Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire For those into building PCs

Sitting at my desk Monday online.

Snap, crackle, pop, screen goes blank ... look over at my PC, and motherboard is on fire. Flames. Smoke.

Pull cord. What the ...?

IEEE 94 connection must have shorted. Probably too dusty. Mobo toast.

Got 11-plus years out of that build. Sandy Bridge 2600K. Salute!

Fire extinguisher protocol refresh time.


Now putting together a new build. Been chin deep in research mode :

I7-12700K
Giga Aorus Master (going with DDR5 - 32GB Corsair)
2TB 980 Pros (two for now, but no plans for RAID)
Noctua D15S (canceled an order for Corsair Liquid setup)

Gonna try to salvage my old Corsair 800D case, 4-5 Noctua fans, checked the Corsair 850W PSU with the paper clip trick yesterday and seems fine .. fan still quiet, etc.

Contemplating GPU and mebbe a new monitor.

Trying to avoid Win 11.


Once the new machine is running, may try to find a used mobo on the ‘bay and see about reviving the old machine. I know someone who could use it.


And that’s the way it is here today ... once-per-decade geek-a-thon ongoing.

Signing off from iPad ...

Well, good luck with that, Rick.

I just try to buy one that works every 11 years or so.

Got a dated XP machine that I'm hoping holds up for a while longer. Not enthused with Win 10, or 11 and I don' relish the though of clear out all of the un-needed MS BS, and loading all of the other apps I commonly use.

Bummer, but I lean toward having a 2 or 3 year warranty. If the unit goes tits up I just call the service desk. Still use a 2004 Dell work station here. A $7K machine but well worth it.

Liquid cooled and overclocked? Gonna "AI" it or you thinking more sedate?

I like the older Lenovo thinkpads.

Got a t470s that several years old.

Loaded Manjaro on it.

Computer towers are dust vacuums and most sit on the floor only compounding the problem. As all modern processors are power hungry bastards and generate tons of heat, dust buildup becomes very problematic. But I have never seen it to the point of combustion.

Twice a year I pull the case cover and blow off the guts using an electric leaf blower. Yes, some folks frown because of the possible static discharge potential, but after doing this for 20+ years and multiple towers, I have never had a problem. I've tried canned air, but it's not strong enough to get into every nook and cranny. So 20 seconds with a leaf blower and job done - outdoors of course.

Rick - Hope you had a current backup.

AI as long as it feeds.

Turns out my liquid cooler order was not canceled quickly enough so I’ll have two coolers in hand from which to select, then I’ll return the other ... probably opt the Noctua. It cools within a hair of liquid and has a much longer expected life, plus less failure points.

Geek-a-THON.

That I do, plus I run a boot drive and separate storage drives. Gonna be updating some of those too. Despite recent issues, memory is still cheap ...

Reminds me of your AC Compressor water cooling geek out.

You’d hit a man with glasses ...

I just switched out all my HDDs to SSDs. Things move faster with SSDs plus I offloaded about 4 TBs worth of picture and video files to SSD storage.

My next build will be water cooled for sure. Heat is a chip killer.

My PC's are as old, or older. On the verge of replacing them.

Have been using Windows 10 for quite a while and like it fine. Is there something about 11 that would make it a bad replacement?

You KNOW what I'm going to say here. As the resident semi-official Linux Missionary, I will try to convert all you Windows heathens to the One Bright Path to Enlightenment.

If this is the machine from which you run the entire Campfire, Rick might look at Fedora. It's designed for programmers. If it's just an everyday driver, Linux Mint or MX may suit you admirably. Put any of them on a 4Gb USB bootable stick and run them in live session for a test drive. Pick the one you like and only then run the Install.

For someone with an XP machine, your choices are limited if it is still 32-bit. The best might be Linux Lite. If it's old but a 64-bit machine, I highly recommend Zorin Core or my personal fave, Linux Mint.

ANY of these will get you free of the Microsoft slavery yoke, will look and feel comfortable, and the included apps will be 100% compatible with your existing documents, photos, and music files.

LINUX MINT LINUX LITE ZORIN MX LINUX FEDORA

Nothing wrong with Win11 as long as you enjoy being a Beta tester.

I am not switching from Win10. If it ain't broke...

No offense RR, but as I am a heavy Adobe Photoshop user, Linux is a little cumbersome - I know it can be done, but...

Nothing wrong with W11? You have just proven beyond doubt that you are the Campfire's village idiot.

GIMP is the completely free photo editor that's at least as powerful and versatile as Photoshop. It comes installed on may Linux distributions, or is a two-click download and install. Almost all Microsoft apps have FREE and 100% compatible Linux options.

My FIL likes to fiddle with computers and builds a new one every three or four years. He almost always wants to give me the one he's just quit using and there is never a danged thing wrong with them. I'll use the one I'm on now until it starts giving me problems, then move on to the one he gave me last year. By then I'll probably have another one waiting in the queue.

Ummm maybe try and complete the sentence - as long as you enjoy being a Beta tester.

Sorry my mirth went zipping over your head.

Pretty elaborate way of confessing that you're posting while on the clock..

Second geek to fess-up today..

I can't and won't try to detail all the abhorrent things about Microsoft/Windows 11 here. But just a few of them are that it tracks you mercilessly; limits what you can and can't run as software; is the #1 target for malware, virus, and hackers; charges subscription fees for most software; and now with W11 cannot even be installed on machines more than about three years old.

Linux is NONE of those things.