It’s time to retire my 10.5-year-old desktop PC, which isn’t able to run Windows 11.
Much as I hate to abandon a company that has been passionate about DEI, I think it is time to switch to the AMD side (way better for gaming, which I’m not allowed to do; somewhat better for productivity).
Workload:
- Adobe Premiere (not very frequently)
- photo editing
- training some AI models (if nothing else, I want to train and run a local AI model for photo library search)
- general Web browsing
- Zoom and Teams for work
- Microsoft Office
Dreams:
- 16 TB M.2 SSD (nobody seems to make this and thus the build below is what I think is the best 8 TB)
- as many USC-C ports as possible (3 on the back and 1 on the front seems to be the limit; ASR LiveMixer motherboard below was picked to get beyond the standard 2 on the back)
- reasonably compact case (currently have a Fractal Design Define 7 that is quiet, but absurdly huge)
- quiet
- built-in UPS that can handle outages of up to 30 seconds (typical Florida power outage is just a few seconds; I guess a 1-minute supply would be necessary to allow the machine to shut down gracefully if power is still out after 30 seconds; nobody makes this because consumers see that they can get 30 minutes out of an inexpensive desk-cluttering standard external UPS?)
- built-in CD/DVD reader (will give up for compactness and plug in via USB-C)
- built-in reader for SD and CFExpress cards (these don’t seem to exist either for 5.25″ or 3.5″ slots; there are some cheap/old readers that fit into 5.25″ slots that read old CF cards, but not CFExpress?)
Here’s my proposed build, with no case:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D 4.3 GHz 16-Core Processor ($671.99 @ Amazon)
- CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition 42 CFM CPU Cooler ($29.99 @ Amazon)
- Motherboard: ASRock X870 LiveMixer WiFi ATX AM5 Motherboard ($229.99 @ Amazon)
- Memory: Corsair Vengeance 128 GB (2 x 64 GB) DDR5-6400 CL42 Memory ($359.99 @ Amazon)
- Storage: Samsung 9100 PRO 8 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 5.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
- Storage: Seagate BarraCuda 24 TB 3.5″ 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive ($249.99 @ Newegg)
- Storage: Seagate BarraCuda 24 TB 3.5″ 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive ($249.99 @ Newegg)
- Video Card: Asus PRIME GeForce RTX 5080 16 GB Video Card ($999.99 @ Amazon)
- Power Supply: Corsair HX1000i (2023) 1000 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($239.99 @ Newegg)
- Monitor: Samsung Odyssey Neo G95NC 57.0″ 7680 x 2160 240 Hz Curved Monitor ($1499.99 @ Abt)
- Total: $4531.91
Questions:
- what is the best case? It would be nice if it can hold one or two addition 3.5″ drives (maybe just move a couple from my old PC), but this isn’t essential
- do I want the heat sink on the Samsung 8 TB M.2 SSD? It’s almost free and yet they sell the device with and without the heat sink (for mechanical fit?)
- what is the right video card to get? I think RTX 5080 is what I want and I think that it will drive the crazy huge double-4K monitor, but I have no idea which brand video card makes sense (the ASUS was picked due to being reasonably cheap and available)
- is the motherboard pick the right one? I might want to add a second M.2 drive some day. I can live with a max of 256 GB of RAM, I think
- any other improvements?
Blog related topic, #divorce: Kentucky divorce rates dropped 25% after 50:50 custody became the norm.
https://lavocedinewyork.com/en/news/2025/09/07/kentuckys-shared-custody-law-revolutionizes-divorces-but-raises-alarms/
Thanks, Anon. This confirms the classic “‘These boots are made for walking’: why most divorce filers are women” paper (Brinig and Allen 2000) https://academic.oup.com/aler/article-abstract/2/1/126/141123
PDF at https://www.bereanpatriot.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Divorce-Reasons-Study-These-Boots-Are-Made-For-Walking.pdf
(Women sue because they expect to win custody of the kids and all of the cash and noncash benefits that go with that victory.)
Re: built-in UPS
Comes standard with every laptop and smart phone. I never bought one because they used lead-acid batteries. Maybe they are li-ion now? We were thinking about a natural gas backup generator, our power goes off for days (water too after an inland tropical storm wiped out our supply). I bought a new laptop with Windows 11about 3 months ago for $350 on sale.
Re: DEI and intel
Intel mentioned rolling back some of it’s DEI “progress” in its last annual report, joining the DEI-reversing bandwagon. Also, the U.S. just invested $9B for a 10% stake in Intel with some small change it found in the couch (unused Biden-era “CHIPS and Science” funds).
“If you can’t enlist–invest–buy a Liberty Bond [or Intel processor]. Defend your country with your dollars.” — WWI U.S. War Bond Poster
Still a lot of money for a blog commenter. For that kind of money, who is actually going to use it? Greenspun doesn’t live permanently in FL but is a digital nomad.
HDDs redundantly configured in RAID for reliability? Suggestion: don’t buy 2 HDDs from same manufacturer, buy from 2 different manufacturers. When a HDD fails, it’s likely from a defect that will occur in other HDDs from the same manufacturing lot. If you’ve got 2 HDDs from the same lot, your RAID could experience 2 concurrent failures = data loss.
3 x 28” monitors for me. 1 central focus (active work tools) + 2 periphery (1 email/web, 1 source documents) neatly matches and delineates my workflow.
That is a lot of DRAM and disc space. If you want to do AI, it is the DRAM on the video card that matters. I would rather have an external disc server like Synology, or store data in a cloud service, with a fast internet connection.
The UPS can be external. You can get a $10 usb reader for sd cards.
I need the RAM for Chrome! If present trends continue it will be 2 GB per open tab soon. I have an external UPS right now to deal with the occasional thunderstorm power glitch. I’d like to clear up my desktop.
The politically incorrect Brave browser reports 79.1MB for the philip.greenspun.com/blog page.
The commenting system here doesn’t seem to use JS, because you can post with a text-only browser like links. That saves a lot of RAM. 🙂
My PC is an old I5-3570 and runs windows 11-pro without any problem. The only advice is tu bien the iso in. USB stick with Rufus and the proper settings
Mark: Thanks. I’ve heard that it can be possible to install Windows 11 on hardware that doesn’t meet the official requirements. However, I use this machine for 1500+ hours per year (a depressing thought! So many hours sitting at a desk). It will be valuable to me if everything becomes more responsive (right now File Explorer can be quite slow, e.g., for renaming a file).
Nobody has any ideas for a case?
I’ve got an email to my brother, who knows a lot about custom PC builds. He’s hard to get a hold of, especially by me. If he gets back to me before you’ve made a decision, I’ll post his ideas.
Have you tried NewEgg’s customer service to recommend a case? I mean you are spending a lot there, probably all AI, but you never know. https://kb.newegg.com/contact-us Might also be a retail PC builder near you, always good to support the locals.
I can’t remember who offhand, but there are some modder fanatics on YouTube who review high-end cases. Probably a lot of goo to sort through with that route. 🙂