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RjL190365
Legend
July 5, 2020
Question

Day of Reckoning for my now-disused secondary PC...

  • July 5, 2020
  • 11 replies
  • 1221 views

Finally, the day of reckoning for one of my two current desktop systems has arrived.

 

Since my mini-ITX Intel i7-7700 system is hardly being used any more, I will be retiring it completely, and possibly donating it to somebody who needs a fairly recent PC. This came because I have no room whatsoever to put a second monitor on any of the desks in the house. My brother's desk already has a monitor, but he still has a 4th-Generation i7-4770 CPU that's in his Dell system that was purchased back in 2014 though the GPU that's currently in that system is a GeForce GTX 750 Ti that I gave him a few years ago (upgraded from a GT 635 1 TB card that was originally in that system).

 

So, my current plan is to give him the GTX 1650 SUPER that is currently in the mini-ITX box (and thus give that first-generation Maxwell 750 Ti card a well-deserved retirement, into the spare parts bin). The soon-to-be-donated i7-7700 bread box will be equipped with both integrated graphics and maybe either a GTX 1050 Ti or a GTX 1060 6 GB card. My brother does not run any video editing software whatsoever; he plays mostly games (flight simulators, mainly) and the occasional Photoshop job. The reason why I am doing this is because I do not want to mess up his personal settings and software configuration.

 

Alternatively, I might actually upgrade the innards of my mini-ITX PC while keeping my brother's PC exactly the way it currently is. That way, I will have a second, recent-generation PC for when I move into my own quarters (and used for the occasional basic video editing job when my main PC is tied up in another video render/exporting job). I am currently thinking about an Intel i5-10600K with a Z490 mini-ITX motherboard.

 

And there will be no way in the world that I will put in an i9-10900 or 10900K in that system, as I do not want my secondary PC to outperform my main PC (as my i7-7700 did when I was still using a 4th-Generation Refresh Intel i7-4790K CPU in my main PC until seven months ago).

 

Any thoughts or suggestions?

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    RjL190365Author
    Legend
    July 28, 2020

    As of now, my plan has been officially scrapped. I found out that I could no longer resell my old innards for anywhere close to the cost of a completely new entry-level Intel i3 CPU/motherboard combo. The value of old Ivy Bridge CPUs have dropped with the 10th-Generation i3's outperforming non-overclockable Ivy Bridge i7's like mine. And getting inside my brother's PC is a little tougher than I would like, so his PC will remain on its current older-generation components until he decides or gets forced to upgrade.

     

    And since I will have a very difficult time selling my old CPU and motherboard, I will instead update those two components, and when I do move into my own place, I will use the mini box for basic editing tasks while my main machine is churning away rendering and exporting.

     

    And after the (admittedly minor) troubles that I had getting my current AMD system stable (especially at higher memory speeds), I will be sticking with Intel for this mini-ITX refresh. And with the GTX 1650 SUPER that's currently inside that system, I do not want too much of a CPU for that mini box. Probably no more than an i5-10600K and a Z490 motherboard (but more likely an i5-10400 and an H470 motherboard).

     

    I may or may not purchase the parts until just before I make the relocation.

    R
    RjL190365Author
    Legend
    August 4, 2020

    Another change in my plans:

     

    Since mini-ITX is a pain in the butt to work inside of, I will be officially scrapping any future plans for it. Instead, it will be donated to a friend or another household member. A GTX 1060 6 GB card or no discrete GPU at all will go inside of it. I will, however, be keeping my GTX 1650 SUPER for a soon-to-be-realized new build using my previous AMD motherboard (an Asus PRIME X570-P, which I had replaced in my main system with an Asus ROG STRIX X570-F GAMING). It turned out that it wasn't the motherboard at all, but my memory, that was unstable at its advertised speeds. This system will be getting either a new 6-core Ryzen 5 3600XT or my current Ryzen 7 3800X, depending on my total build-completion budget. It will also be getting a new case and a new power supply. Both of these systems will move with me to a new place to live.

    R
    RjL190365Author
    Legend
    August 15, 2020

    Another swing and a miss! I still have that mini-ITX Intel quad-core build as of now. As such, my future plans with desktop computing have changed yet again.

     

    Only this time, it will be the opposite: Since I might not be moving my current main system to my planned new smaller place due to space issues, I will be using my mini-ITX box instead as the housing for a completely overhauled new build for my new main system. (I am planning to ditch the existing components inside that build - an H170 motherboard with a now almost four-year-old i7-7700 CPU, its 16 GB of DDR4-2400 RAM and a liquid cooling system as the cooler was poorly integrated into my mini system - the cooler's fans eat up the only fan mount in the case, and it was oriented as intake.) And since this will almost certainly be an Intel CPU-based build, it will have a Z490 chipset-based mini-ITX motherboard and an Intel i9-10900K CPU. My two m.2 NVMe SSDs, the 64 GB of RAM and the GeForce RTX 2060 Super will be transferred from my current main system to the mini system.

     

    Alternatively, I can just revert back to my original plan of repurposing that mini-ITX box as my secondary editing PC. In this role, it will likely have a lesser i7-10700K or an i5-10600K CPU plus a Z490 motherboard. It will be equipped with 32 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM plus the GeForce GTX 1650 Super that's currently inside the PC box. The liquid cooler will, as I noted above, be replaced with air cooling (likely a Noctua NH-U12S). And this build is assuming that I will continue to use my current tower PC as my main system.

     

    Decisions, decisions...

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