Building an AMD-based PC

by philg

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?
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Where are rich people from Massachusetts moving?

by philg

Happy National New Hampshire Day to those who celebrate.

During last month’s trip to Boston, I talked to a private banker who handles mostly $20-400 million accounts. He says that the relatively new Maskachusetts “millionaire’s tax” in which the progressive state finally has a progressive income tax rate (9% for income over $1 million) has provided quite a few of his clients with the final push that they needed to pack up and get out. “It’s happening slowly,” he said, “but it is definitely happening. It takes people a few years to get a move organized.” New Hampshire recently abolished its personal income tax (2025 is the first tax-free year; previously, the state was tax-free only for W-2 earnings) and it lacks an estate tax so I expected NH to be a popular destination (MA estate tax is 16%). It should, after all, be easier to move 50 miles than to move 1,000+ miles. “Florida is still the most popular destination,” the banker replied. “My California clients are moving to Texas, but from the Northeast they’re still going to Florida.”

What else did I see in downtown Boston before and after this conversation? Boston leadership in health care and pharma is evident from all the ads for home delivery of healing marijuana:

The folks who say that they’re passionate about social justice are content to simply stroll by any number of people who are reduced to sleeping on the sidewalk:

What’s across the street from this guy? A law school that says it has a “commitment” to social justice:

The advancement of diversity and social justice is a cause that many attorneys may address in their careers. Suffolk University Law School’s commitment to these important objectives reflects itself in the wide range of courses that address issues of diversity, inclusion, and social justice. While many courses at the Law School reflect these objectives, the courses gathered here are notable in that they are addressed in a particular way to this cause and will be of interest to students who wish to focus their careers on the advancement of diversity, inclusion, and social justice.

Instead of helping their homeless neighbors, however, the law school righteous decided to build themselves a fancy crib:

Michael Dukakis inaugurated a grand Massachusetts tradition in 1988 (US News):

(Unlike Tim Walz, however, Dukakis did not claim to have suffered PTSD after his tank ride.)

The locals were carrying on this tradition on the Boston Common, August 21, 2025:

Also, if you want to see where you non-Medicaid/Medicare tax dollars went to die…

A Downtown Pony:

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Wall Street Journal warns New Yorkers not to move to Florida

by philg

New York-based journalists love to write about how New York taxpayers shouldn’t flee to Florida and skip paying 14.8 percent state/city income tax, 8.9 percent sales tax, and 16 percent estate tax (vs. 6-7 percent sales tax in FL and 0 percent income/estate). Here’s a recent example, “The Worst Housing Market in America Is Now Florida’s Cape Coral”:

The median home price soared nearly 75% to $419,000 in three years, transforming the character of this middle-income community that for decades has catered to retirees and small investors. … Home prices for Cape Coral-Fort Myers have tumbled 11% in the two years through May

So the prices went up about 56 percent, over a five-year period. That’s before adjusting for Bidenflation. What happened in the U.S. overall? Prices went from 218 to 331 (source), a rise in nominal dollars of 52 percent:

In other words, for people who bought a house five years ago (the average tenure in a house for an American is about 12 years), what the WSJ calls “the worst housing market in America” outperformed the U.S. residential real estate market overall.

What Zillow shows is that the Cape Coral market was more volatile than the national average:

So Cape Coral actually has been a bad market for home-flippers who had the misfortune to buy in at the peak, but for the typical Cape Coral homeowner it has been a better market (albeit, not by much) than the average U.S. real estate market. What about for the elites who put the Wall Street Journal together? How has their Manhattan real estate done by comparison? Zillow:

(“New York County”=Manhattan)

So Cape Coral is objectively speaking the worst housing market in the U.S. (reported as fact/news by the Wall Street Journal rather than as opinion). At the same time, people who owned property in Manhattan fared far worse over the past 6 years or almost any time window within those 6 years.

Related:

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Righteous contempt as Florida follows Japan, Sweden, and Switzerland into non-coerced vaccination of children

by philg

ChatGPT:

Countries like Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the UK, and most of Scandinavia do not condition public school attendance on vaccination status. Japan – Vaccines are strongly promoted, but school entry is not denied for unvaccinated children. Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland – All Nordic countries besides Iceland follow voluntary vaccination policies for school entry. Switzerland – Vaccination is voluntary, and school entry does not depend on vaccine status.

“Which countries have mandatory childhood vaccination policies?” (Our World in Data):

A Democrat on Facebook:

What’s the punchline to this post? The author lives in… Japan, where childhood vaccines are optional. My response to him:

When do you expect the wave of unvaccinated death to hit Palm Beach, Coral Gables, Bal Harbour, Wellington, and Key Biscayne?

Note that Florida has a free “Vaccines for Children” program in which $200 million/year of injections are administered every year. Florida doesn’t have the highest vaccinate coverage rates for kindergartners, but nonetheless Florida has higher rates than the Orthodox Democrat states of Minnesota and Colorado (CDC).

The trailblazing 2SLGBTQQIA+ governor of Maskachusetts:

I personally doubt that the reduction in vaccine bureaucracy will have a large effect on standard childhood vaccination rates in Florida. People already had the option of opting out for religious reasons. Maybe the vaccination rates will go up if the lack of a legal requirement results in some additional creativity among the public health experts, e.g., free medical marijuana to any parent who brings his/her/zir/their child in for shots, convenient shot clinics at places where children are likely to gather. The Righteous assume that the only way to get humans to do something is to threaten them, but economists have found that very small financial incentives can create dramatic behavioral changes.

If we accept that the government has the right to coerce humans in the name of public health what I would do is force Americans to exercise and maintain a government-monitored BMI. Philip’s Shut-Yo-Pie-Hole System would use cameras and AI to make sure every American gets on a scale in the morning. If over 25 BMI then he/she/ze/they can’t get food other than broccoli at either a supermarket or a restaurant (control with a phone app and step tracker). Add one chicken nugget for every 5000 steps. There would be a chocolate ration of 20 grams (increased from the former value of 30 grams) for anyone with a BMI of under 21.

Loosely related, a friend in a discussion group in Maskachusetts let everyone know that he’d moved to Florida and a Democrat responded:

look on the bright side. At least you will live worry free in Florida: no state taxes, no climate change, no vaccines, and no one to tend to your lawns or clean your pools.

The emphasis on cheap/slave labor via low-skill immigration is fascinating to me. The American Righteous decided to fully open our borders to low-skill migrants almost exactly coinciding with the Age of AI/robots. (Of course, it is actually much easier to get labor in Florida than in Maskachusetts because chillin’ on taxpayer-funded housing, health care, food, etc. doesn’t pay as well in Florida as in Maskachusetts (see Table 4 in Cato’s Work v. Welfare Trade-off.)

See also

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The terms “safety net” and “dignity” as propaganda

by philg

Happy International Day of Charity to those who celebrate, especially Californians in the 50.3% tax bracket who could definitely afford to give some more! The UN says that we just need “Global Solidarity to Eradicate Poverty” (recent archive.org version of the page). There is no possibility of non-working humans breeding faster than money and other resources can be transferred from working humans. What kind of language can be used to persuade people who already pay taxes at the highest rates in human history to pay more and, ideally, voluntarily give more?

Americans don’t seem to like the idea of a “cradle to grave welfare state” yet that is what a significant percentage of us are in, sometimes for 4 or 5 generations. Right now about 40 percent of American births are paid for by Medicaid (formerly known as “welfare”) and the resulting children are on Medicaid immediately and, most likely, will be on Medicaid for the rest of their lives (health care doesn’t get cheaper; AI and continued low-skill immigration won’t make low-skill Americans more valuable as workers).

What kind of propaganda could be used to get people to vote for expanding our cradle-to-grave welfare state? How about calling what 40 percent of young Americans are on a “safety net”? You wouldn’t expect 40 percent of performers in a circus to fall into a safety net, but there is no law against using the term to describe what is, in fact, an all-day-every-day thing. Example from the former Treasury Secretary and El Presidente at Harvard:

He uses the term “safety net” three times in the linked-to NYT piece (as a Russian I know says about the NYT, “The difference between Soviets and Americans is that we didn’t believe the propaganda”) to advocate for an expanded cradle-to-grave multi-generational welfare state.

(Prof. Summers lives in Maskachusetts where, in fact, “Forty-eight percent of Massachusetts children are covered by MassHealth, according to a Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation report” (source; also says “The largest program in the state’s annual budget, MassHealth is also heavily dependent on money coming from the federal government…” (inequality is bad, but Massachusetts loves to take money away from poorer states by feeding at the federal trough!)).)

How about “dignity”? That seems to be popular now with advocates of transfers from those who work to those who don’t work or from successful hard-working societies to societies in which nobody need work (e.g., the Palestinians). When arguing for an expansion of transfers, one points out that mere survival (basic shelter, food, health care, education for kids) is not “dignified”. What would be dignified is a U.S., Japanese, or Western European standard of living.

Here’s a 2019 tweet from the Democrats’ thought leader:

“all people having power in the economy” presumably includes those who don’t work.

The UN Secretary General tweets that it isn’t enough for US and EU taxpayers to fund a 100% free basic lifestyle for Palestinians everywhere. If they never work they’re still entitled to “dignity” (in fact it is an “inalienable right” that can’t be forfeited via 75+ years of not working, periodic trips into Israel to kill, rape, and kidnap civilians, etc.):

Actually, according to the UN, all humans who do no work have a right to “adequate housing … and dignity” (source):

An “overcrowded slum” is not dignity. The UN article goes on to say that affordability is also a right:

Affordability: Personal or household financial costs associated with housing should not threaten or compromise the attainment and satisfaction of other basic needs (for example, food, education, access to health care).

The use of “dignity” in connection with building support for welfare state transfers and foreign aid transfers is, I think, fairly new. It seems to be effective also. Who could be against “dignity”?

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NFL teams are free to choose a social justice message for this season

by philg

ESPN:

The NFL is continuing its on-field social justice messaging for a sixth straight season.

All 32 teams will feature an end zone message of their choice at each home game throughout the season, selecting from four options: “End Racism,” “Stop Hate,” “Choose Love” or “Inspire Change.” Once again, “It Takes All of Us” will be stenciled in the opposite end zone for all games. The only change from 2024 is that “Inspire Change” replaces “Vote.”

It’s “an end zone message of their choice” but all possible messages that can be chosen have been preselected for the teams. A team that wished to say “End Poverty”, for example, would not be free to make that choice. (One great way to end poverty would be for everyone who currently spends money on NFL tickets to instead donate that money to the poor! Another great way would be for everyone who watches NFL games on TV to instead work a gig job for those hours and donate the earnings to the poor.)

Who will be watching tonight’s game, the first of the season, and can let us know what social justice messages were communicated?

Separately, if you’re watching an NFL game on CBS make sure to turn off the TV before the news comes on. Bari Weiss, a traitor to the social justice cause (former NYT journalist), is going to be corrupting what had been a socially just news organization (from the NY Post):

Apparently, journalists who aren’t progressive Democrats are so rare that it cost CBS $200 million to hire one. Just how Deplorable is Bari Weiss? Here’s a recent Free Press article that contradicts progressives’ most authoritative source for health-related information (i.e., the Gaza Health Ministry):

See, also, “Another Reason Not to Trust the ‘Experts’”:

The International Association of Genocide Scholars calls itself a body of experts, but joining requires only a form and a fee. Members include parody accounts like ‘Mo Cookie’ and ‘Emperor Palpatine.’

My comment on this august body of scholars:

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Harvard’s latest win in court and the New York Times

by philg

“Judge Rules Trump Administration Illegally Canceled Harvard Funding” (NYT):

Harvard University won a crucial legal victory in its clash with the Trump administration on Wednesday, when a federal judge said that the government had broken the law by freezing billions of dollars in research funds in the name of stamping out antisemitism.

The ruling may not be the final word on the matter, but the decision by Judge Allison D. Burroughs of the U.S. District Court in Boston was an interim rebuff of the Trump administration’s campaign to remake elite higher education by force.

What does the multi-page article lack? Any background information on this judge. Her Wikipedia page:

Allison Dale Burroughs (born 1961) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a United States district judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. She was appointed in 2014 by President Barack Obama. She is most notably known for rejecting the lawsuit Asian students brought against Harvard’s race-based admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2019).

It wasn’t worth mentioning, in other words, that her previous ruling in favor of Harvard, allowing them to continue to discriminate by race, was overturned by the Supreme Court. Nor did the NYT have space for “Obama-appointed” anywhere in the article, despite the fact that justice right now seems heavily dependent on whether a judge was appointed by a Democrat or a Republican president (all three Supreme Court Justices appointed by Democrats, for example, said that it was constitutional for Harvard to sort applicants by skin color).

Update: The Wall Street Journal does the same thing, e.g., in “Harvard’s Pyrrhic Legal Victory” (editorial) and “Trump Administration’s Cuts to Harvard Funding Are Unconstitutional, Judge Rules” (“news”).

(Note that I personally don’t understand why Harvard, which officially says that inequality is “one of America’s most vexing problems” is willing to accept any federal money. Harvard is a rich institution in a richer-than-average state. One would think that they’d seek money from the Massachusetts state government and ask that all federal money be redirected to less-wealthy universities in poorer-than-average states, e.g., University of Michigan.)

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Is it legal for the U.S. to destroy a Tren de Aragua boat in international waters?

by philg

If we accept the White House’s tweet as true, the U.S. military has destroyed a boat, some drugs, and some Tren de Aragua members (before they had a chance to enrich us via immigration):

Even if everything that the White House says is true, how is it legal to do this? We didn’t know for sure that these noble enrichers/merchants were heading to the U.S., right? They could have been going to some other country. Maybe there is some country on this planet where whatever cargo was in the boat was legal to possess. Or maybe the enrichers were going to dump the cargo overboard prior to docking and meeting for margaritas with Maryland Senator Van Hollen?

We were informed that we couldn’t drive an AC-130 up and down the coast of Somalia and destroy pirate vessels from the air, thus ending the Somali pirate industry at a negligible cost. We had to use multi-$billion Navy ships and board the Somali vessels, take the noble future Minneapolis residents into custody, etc. But now we’re allowed to do “Death from Above” in international waters?

I asked ChatGPT “Can a military legally destroy a boat that it knows to be carrying drugs if the boat is in international waters?” and it gives a long answer with the following conclusion:

A military cannot simply destroy a drug-carrying boat in international waters under international law. The lawful course is to seek flag-state consent, board, seize, and possibly scuttle—but not to sink the vessel outright with people or cargo on board. Destruction without consent or imminent threat would generally be illegal.

Maybe part of the answer, which eludes our future AI Overlord, is that the U.S. has refused to sign the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. We are, literally, lawless (see “Unmoored from the UN: The Struggle to Ratify UNCLOS in the United States”).

Loosely related…

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New York needed millionaires and it got migrants instead

by philg

New York has been substantially enriched by migrants in recent decades, especially from 2021-2024. After careful analysis, however, it seems that “New York Needs More Millionaires” (New York Times, August 28, 2025):

The rate at which New York State has been adding millionaires to its population in recent years has fallen below that of other large states, potentially costing the state billions in unrealized tax revenue, according to a new report from a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group.

At the same time, California, Florida and Texas had large increases in the number of people with annual incomes of at least $1 million residing in their states, all adding them at a faster rate than New York did from 2010 to 2022. The millionaire population in New York nearly doubled over that same time period, but it more than tripled in those other states.

Note that “millionaire” is not a peasant who owns a $1 million house outright, but rather someone who earns at least $1 million every year. The word has been updated for inflation, apparently!

There were about 70,000 people earning $1 million in New York State in 2022, with half of them living in New York City, according to the report.

Also, Ms. Eisner said the latest migration trends showed that millionaires were not leaving New York City and that, according to her research, they do not move in response to tax increases. Middle- and upper-middle class families — those in the $200,000 to $300,000 income range — are departing at the fastest rate, she said.

New York State added millionaire earners at a consistent rate from 2010 to 2022, when it had 69,780 tax filers with incomes greater than $1 million and about half lived in New York City. There were 35,802 millionaire filers in 2010 in New York State.

California stayed the top home for millionaires every year over that period, with an acceleration of top earners in recent years. It had 42,090 such earners in 2010 and 128,900 in 2022.

New York State had more top earners than Florida and Texas over that period until 2022, when those states jumped ahead. Florida had 19,450 people with $1 million incomes in 2010 and 77,670 in 2022. Texas had 23,859 in 2010 and 73,930 in 2022.

Considering that Florida has no Wall Street and is famous as a retirement destination (people tend not to earn as much in retirement as when they were working full time), it’s a remarkable failure that New York State now has fewer people who earn more than $1 million/year than Florida does. Does that mean California is the most successful? The New York Times seems to be unable to adjust numbers for population. Florida had a population of approximately 22 million in 2022 while California boasted 39 million humans (plus or minus 5 million depending on how the undocumented are counted?). Florida thus had a higher prevalence of earners over the $1 million threshold (1 in 283 for FL vs. 1 in 303 for CA).

A photo from my Lower East Side-through Chinatown-to Wall St walk, August 19, 2025:

On the Upper East Side, on the other hand, a diverse crowd in a rainbow of skin colors waits in line to get into the renovated Frick:

Speaking of the Upper East Side, across the street from the north side of the Frick is Emmanuel Goldstein’s former townhouse at 9 East 71st Street:

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20th anniversary of my bad idea for using a mobile phone as a home computer

by philg

Twenty years ago this month (i.e., two years before the iPhone), I wrote “Mobile Phone As Home Computer”:

What would you call a device that has a screen, a keyboard, storage for personal information such as contacts, email, documents, the ability to play audio and video files, some games, a spreadsheet program, and a communications capability? Sound like a personal computer? How about “mobile phone”?

A mobile phone has substantially all of the computing capabilities desired by a large fraction of the public. Why then would someone want to go to the trouble of installing and maintaining a personal computer (PC)? The PC has a larger keyboard and screen, a larger storage capacity, can play more sophisticated games, and has a faster communications capability.

If you are an architect and want to run a computer-aided design program, the PC is great. If you are an electrical engineer and want to design circuits, a PC is great. If you are a filmmaker and want to edit video, a PC is great. For all of these customers it would be difficult indeed to supplant the PC. For a large segment of the market, however, the PC represents confusion, misery, and wasted hours.

The PC is a scaled-down circa 1965 mainframe. The hardware engineers have done a brilliant job in changing the way that the circuits are constructed. The software engineers, unfortunately, have presented today’s consumer with much of the same complexity that professional programmers faced in 1965.

Why was it a bad idea? It’s been 20 years and nobody has been successful in the marketplace with anything like this. At least one prediction, though, has come true:

The PC industry, however, is seemingly unable to change. Nothing has been done to address the havoc wreaked on users except to build better desktop search tools for finding those lost files more quickly. You would think that the success of programs such as iTunes, MusicMatch, and Windows Media Player, which present a multi-categorized view of files in the underlying hierarchical file system, would inspire the authors of other PC programs but this seems not to have been the case.

The latest versions of MacOS and Windows 11 are more or less the same as they were 20 years ago, thus leading my unbiased team of fact-checkers (me and Mindy the Crippler, our golden retriever) to rate the prediction #MostlyTrue.

It would be substantially easier to implement my 2005 idea today because processing capability in the “dock” (a standard PC in disguise) would no longer be necessary for most users. And there are, in fact, a few unsuccessful products that have been built. From 2021, “5 laptop docks that let you use a smartphone like a notebook”:

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