There are so many new CPUs and GPUs out there and more coming this year. Has anyone got a mod planned for 2024? You know, something with a few nice pieces of hardware in them....
I've got an idea in mind, and some of the parts on hand....
Power is a necessary evil. Overcome your demons with more power!
A decent GPU is necessary if you plan to game a bit. I do plan to game a bit. I love World of Tanks - Blitz. This Radeon RX 7900 XT should be sufficient.
A few more tasty bits arrived recently. This is the newer AIO from Corsair and a few fans to pair with it in the case.
The TT Core P6 is still one of, if not my favorite cases to build in. I don't know if you remember my liquid overkill build. There is a ton of room in it and they make cool aftermarket parts for it. I had 3 pumps, 3 reservoirs, all the piping, with a little custom drilling, and all the components inside the front of that case lol. And put a custom water plate in the front. You can get very creative with the room inside that case.
Everyone needs some M.2 storage. I can't decide if I want the 2 TB drive as my system drive, or the 1 TB drive as my system drive. This will be a gaming machine though - most of the storage will be games from Steam.
That's what I ended up doing. The 2 TB M.2 drive is my games drive.
Yes, I need a gaming monitor if I'm going with an AMD RX 7900 XT video card. This one was on sale for about $250 on Amazon.
Good sound has been important to me, since I had worked at JBL in Northridge, California for a few years prior to attending university. These are still the best computer speakers for the money in my humble opinion. I now have ten sets. You heard that right.
I will start on this build soon. I have the desk area ready for it.
I did some building for a few hours yesterday. I started by removing the glass panels in my Thermaltake case and then I pulled the AM5 socket cover off and replaced it with a Thermalright machined cover. Looks snazzy!
Well, I've been busy this afternoon, here at Big Al Computers. I dealt with hand and finger cramps trying to connect everything up and you know what? The World-of-Tanks build booted successfully! I just finished playing a round of World of Tanks - Blitz before ending my efforts for tonight. There are still things to install and configure, like some decent wallpapers, change some memory settings in the BIOS and things of this nature. I'm so happy it booted up after one power button push and one reset.
I did some more configuration things, like installing iCUE and some wallpapers. I also placed one of my old tank models inside the case. I have a few more that I'm gluing back together - they didn't travel well back in 1991 when we moved here from California!
I changed out the base this morning, after finding my old drafting board from the university days of the early 1980's. I put black duck tape (two strips per side) on the board and the LED mouse pad covers the rest. This is better than painting those previous wooden boxes, especially since it's so cold out here in Northern Virginia lately. Yesterday, I played around with the iCUE configurations and selected the radar gif image for the LCD display in the water pump. It gives the machine a military look I think.
Last few adjustments today. I had ordered a World of Tanks mousepad from their store and it arrived yesterday. I knew this was a big mousepad with the Tiger II on it, but as they say, 'go big or go home'. Two of the monitor legs sit on top of the mousepad but it's really not an issue. I hope the silkscreened image lasts a while. I also did a BIOS update yesterday morning and reset the memory back up to 6000 MHz. (On my website, I took the picture after the BIOS update but prior to resetting the memory frequency via EXPO-1). I think this is now a worthy battle station!
This is the version we use in WWII Online:
Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger Ausf.E (Sd.Kfz.181) Tiger I - Tank Encyclopedia (tanks-encyclopedia.com)
