We're mostly settled into the new-to-us house as of late June, which has really proven to be a wonderfully private, secluded refuge of comfort and all-around nerdery for both PROTH and me. We've got a handful of small projects and repairs to get taken care of this summer, but being real-deal homeowners feels pretty great so far. At the risk of being cliche, it already feels like a home to us, unlike the rental that was only ever a waystation of sorts – a place we lived while we sorted out jobs and longer-term plans, but were never really fully comfortable in.
I'm also getting a much better handle on the workings of my new department. We're knee-deep in one of our busiest times of the year, but I already feel as though I understand the extent and nature of this position far better at barely two-months in than I did after more than half a year in my previous role. A much narrower focus on contract management, account tracking/receipting, administrative support, and work on specialized IT-adjacent projects is much more so my jam. It's a challenging environment, but it also feels like there's room for growth, and I'm excited at the challenge of making this position my own and building out bigger-better-faster-stronger tracking systems and workflows in the coming months.
In unrelated nerd news, the core rebuilds for both my and PROTH's workstations are now complete. I tend to go for a tick-tock (or sometimes tick-tock-tock) pattern when it comes to upgrades, where the "tick" involves changing out what I consider to be mission-critical "core" gaming components – the CPU, motherboard, GPU, memory, and maybe the PSU if I'm starting to worry about its longevity – while the "tocks" are typically just a GPU upgrade every 1.5-2.5 years, and sometimes adding extra system memory or moving to a markedly faster kind of storage tech for the OS drive (like the jump from spinning mechanical HDDs to SATA-based SSDs, or the leap to their M2-based cousins). Core rebuilds tend to be far more expensive and time-consuming, since changing to a new CPU architecture generally requires an involved tear-down of the current rig and replacement of its highest-cost components, but the gains in IPC (and sometimes clockspeed and/or core count, too) can be pretty great when you're effectively going up at least 2-3 generations in processor tech at once. That's definitely the case here, and – unlike more modest, less cost-effective upgrades – I can really feel the difference in performance in all the right ways.
My now-demoted i7-2600K was a remarkably good performer for years, so it currently lives on in storage as a backup machine along with other similarly-retired (but still functional and compatible) components to serve as a hedge against catastrophic hardware failure with either of our new machines. There were worsening issues with PROTH's i5-3500K and its motherboard, so very little from that machine survived the culling aside from its PSU. Fortunately, serious hardware failure (short of direct lightning strikes or other environmental hazards) doesn't seem likely at this point, and the nature of my upgrade cycles makes it fairly easy to keep at least one computer's worth of prior-gen hardware in reserve at all times just in case.
As for the details, I opted for the second-gen Ryzen parts for this core upgrade. Namely, the Ryzen 5 2600X, MSI's X470 GAMING PLUS, and a 16 GB kit from the G.Skill Ripjaws V Series. While the additional gains in IPC, clockspeed, and power efficiency for the third-gen parts coming later this summer from AMD looked promising, I didn't want to risk being a first-gen(ish) adopter or have to wait until later July or August to take the plunge. Similarly, I didn't feel like gambling on there being adequate stock of the third-gen parts or whether or not they'd line up with their MSRPs, so that plus all the discounts and free bundled games (World War Z and The Division 2) made this a pretty easy choice. I had purchased a Black Edition EVGA 2070 RTX earlier this year, so that is part of the mix as well and also what I'll likely purchase for PROTH's machine (if need be) in the next few months.
The Ryzen 2XXX chips boost aggressively and run pretty hot, so I'm weighing supplemental cooling options right now. I'm not that excited about the closed-loop water cooling options currently available for AM4, but more case fans are definitely on the menu and possibly a higher-end HSF unit as well after further investigation. I can accept that these Ryzen chips just have higher operating temps, but I'd still like to rein them in a bit if it's practical and feasible to do so. Beyond that, setup was simple and the stock Wraith coolers from AMD seem solid and easier to manage than Intel's stock HSFs, which was a welcome development since I needed to (re)build two largely identical versions of the same PC in quick succession.
In short: the new machines are humming along nicely and more than pulling their own weight, which is just as well, since the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge chips they replaced were really starting to show their age. Plus, the occasional hardware refresh for headquarters never hurts.
Speaking of which: Orbital HQ, out.
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