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.

GPU prices are stupid high

helped my son build a gaming computer over the winter. We went AMD for the CPU and Nvidia 3060ti.

My last build was about eight years ago. I lean heavily toward AMD processers and graphics.

I can usually hold a build to less than $1200. You can get components which were state of the art 18 months ago, and would have cost $10,000 then.

But, I don't do combat flight sims, or attack sub sims anymore. 99% of what I do on the computer today is done on an Asus Tuff Gaming laptop.
Rather than build a new system, I think my next project will be new operating systems on the old desk top. Win XP Pro, and Linux on a dual boot system.

Gaming is much improved on Linux now. I don't do that, so I can't vouch for how good it is. But there are thousands of verified games using the Steam add-in. If you set up a dual-boot with Win and Linux, you may soon wipe out the Win half.

For games, I might recommend trying Pop! as your Linux distro.

Lol and here I was dreading windoz 7 so I went experimenting with Linux and never looked back.

I used to leave a couple of systems running all the time until like you I had one catch on fire while I was home, I no longer leave any running if I'm not home.

The system I have in the loading room is an I7, 16 gig of ram, SSD boot drive, and Ubuntu 18.04 is up and ready inside of 12 seconds so no need to leave it run.

Glad it wasn't any worse.

#geekontheloose

Despite Rocky's commentary on the horror which is Windows, I've had Win11 running on a couple of spare laptops and its just a continuation of Win10. We use MS at work and its too much of a pain to run Linux in parallel. I have run Mint and its fine as well. Just easier at the moment to stick with Windows since I'm working in it all day every day.

There more expensive and have a lot of stuff hidden from the user, but macs are pretty good. The are just like a Linux machine but have software like a Windows machine.

Hope it all works out, not sure i know enough to attempt to build a system.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Build a system!😂😂😂😂😂😂


Only read the thread to see what I could pick up.
There were words understood, and a bunch of Charley Brown's teacher.
Wish I understood this stuff, but another rabbit hole? No!

Thanks Rocky. The system in mind already has two HDDs divided into five partitions plus an SSD for boot and often accessed programs. It would be easy to make it dual boot

My idea of gaming is far from typical. I absolutely will not do online stuff. My Software is all DOS based, written for Win 95/98.

Titles like Janes 688i, Dangerous Waters, Falcon IV, Janes USAF, Janes IAF, Janes F 15.

No, I really was not pretending to be a pilot. But WAS very interested to learn about the capability of various weapons systems and data links, as they are modeled by Janes.

In six months I will be retired and thought I might see if I can rekindle the interest in these titles. There is not really anything coming from the publishers which is comparable today.

Most people using this software on modern systems run it in an emulator. I have not attempted to set up an emulator. Nor do I know how Linux will play with DOS software. Perhaps an emulator will run in Linux.

I have lots to learn.

The easiest way to learn about home computer tech, and available hard/software is to pick up and read the PC Gamer mags. I do so for about six months each time I contemplate a new PC. That will tell one what has become available in the market.

I shop Newegg.com

I'll I know is that superman can beat up Spiderman. That's were my geek knowledge ends.

Bb

AMD 5600X water cooled.

Radeon 6700XT 12GB.

Gaming machines are VERY high-end, with capabilities way WAY beyond what the average home user really needs. Let's face it, most home users use a computer solely to access the internet and maybe do a letter or spreadsheet or two. For those people neither Windows nor MAC with all their bloatware and tracking are not only excessive but undesirable.

If you are work-at-home engineer or such, you may be required to use Windows and a bunch of proprietary (expensive) software. So Linux may not work for you. But for the rest of us, we can load almost any Linux distribution and hardly know the difference from Windows. Except that Linux doesn't crash, doesn't kidnap your machine to do updates, and has totally free software.