My Desktop PC's Upgrade History [picard]
During the years and for whatever reasons, my desktop PC has been upgraded. Here is its approximate history in chronological order...
circa 1998
My very first PC (after my Atari STFM and Atari STe) was based around a Cyrix 6x86MX, and probably had a very simple graphics card, a tiny hard drive and very little RAM in it. I really can't recall as it would have been circa 1998.
circa 2002
Obviously it was upgraded (or this page would be redundant), but I can't recall why I did - probably just because I needed more power, but the next one was called "kirk" and was like this:
| Motherboard: | Gigabyte GA-7DXE |
| Processor: | AMD Athlon XP 2100 (1.8GHz) |
| CPU Heat-sink: | Zalman CNPS7000V-AlCu |
| RAM: |
2 x Crucial CT6464Z265 512MB PC2100 DDR
(1GiByte total) |
| Graphics Card: | Some nVidia GeForce4 MX 440 card (eventually) |
| Hard Drive: | 40GByte PATA, file-system |
| Optical Drive: | I think it was pre DVD recorder |
| Wireless Network: | Netgear MA311 (802.11b) |
| Extra USB Hub: | Belkin F5U220vea1 (5 port USB 2.0) |
| Monitor: | Some 19 inch CRT monitor that I can't recall |
September 2007
I had the last desktop for several years and I basically just wanted to upgrade so that it lasted another 5 years or so! This was pretty much a complete upgrade, barring USB the card (as I gave the old one to my Mum).
| Case: | NZXT Hush |
| Power Supply: | Seasonic S12-430 (430W Silent 12cm Fan Series) |
| Motherboard: | Asus M2V |
| Processor: | AMD Athlon X2 6000 (3GHz) |
| CPU Heat-sink: | Zalman CNPS9700 LED |
| RAM: |
Corsair TWIN 2X1024-6400
(2GiBytes total, 5-5-5-18 timings) |
| Graphics Card: | Asus EN7300GT Silent/HTD/256M (nVidia GeForce 7300GT, 256MiByte) |
| Hard Drives: |
Hitachi Deskstar 7K160
(160GByte PATA, root file-system)
Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 (500GByte PATA, /home file-system) |
| Optical Drive: | LG GH22LS30 DVD RAM (with Light-scribe) |
| Wireless Network: | D-Link DWL-G520 (802.11g +) |
| Extra USB Hub: | Belkin F5U220vea1 (5 port USB 2.0) |
| Floppy / Card Reader: | TEAC FD-CR07 |
| Monitor: | Some 19 inch CRT monitor that I can't recall |
| Keyboard / Mouse: | Logitech Cordless Desktop Comfort Laser |
| Battery Backup UPS: | Belkin f6H350ukUNV |
December 2008
NEED MORE RAM!!!
| RAM: |
2 x Corsair TWIN 2X1024-6400
(4GiBytes total, 5-5-5-18 timings) |
May 2009
My CRT monitor is starting to flicker...
| Monitor: |
DELL 2209WA ( 22inch wide-screen, eIPS panel) |
May 2011
My graphics card was stumbling with full HD video playback.
| Graphics Card: | Gigabyte GV-N440D3-1GI (nVidia GeForce 440 GT, 1GiByte) |
July 2012
Ok, so I have a Raspberry Pi, but I then realised that my internal media reader / writer couldn't do SDHC so out with the old and in with the new.
| Media Reader: | Akasa AK-ICR-10 |
October 2012
After months of experimenting with various PATA combinations, I eventually came to the conclusion that the Southbridge in the PC was faulty as every now and then at random times it would just lock up trying to access the hard drive. So since Socket AM2 motherboards and DDR2 were pretty expensive (being legacy products), the natural choice was to upgrade to an AM3+ motherboard with DDR3 (with the addition of a SSD root file system just to speed things up a bit).
| Motherboard: | Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 |
| Processor: |
AMD Bulldozer FX-6100 (3.3GHz; 3.9GHz turbo) |
| RAM: |
Corsair Vengeance 8GiB Dual Channel DDR3 Kit CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9 (8GiBytes total, 9-9-9-24 timings) |
| Hard Drives: |
OCZ Agility 3 (60GByte SATA III SSD, root file-system) |
April 2013
With all of this media kicking around both my desktop and server, it was inevitable that I'd need more storage. So, a shiny new 3TB Western Digital Red for the server and a transplant of the 1TB Hitachi into the desktop.
| Hard Drives: |
Hitachi Deskstar 5K1000 (1TByte SATA, home file-system) |
August 2013
Not that I "needed" it, but before the price started to go up for DDR3, I thought I'd better fill my motherboard with the maximum it could take.
| RAM: |
Corsair Vengeance 8GiB Dual Channel DDR3 Kit CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9
(2 kits, 16GiBytes total, 9-9-9-24 timings) |
October 2013
I needed to be able to read these Bluray discs that I had...
| Optical Drives: | LiteOn iHOS104 BD-ROM |
November 2013
My graphics card has developed a strange fault - a software initiated hard reset, i.e. when logging out of X-Windows and the X-Server restarts. However at this point the PC display dies totally and the only recovery is to SSH in and reboot.
| Graphics Card: |
Asus GT640-DCSL-2GD3 (nVidia GeForce 640 GT, 2GiByte) |
October 2015
Well I finally get word from Indiegogo that my Plusberry Pi was about to ship and I thought that it would be nice to actually put a hard drive in the box as that's part of the point of the box. Howver, since I didn't have a spare one: upgrade the SSD in my desktop PC; transfer the old SSD from it to my Acer Aspire R3700; put the HDD from it into the Plusberry Pi.
| Hard Drives: |
OCZ Vector 180 (120GByte SATA III, SSD root file-system) |
January 2017
Working from home with a laptop, and using my monitor (with an simple KVM switch) meant that if I switched to my desktop PC, then the laptop thought that the monitor was disconnected. Time for one a bit more serious!
| KVM Switch: |
Belkin F1DN104Cea (Secure 4-port DVI-I, USB2.0, audio & CAC) |
July 2017
The PC had been intermittently locking up for some time, but then suddenly kept rebooting one day. Symptoms pointed to either the motherboard or the power supply - so I replaced both (well the new AM3+ motherboard that I picked really needed an extra 12V connector anyway!).
| Power Supply: | Corsair VS650 (650W low noise, 12cm fan) |
| Motherboard: | Asus 970 Pro Gaming/Aura |
| Extra USB Hub: | |
| FreeView TV Tuner: | Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-TD-500 |
November 2017
I decided that doing a lot of remote desktop access with a not quite full HD monitor was getting too annoying, so time to get one with more pixels! Well I'd had the last one for 8 years after all (and it will still get used somewhere in the house).
| Monitor: |
DELL P2418D (24inch wide-screen, 2560x1440 IPS panel) |
February 2018
There had been an annoying (and "that's about to pack in") sound coming from my PC. I suspected the CPU fan (well I've had it for over 10 years, and it's pretty much been running every day since), so time to replace it. I thought I'd try some water cooling this time - not a stupidly expensive system, but an all-in-one thing (well as in, a kit that contains everything required as opposed to buying seperates).
| CPU Heat-sink: | Coolmaster MasterLiquide Lite 120 |
March 2019
It had been over a year since I last did anything to my PC, so my itchy feet won (plus the price was ridiculously low compared to several years ago)!
| Processor: |
AMD Piledriver FX-8350 (4.0GHz; 4.2GHz boost) |
October 2019
The kids PC just felt a bit slow compared to my desktop - so a simple upgrade path: new (faster and more) memory for my desktop, and transfer the old stuff to the kids PC. So their PC goes from 6GiB of 1333MHz to 16GiB of 1600MHz.
| RAM: |
Hyper-X Fury 16GiB Dual Channel DDR3 Kit HX318C10FRK2/16 (2 kits, 32GiBytes total, 10-11-10-30 timings) |
November 2019
Not so much of an upgrade, but reusing a bit of kit that was in my box of bits. I was playing Portal 2 one night, and number one son complained about the noise (well, he was trying to sleep to be fair), so I though that I'd use my Sennheiser HD 4.50BTNC Bluetooth, noise-cancelling headphones, so I needed a Bluetooth adapter on my desktop. Also, with the wee lad getting a PC in his room I shuffled around the mice and bought a new one for myself
| Bluetooth: | Generic CSR 4.0 Low Energy |
| Mouse: |
Logitech MX Master |
December 2019
My motherboard (since getting this one) has always had an empty M.2 slot. So, with Black Friday sales on everywhere, I managed to grab a good spec one for a good price!
| Storage: |
Western Digital Black SN750 (500GByte NVMe SSD root file-system) |
March 2020
More of a down-grade this time: my media reader went faulty and was causing excessive boot times as the OS tried to work out what the device was. So it's been removed!
May 2020
During the a COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, I was spending rather a lot of time in front of my PC - day in, day out - for work and for pleasure. My circa 25 year old speakers were humming/hissing which was starting to grate. So I treated myself to a new pair - they sound very nice indeed!
| Speakers: |
Creative GigaWorks T40 Series II |
June 2020
Not a major upgrade, but one of the boys asked for an optical drive in their PC. When I found one and looked up its specs, I noticed M-Disc support. So I'll have that and he can have my old one with Lightscribe which never really gets used.
| Optical Drives: |
Asus DRW-24D5MT DVD burner with M-Disc support |
September 2021
I noticed in the S.M.A.R.T data for my spinning rust that it was starting to fail on reallocated logical sectors and mechanical start failures, so I thought I'd swap it for something a bit more solid!
| Storage: |
Samsung 870 EVO (500GByte SATA additional file-system) |
November 2021
An recent update to Fortnite (that I sometimes play with the kids) had a lot more detail in it, and I noticed the laggy graphics updates. I would have loved to get an nVidia RTX, but just couldn't justify the money. So, a half-way house upgrade.
| Graphics Card: |
MSI GTX 1050 Ti 4GT LP (nVidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, 4GiByte DDR5) |
June 2022
Since I've been playing a few more games running under Windows (shame on me, I know!), I swapped over the Samsung 870 EVO from my laptop. So, the laptop now only has 500GB, but my desktop has 1TB (as well as the 500GB NVMe drive of course).
| Storage: |
|
Computing Power
- Acer Aspire R3700
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- Desktop PC
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- Eee PC 901
- Gigabit Network
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- Kids PC 2
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