday's HDDs. Backups and monitoring are your defense points, if you're doing one or both you are far better off than doing nothing at all.

[Flanker562]

Good point, my laptop has such software, but I hardly look at it.

[MarkEAW]

Hmm, I have SMART on in the BIOS/CMOS, but I don't think windows 10 uses it. I think its using its own stuff to monitor the drives...I know I set something up before with in windows.

I have also SeaTools that reads the smart drive log. One of my drives, the game drive, says its failing, but I had it for 20+ years and its really fine. My other drive is also that old , it use to be my WinXP OS drive, thats fine too, no warnings.
I have seen windows check the drives a few times after a system crash, to recover data on the newer sata3 drive. (My computer is over 10 years old, some parts are 5 years newer.

Oh I also use a USB thumb drive as a readyboost drive. heh

Needless to say I use an external backup HardDrive(s) USB 3.0.

[Wrench]

Ok, now I'm interested ... is this built into winge11 or is a download??

even backing up monthly, and the machine only being a year old, I'm always wanting to stay ahead of any failures

[Major Lee]

@Wrench A variety of options are available...

https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/check-ssd-health-windows-10-11

[Erik]

Each disk manufacturer makes their own proprietary disk software. You can download and install per their instructions. Using a manufacturer's disk software may give you a few more values or options which are good for disk management if you need fix, move, or wipe a disk but if you're just looking to monitor you can use something like below.

Windows has a pretty decent free option called Crystal Disk Info. You can grab it in the Microsoft Store here: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/xp8k4rgx25g3gm?hl=en-US&gl=US. There's a quick tutorial of how to use Crystal Disk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej-5N81XXdg.

 

[Erik]

This free sentinel looks like a pretty nifty way to monitor your drives and it alerts you if there's a problem. Looks like a ton of information built into the GUI as well. https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/xpdnxg5333csvk?hl=en-US&gl=US

 

[Flanker562]

I'm pretty sure my laptop has that software, I remember looking at it and disregarding it when I got it, or my previous laptop though. It's new so I guess there's no reason why I should look at it now, but will look into it down the road.