Josh Writes a Blog

Category: technology

  • A Trip down RAM Lane

    A few years back, I thought it would be fun to try and construct a historical inventory of my PC computers. This stemmed from a nagging desire to track down the exact brand of my very first computer, which I eventually discovered was a Systemax AMD 2400 from 2003. I dubbed it the Fortress of Consternation. Or, rather, the machine was called ALBATROSS, but the hard drive inside the machine was named the FoC.

    Ol’ Connie was my PC from 2003 through 2008–I even shipped it across the country for a summer in 2005, when I was interning at a theatre in upstate NY. For reference: I didn’t own a laptop, couldn’t afford a laptop, and smart phones wouldn’t exist for another 3 years, and I would have gone insane without my computer. So I shipped it to NY from my mom’s work, saving me money, and then when I shipped it back at the end of the internship via a much more expensive UPS option, they wrapped it in a shitload of highly static cling wrap which guess what you’re not supposed to do. Despite that, I still used it for three more years!

    me with the FoC and one of those giant goddamn CRT monitors, circa 2008

    Most of my historical digging at the start was done by searching through my gmail account for anything labeled “tigerdirect” or “newegg.” TigerDirect was my computer parts website of choice back in the day, and whenever I had student loan money I would often spend it almost immediately and without any financial acumen there.

    This post is a retrospective of over 20 years of PC ownership. This is what the kids call a “long read,” so buckle up.

    ALBATROSS

    Bought: September, 2003
    Type: Desktop PC
    Cost: $600 ($1,060 in 2026)

    The story of my descent into PC madness begins as it usually does: with screw ups.

    In the beginning, I was using my father’s computer. We had a couple over my childhood, but based on my hazy memory, the last one I used was probably this tower, a Gateway Essential 600 which was from 1999:

    I’m pretty sure it was the 600, as the 450 was taller and had four drive bays, and I don’t remember having four. Anyway, for fun, here were the specs, at least the ones I could find on this Japanese website:

    • CPU: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz
    • RAM: 64MB (DDR? DDDon’t worry about it)
    • HDD: 5.1GB “UltraATA”
    • ROM: 24x CD-ROM
    • And the ubiquitous floppy disk.

    I’m seeing a 400Mhz Celeron version on eBay, but think we had a proper Pentium. It might’ve been a Pentium II, though. It’s hard to find this shit online! Gateways were super popular back in the day, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the above image was the exact thing my dad bought. (Also you could get a PC, monitor, AND keyboard & mouse, in a bundle for like $600-700! Insane!)

    (Side note: eBay resellers are calling PCs from the late 90s “vintage” and that is causing my eye to twitch.)

    Also, sorry, sorry, but these were the speakers that were with this computer at the time.

    I had these speakers for YEEEAAAAAAARS. I used them until … five years ago? Six? They were still good speakers, right up until the end.

    Okay. Anyway.

    The family computer was in the living room, which meant I could play games on it and only search Nefarious Websites for Risque Materials at night, after my parents had gone to sleep. I lamented about it in November 2001 on my LiveJournal:

    I hate having the computer in the front room, right across from the couch where he [my dad] sits, and when I ask if I can move it into the back bedroom, he says, “But then I’ll never see you.” I wanna say, “YOU SEE ME ALL THE TIME,” but I’m too nice for that. So instead I agree and go back to the comp.

    I’m sure this only worsened my teenage insomnia. Eventually I got a job and then started college, which provided me the sweet, sweet student loan money I would need to buy ALBATROSS.

    In April 2002 the family computer crapped out on us:

    Complete. Computer. Meltdown.

    That’s what occured in the past two days. The good news? The hard drive is clean. The bad news: It was reformatted. So who knows how much countless crap that I had that is now gone. Thank god for Zip disks is all I can say.

    Ahhhhh, ZIP disks. I still have some! Which is to say, my mom saved them and gave them back to me. I don’t have a drive for them, either. Oh well.

    Despite the meltdown, I still didn’t buy a PC until the following year–or, rather, I attempted to buy a laptop that ended up being backordered, so I canceled it. A Toshiba Satellite, Intel Celeron 2.0 with 256MB of RAM and a 30 gig hard drive. A friend berated me in my LiveJournal entry for getting a bad laptop. Well, I never got it in the first place! So there!

    That was my first screw up. The next is that I bought two computers at the same time. I first bought a Gateway because the ’99 family computer was a Gateway. Pretty sure it was this one, the 310S, which was the cheapest option at the time:

    For reference, here were its specs:

    • Intel® Celeron® Processor 2.6GHz with 128K cache
    • 256MB DDR SDRAM
    • 40GB ultra ATA100 5400rpm hard drive
    • 48x/24x/48x CD-RW/DVD combo drive
    • Gateway Micro-Tower Case
    • 3 PCI Expansion Slots
    • (6) USB (2 in front and 4 in back are version 2.0)
    • Parallel, Serial and (2) PS/2
    • 17″ Color Monitor (15.9″ viewable area)
    • Integrated Intel® Extreme Graphics with up to 64MB dynamic video memory

    After purchasing this, I decided to not get it and bought the Systemax instead, because I believed I could get a better option for a lower price. But despite my protestations to their website, the Gateway PC had already been packed up and shipped, so I had to send it back. Gateway customer service was very nice about the whole thing, which was extremely helpful for a dumb 20-year-old me. They even let me keep the monitor! (Not for free, of course, but still!)

    I deleted all my old receipt and “your package is being delivered” emails that I had originally referenced to find out these old computer specs. Generally a good idea, but in writing this, I wish I hadn’t, because I was very sloppy in my data gathering. But then I had an idea to check archive.org and was VERY surprised to learn just how much of tigerdirect.com was archived on that site. It’s WAY more than I thought it would be. Even though I couldn’t access the page itself, I managed to find my computer (or the closest to it) on a listing.

    Here were its specs:

    • CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2400+ / 2 GHz 266 MHz
    • MOBO: Socket A VIA ProSavageDDR KM266
    • RAM: 256 MB DDR 266Mhz PC2100
    • HDD: IDE 7200 rpm Parallel ATA 80GB
    • GPU: S3 ProSavage8 32 MB (integrated)
    • GPU: AMD Radeon 9200 128MB
      • I must’ve bought this later, considering the original GPU was integrated. Wasn’t my first GPU; I think that would have to be a 3dfx Voodoo back in the 90s.
    • CASE: Systemax™ Black Micro-ATX Case
    • PSU: 300-Watt Power Supply
    • DVD: DVD-ROM 52X
    • CD: CD-RW.
    • MISC: 250 Zip Drive (bought later)

    256 MB of RAM! DDR! Just DDR, no DDR 2/3/4/etc. A 300 watt PSU! Nobody thought about power supplies back then. I also distinctly remember fighting over hard drive space due to all the mp3s I hoarded thanks to Napster and Limewire.

    So: Was the Gateway or the Systemax PC better? Surprisingly, there is a website that lets you compare old CPUs. And if we went with only that as a metric, then I think the Gateway wins. In fact, the only real downside of the Gateway PC is the smaller hard drive. I bamboozled myself, thirteen years ago! Oh well.

    albatross in my shitty little theatre intern dorm room in auburn, ny, 2005. i loved pepsi. also despite sending the gateway pc back, they let me keep the monitor.

    ALBATROSS was my first PC. The first once I spent my own money on (that I borrowed from the government and will never, ever pay back, but still). It went from my parents basement to my first apartment in Boise, to Auburn, NY and back, and then to Portland, OR, where I live now. It saw a lot of shit!

    I kept it until February, 2011, apparently, according to Facebook. I really can’t believe I kept it for as long as I did, considering the damage and constant freezing it would do. I guess this is what happens when you’re broke. I don’t remember what happened to it, ultimately. I can only assume I took it out to pasture, or tossed it (hopefully to some sort of e-cycling center).

    MAGRAGEEVES

    Bought: April, 2009
    Type: Desktop PC
    Cost: $430 ($652 in 2026)

    I should probably note early on that I give my computers funny names.

    So, eventually the damage from ALBATROSS’s saran-wrapped flight across the US was too much. The computer was freezing on me very often, to the point where it was virtually unusable and I had to quickly find a replacement. That came in the form of, I guess, another Systemax: The Venture Vsomething. VC? VXP? I don’t know. The case looked like this:

    This is the best quality photo I could find on the internet. But it looked like that. Here were the specs:

    • CPU: Intel Pentium Dual Core E2220 2.4Ghz 1M
    • MOBO: G31M3-F mATX Motherboard
    • RAM: 2GB DDR2 800Mhz PC6400 Memory (2GB x 1)
      • + Centon 2GB800DDR2 2GB Memory Module – PC6400, DDR2, 800MHz which I bought later
    • HDD: WD 500GB 7200 RPM
    • GPU: ATI Radeon HD 3650 1GB PCIe (2 DVI)
    • CASE: Systemax microtower mATX form-factor case
    • PSU: 250 watt!
    • DVD: 22X DVDRW SATA Drive Black

    I actually took a photo of the setup, which was listed in the case! I took it in 2020 which means I had it for that long?! Wild!

    TWO cores?! Unheard of. I also upgraded the RAM, adding a second 2GB stick.

    After doing some more research, I’m pretty sure this was one of their “build-to-order” PCs. I found one of configure pages from TigerDirect and I DISTINCTLY remember this screen.

    I spent so. much. time. on this screen, trying to pick something that I liked but wasn’t too expensive. You’ll note on the earlier spec sheet picture that it says “Free DOS,” that’s because I picked DOS as my OS because Windows was too expensive, and I wanted the GPU. Amazing. DOS! Still existed in 2009. I’m honestly super pleased that I found this. Thanks Wayback Machine!

    I ended up keeping this PC and the next one for several years after I stopped using them (up to 2020, apparently). We put one in the guest room of the house I was renting at the time. MAGRAGEEVES was upgraded with a 500gb SSD and sold to a friend of mine for very cheap (like $50). She needed it for school and I would not be surprised if she tossed it like six months later and got a laptop instead.

    For some reason I kept the GPU until a couple years ago, as if I was going to use it. It looked like this:

    Which is very funny to me considering that the GPU would be seated upside down from this photo, meaning you’d never see the fancy viking art.

    CABERTOSS

    Bought: February, 2011
    Type: Desktop PC
    Cost: $280 ($405 in 2026)

    I’m not sure exactly what made me buy this extraordinarily cheap PC. Maybe it was this picture on TigerDirect’s homepage:

    Unfortunately, the link that was on this image wasn’t archived, and I never took a photo of this PC, so this is all you’re gonna get. I’m almost certain this was a “we need to get rid of these parts” type of sale. The parts on the picture are actually the parts though! I double checked to make sure.

    So yeah, I think the allure of a cheap, quad core CPU build did it for me. But the entire setup really felt so, so cheap. This was the first PC I bought that had a dedicated computer case brand, though. Here were its specs:

    • CPU: AMD Phenom X4 9600B 2.3Ghz AM2+ OEM CPU
    • CPU Cooler: Cooler Master AM2 95w CPU Fan
    • MOBO: MSI K9N6PGM2-V V.2 GeForce 6100 Socket AM2+ MB
    • RAM: Crucial 2GB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz
    • HDD: WD Caviar 500GB Serial ATA HD 7200/16MB/SATA-3G
    • GPU: ATI Radeon HD 4650 1GB PCIe w/Dual Link DVI
    • CASE: PowerUp G54-8019 Executive ATX Mid-Tower
    • PSU: Sparkle Computer Corp PS Series 400W PSU
    • DVD: Lite ON 24X DVDRW SATA OEM

    According to my Facebook archive, I bought the CPU cooler, GPU, and PSU separately. The first two were because the barebones kit didn’t have them, and I’m sure I got a new PSU because whatever was in this thing was not going to cut it. Dunno how much those cost and god I hope I moved them into MAGRAGEEVES.

    this is a case, taken from a youtube video which is the only place where i could find a photo of this damn thing.

    I have no photos of this PC because I barely used it. It scared me. It was very cheap and the case was very flimsy. I’m realizing now, fifteen years later, that it was cheap because the parts were a few years old, not because they were bad parts. The AMD Phenom X4 was three years old when I bought it. Not a tremendous amount of time, but the Phenom IIs were already out, plus the late 2000s/early 2010s were a really wild time, in terms of components. Also in hindsight, I think the case was the only flimsy thing about this setup. I should’ve kept it and just bought a new case.

    This sat in a closet for a few years before I donated it to a friend.

    FIRGADOR

    Bought: September, 2011
    Type: Laptop
    Cost: $600 ($871 in 2026)

    My first laptop! A Dell Inspiron 14R. This is literally what the specs said in the email:

    • DELL I14R I52410M 6/640/DVD/W7HP/14 NB

    You might be able to glean what most of this means, but in case not, I found the original specs:

    • CPU: 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i3-2310M processor 2.10 GHz
    • RAM: 6GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz
    • 640GB4 SATA hard drive (5400RPM)
    • Intel HD Graphics/HD Graphics 3000 with up to 1.6GB Dynamic Video Memory
    • 8X Tray Load CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
    • Integrated 1.0 mega pixel widescreen HD Webcam

    This way back in the day when hard drives could have weird amounts. 640 is a weird amount for a hard drive.

    Here’s what it looked like:

    I still have this laptop, though now it looks like this:

    Here’s a brief rundown of how it got this way:

    1. The laptop stopped booting up several years ago. I think it’s a faulty power supply, but it’s actually just a bad battery.
    2. I get a new battery three(?) years ago; laptop boots up again!
    3. But it’s slow as hell, so I take it apart to swap the hard drive with an SSD, which speeds it up considerably.
    4. After I do this, I put it back together.
    5. Cut to last month. I never use this laptop. The moment it gets slightly warm, a fan inside it spins so loud it sounds like an jet engine taking off. I’ve decided I want the SSD back.
    6. I take the laptop apart again, and grab the SSD.
    7. I decide not to put it back together again.

    The plan is to donate it to Free Geek.

    The “fun” concept with this Inspiron line is that you could detach the cover and swap it with another, fancier cover. I never did that. As far as I can tell, nobody else did either.

    I used this mainly for D&D games, as the modern era pulled us away from physical books and into spending more money on a second copy of digital books.

    GARGAROTH

    Bought: November, 2011
    Type: Desktop PC
    Cost: $1,819 ($2,643 in 2026)

    A stupid premonition from November, 2011, via my Facebook:

    Just finished ordering parts for my latest, and hopefully last, computer build. This one should last for a few years and plenty of upgrades.

    “Hopefully last.” So naive. So, so naive.

    I present: GARGAROTH. (In the lower right corner.)

    photo from 2011. also marvel at that cable management.

    This photo doesn’t really do it justice. That computer tower is HUGE. This was the first PC I built myself, part by part. I probably ordered everything off Newegg by this point.

    Here’s the specs, which, by the way, were a lot of very popular choices at the time:

    • CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz
    • CPU Cooler: MasterCooler Hyper 212
    • MOBO: MSI|P67A-GD65 (B3) P67 LGA1155 R
    • RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
      • Just real quick because RAM is expensive as hell right now: these sticks cost $43. Total.
    • SSD: CRUCIAL 64GB
    • HDD: 4x WD 500 GB 7200RPM SATA III 16MB cache, 1 Toshiba 2TB
    • GPU: MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III 1G/OC Radeon HD 6950
    • GPU UPGRADED: to VGA MSI|R7950 TWIN FROZR 3GD5/OC R (12/2012)
    • CASE: ANTEC DF-85 RT
    • PSU: ANTEC 750W GREEN
    • DVD: Blu-Ray thing
    • KEY: Logitech wired keyboard and
    • MAUS: G9x mouse
    • FANS: Blue fan

    Let’s begin with the case. The ANTEC DF-85 RT.

    Look at this stupid ass case. This computer case is TWO FEET TALL. This computer case has EIGHT FANS. (Seven came with and then I for some insane reason bought a blue RGB fan for that side mount there, instead of red one.) The three font fans each have a little knob you can turn to make them go faster. Yes it has red RGB, of COURSE it has RGB. Each fan mount on the front opens like little doors so you can clean and access the hard drives. It has bays for three 5.25″ devices (like CD-ROMs and such), SIX 3.5″ hard drives, and one 2.5″ SSD mount on the bottom of the case for some wild reason. Plus a hot swappable 2.5″ bay at the very top.

    This case was made out of STEEL and weighed 26 pounds, on its own, without components installed.

    For reference, my current PC case (Fractal Meshify C) is 17″ tall and weighs about 13 pounds on its own.

    GARGAROTH was also my first time using the Cooler Master Hyper 212, also known as a “tower” cooler. Prior to this, CPU heatsinks were smaller and generally mounted flat onto the CPU, and the fan blew the air straight outward. The Hyper 212 turned the heatsink and fans 90°, creating the “tower” look and allowing the fans to blow the hot air from the heatsinks directly to the back of the PC. I thought this was the coolest thing at the time, no pun intended. It just looked neat and was big and bulky.

    gargaroth in action in 2014; me watching night court with jowers and also a bunch of guinness cans because it was near st patrick’s day. (also a pizza box?!)

    If ALBATROSS was my meek and mild entry into PC ownership, GARGAROTH was my brash and bold (if maybe a little garish) “I’M A PC GAMER!” exclamation. It truly was a great PC and handled almost everything I threw at it at the time. It was my first real attempt at cable management, too; I did alright. After nine years of gaming on it, however, it was time to move on. I ended up donating most of it to Free Geek, while a few components were repurposed into SMOLCOMP.

    INZHISERA

    Bought: Sometime in 2017
    Type: Chromebook
    Cost: $250 ($333 in 2026)

    This was a Chromebook laptop. It was very slow and I bought it because A) FIRGADOR wasn’t working, B) it was cheap, and C) because I was becoming a real Googlehead at the time. I could only find one photo of it and it’s this one:

    This was my “pre-colonoscopy prep” photo in 2021.

    Here are some specs I could find:

    • Intel Pentium N4200 processor (4 cores, 1.1Ghz)
    • 4GB of memory
    • 32GB of flash storage

    Chromebooks are kind of a terrible idea, but also a great one if you love Google. This one handled small tasks alright, but I tried to run a D&D game on Roll20 once and it was so slow it became unusable.

    Inzhisera was donated to Free Geek.

    BALGRAHR

    Bought: January, 2020
    Type: Raspberry Pi
    Cost: $99 ($125 in 2026)

    Before the pandemic hit, I bought a Raspberry Pi 4 (model B, 4gb of RAM). In fact, I bought an entire starter kit from Vilros, with a power supply, case, HDMI cable, and lil fan. My plan was to use it as a media player for all the movies and TV shows I legally obtain (I actually really did, through Netflix, and then used some weird Linux setup to watch it on the Pi). Along with it I bought a 3-way HDMI switch to swap between inputs, a cheapo sound bar, and a wireless Logitech keyboard and mouse. It worked fine but ended up being kind of a pain. I liked playing around with Ubuntu though! I ended up repurposing it into GOGREZ.

    THARGORAD

    Bought: April/May, 2020, but upgraded a lot since then.
    Type: Desktop PC
    Cost: Originally, $1,273 ($1,607 in 2026)

    I am typing this from THARGORAD right now. The product of those paltry covid stimulus checks, THARGORAD was the direct successor to GARGAROTH, taking advantage of newer hardware (within my budget, of course). Here are the original specs from 2020:

    • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor
    • CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler
    • MOBO: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard
    • RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory
      • Again, due to RAM shortage: this was $80 and I later bought another 2 x 8 GB sticks of the same RAM for $43.
    • NVMe: WD – BLACK SN750 500GB Internal Gaming SSD PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe
    • SSD: 2x Western Digital Blue 500 GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive
    • HDD: 2x WD Blue 1 TB
    • GPU: MSI Radeon RX 580 DirectX 12 RX 580 ARMOR 8G OC 8GB 256-Bit GDDR5
    • CASE: Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case
    • PSU: Corsair RM (2019) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
    • KEY: Logitech G213 Prodigy Gaming Keyboard
    • MAUS: Logitech G102 (G203) IC PRODIGY 8000DPI 1000Hz Polling Rate 16.8M Color RGB Gaming Mouse – Black
    • MON: 2x Dell – 27″ IPS LED FHD FreeSync Monitor – Piano Black
    • SPKR: Logitech Z333 2.1 Speakers
    • FANS: 4x Cooler Master 120mm

    Some of these parts came from Best Buy, some from Newegg. Here was my setup in 2021:

    Simple, elegant, with components right in the middle of the bell curve of what people were buying at the time.

    I have since done some upgrades.

    • RAM: Added the aforementioned 2 x 8 GB sticks. These are technically 3200 Mhz, not 3000, so they are effectively underclocked.
    • HDD: Swapped the two 1 TB drives for two 4 TB drives.
    • SSD: Swapped the 500 GB drives for 1 TB drives, and then 2 TB drives. (I have too many hard drives.)
    • GPU: Upgraded to a Radeon 6700 XT 12GB in Jan 2023 and then AGAIN to a 9060XT 16GB three years later, because the 6700XT broke.
    • Bought an ultrawide monitor.
    • Bought a better webcam. (Logitech C615)
    • Bought an Xbox controller.

    Those additions cost a total of $1,640 (won’t do the 2026 version here because these were bought at different times).

    I have also upgraded some core components, but I’ll get to that later.

    the setup, circa 2023.

    THARGORAD is a nice merger between the simplicity of ALBATROSS and the powerhouse nonsense of GARGAROTH. I am a big fan of it.

    SMÖLCÖMP

    Bought: 2021 (repurposed)
    Type: Desktop mini PC
    Cost: $138 ($176 in 2026)

    So, GARGAROTH was retired, its giant case stuffed into my closet. I had gotten rid of the ancients, MAGRAGEEVES and CABERTOSS. BALGRAHR (the Raspberry Pi) was ineffective as a media player and was lying dormant in my closet. Since I had a whole-ass computer that still worked just laying around, I decided to convert it into a home theater PC, or HTPC, effectively upgrading from the Raspberry Pi situation. This would also be fairly cheap since I was repurposing the majority of GARGAROTH’s parts, but putting it into a smaller case.

    In the end, all I bought for this build was the case and the motherboard, which were:

    • CASE: Thermaltake Core V1
    • MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-H61N-USB3 Intel LGA1155 DDR3 Desktop Mini ITX
    SMOLCOMP as of a couple days ago, before i gutted it.

    Since Gargy was a decade old at this point, I had to trawl through eBay to find a proper motherboard, which was sort of exciting. It was my first time looking for used parts online, and I had heard all sorts of horror stories about getting defective parts and whatnot, but this mobo turned out great, for a while at least. The PCIe bus seems to be broken, as it doesn’t recognize my GPU, but thankfully the CPU has integrated graphics, so I can still use it.

    I still think a HTPC is a good idea, but I ended up not using this very much because I had BigTV and could just upload videos from THARGORAD to a USB drive and plug it into the back of BigTV. This didn’t work all the time (a lot of movies wouldn’t play audio because BigTV is an LG and I think there were codec issues), but it worked well enough.

    Since my big THARGORAD upgrade, I have since disassembled SMOLCOMP entirely. I’m keeping the case but the rest is going to Free Geek. Meanwhile, the case may end up being the home for a NAS in the future. We’ll see.

    BigTV

    Bought: June, 2022
    Type: BigTV, I mean, smart TV
    Cost: $1,100 ($1,228 in 2026)

    An honorable mention. BigTV is not a computer, except it is, basically. Specs:

    • LG – 55″ Class C1 Series OLED 4K UHD Smart webOS TV (2021)

    BigTV is good. BigTV make moving picture on screen look good. Me love BigTV.

    BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV.

    NA’ANTERAL

    Bought: February, 2023
    Type: Tablet
    Cost: $150 ($160 in 2026)

    I had an ultrawide monitor at this point, which I still use and enjoy, but I missed having a second monitor to watch videos on. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to buy a cheap tablet and make it a second monitor. This did not work at all.

    NA’ANTERAL is a Samsung Galaxy Tab 8 and it sucks ass. It’s the slowest piece of computer hardware I’ve experienced in 20 years. Even your grandma would hate this thing. It was good for reading ebooks, and that was it.

    I still have it but am going to donate it ASAP.

    AGAGRAVON

    Bought: 2024
    Type: Laptop
    Cost: $650 ($677 in 2026)

    This is my laptop! Here are the specs:

    • HP – Pavilion 16″ WUXGA Touch-Screen Laptop
    • AMD Ryzen 5 8540U
    • 8GB Memory
    • AMD Radeon Graphics
    • 512GB SSD

    This is a great laptop for the price! The touch screen is cool too even though I hardly ever use it.

    More importantly, this effectively replaced SMOLCOMP, because if movies won’t play when I plug them into the back of BigTV from the USB drive, I can plug the drive into the laptop and just cast the screen to BigTV. This is how I started a rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as I wanted to watch the OG aspect ratio and not the shitty HD “remaster” and the files I found online wouldn’t play on BigTV. (Note to self: You need to finish that rewatch.)

    GOGREZ

    Bought: 2026 (repurposed)
    Type: Raspberry Pi
    Cost: $90 ($90 in 2026)

    GOGREZ is a reincarnation of BALGRAHR. It’s five things, basically:

    • COMP: Raspberry Pi 4
    • USB: j5create – USB 3.0 7-Port HUB – Black
    • SSD: 2x Western Digital Blue 500 GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive
    • CASE: 2x Insignia™ – 2.5″ SATA to USB-C HDD Enclosure – Black

    I only bought the USB hub and the SATA enclosures. I was trying to get a cheaper hub than the one I got, but my local Best Buy didn’t have it and after two separate employees tried to find it, a third employee casually said, “It’s probably been stolen.” (Also I guess I bought a power strip too but that’s not a computer.)

    AGAGRAVON lived in a shoebox for a while.

    The impetus for putting this together is to make a personal web server for FoundryVTT, so I could use a domain name rather than my computer’s IP address, allowing players to log on without getting scary security warnings from their browsers. Since then it has become a big trial-and-error Linux experience.

    I outlined a lot of the process of putting this together on my Substack. Suffice it to say, it worked, eventually, and it’s pretty cool! I just have a little website for TTRPG games with friends. Neat.

    THARGORAD 2.0

    Upgraded: March, 2026
    Cost: Upgrades, $600. In total, after all upgrades, $3,822 (around $4,100 in 2026)

    After alllllll this nonsense, you’d think I was finished, wouldn’t you. But here’s the thing: AI companies are ruining the parts market for PC builders, particularly in the RAM and storage departments, as they buy tons of it for their water-guzzling servers. RAM that cost under $100 back in the day is now nearing $200, and that’s DDR4. Next gen, DDR5 RAM is around $400-$500.

    Because of this, I had a think, and rattled some thoughts around in my middle-aged brain. Ultimately, I decided to upgrade the core components of THARGORAD to make them as new(ish) as possible, effectively future-proofing my PC until prices die down, which they probably never will. Thus, despite still having an “older” computer compared to the current market of AMD & Intel processors and DDR5 RAM, I would still have something that could compete for as long as GARGAROTH did.

    Here’s what I bought:

    • AMD Ryzen 7 5700X – Ryzen 7 5000 Series Vermeer (Zen 3) 8-Core 3.4 GHz Socket AM4 65W None Integrated Graphics Desktop CPU Processor
    • NZXT – Kraken Plus 280mm Radiator CPU Liquid Cooler (2 x 140mm F140P Fans) with 1.54″ Square LCD – Black
    • MSI – B550 GAMING PLUS (Socket AM4) AMD B550 ATX DDR4 Motherboard – Black
    • Crucial – P310 1TB Internal SSD PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe M.2
    i’ve never taken one of these “pics of all my new components” before. please enjoy my laundry basket in the background

    Basically, a bump in the CPU and motherboard, an AIO cooler (always wanted to try one), and, as always, more storage.

    The cost for this altogether was $600 ($600 in 2026). And everything was cheaper than it would’ve been had I bought it originally. In fact, my Ryzen 5 3600, which cost $175 in 2020, would be about $220 today–except it wouldn’t be, because it’s very old and even the budget-friendly Ryzen 5 5500, a better CPU, is under $100. Regardless, 7 is more than 5 so I got a better CPU. So there.

    I spent all of Friday night installing the new components–though first, I rearranged the furniture in my living room. I did this for a couple reasons, but mainly because my tower was on the left side of my desk in the old spot, in the corner, so I had no view inside the glass panel. The NZXT AIO has an LCD screen to display temps and stuff, and by gum I wanted to see it. So I moved everything in my tiny living room apartment around. But I see it now! I see it!

    thargorad, the next generation.

    Having the CPU temp on the LCD screen was nice but I had a better idea:

    That is this:

    But I can’t add the video because I don’t give WordPress enough money. He is running on a little monitor on the CPU pump itself. That’s just neat.

    The B550 is a big upgrade for a data hoarder like me. The B450 has one M.2 slot which, when used, disabled the last two SATA inputs. The B550, on the other hand, has two M.2 slots and when they are both in use, disables the second PCIe x16 slot, instead of the SATA slots, which is a MUCH better idea. Who uses the second PCIe x16 slot? Besides NERDS

    Installing this new setup was a real pain in the ass, for three reasons.

    First: I’ve never installed an AIO before so I had to figure that out. The issue was that my AIO is too big to fit at the top of the case for exhaust (the “optimal” setup), so I had to put it at the front, for intake instead. While supposedly less than optimal, I do like the idea of these larger fans pulling in cooler air.

    NZXT’s instuction booklet was so fucking weirdly laid out that it was genuinely hard to understand for a while. That plus there being NO indication anywhere that the pump had thermal paste pre-applied made me wish that they would have had some “AIOs for dummies” booklet. (Yeah yeah, I probably could’ve watched a YouTube video on my phone, but I didn’t want to do that.)

    Second: I basically screwed in the motherboard and then had to unscrew it because some wires from the previous setup were stuck behind it. And then, much later on, I discovered that the rear exhaust fan’s wires were stuck, notched between the rear I/O ports and the motherboard. Getting it unstuck would mean unscrewing the motherboard AGAIN, so instead I just cut the wires, because I have extra fans (and I ended up not using the extras because Cooler Master wires aren’t totally black, like the Fractal ones are).

    Third: These motherfuckers.

    from ecomputertips.com

    These little pieces of shit are the worst things that have ever existed. Why are they all SEPARATE?

    I plugged these into where they were on my OLD board and then thought I was all done and everything was great, only to wonder why my PC wasn’t booting up at all. Thankfully I glanced at the mobo instructions and noted that I hadn’t plugged them into the JFP1 pins at all. Problem was, the JFP1 pins were more forward on the B550 and the front panel plugs wouldn’t reach.

    This meant I had to pull all of these little shits out of the tiny hole on my PC case that I had threaded them through before, and then awkwardly shove them through another tiny hole, one at a time, with WAY more shit in the way. For cable management, of course. I nearly threw my entire computer into a lake because of it. I’m sure if you’ve ever dabbled in cable management, you know that I mean.

    WHY ARE THEY ALL SEPARATE LIKE THIS JUST MAKE THEM ONE BLOCK YOU BASTARDS.

    After all that nonsense, the computer did finally turn on and Windows was like “R U NEW PC?” and was like “No” and Windows was like “PLS ACTIVATE WINDOWS” and I was like “Fuck off” and Windows finally got the hint.

    And now my PC is a lot faster than it used to be! It’s kind of wild. I was fine with the Ryzen 3600 but now that I have this, it’s noticeably different.

    THE FUTURE

    Right now I have a couple of ideas about what to do for future builds:

    • First, and most obvious, would be to build an AM5 socket PC. But that is expensive and likely won’t happen anytime soon. I’m waiting for the AI bubble to burst.
    • A possible rebuild using my Ryzen 5 3600 and a mini-ITX board within the SMOLCOMP case. I’m debating whether to do this, or to store the B450 + CPU in case my new setup fails. If I rebuild, it will be to create a NAS. If I don’t, then:
    • I am going to put GOGREZ into the Thermaltake case. Just stuff it in there. Why the heck not.

    THE END

    Good golly miss molly was this a long post. But that’s the history of my PC ownership! Hopefully you gained something from it. If anything, maybe you enjoyed reminiscing about old PC specs. Or maybe you’re mad/bummed about the RAM price hike too!

    Until next time!

  • Forerunner 55 vs Pixel Watch: Initial Thoughts

    A few days ago I laid out my technology woes, about how I think I incorrectly purchased a Pixel Watch. Well folks, since then I bought a Garmin Forerunner 55 and now I’m worried that my Pixel Watch is about to become a Pixel Paperweight. Here’s why:

    The Forerunner is light. Way lighter than the Pixel, and oftentimes I don’t even realize it’s on my wrist. Note: This is kind of different now as I switched from wearing it on my left right to my right wrist — I’m not ambidextrous, per se, but I’m left handed with some things and right handed with others, so I’m trying out this placement to see if I like it better, but it also means that I’m far more aware of the watch now. Also, the Forerunner has a lot more air holes in the watch band than the Pixel. I know these are for sizing for large or small wrists, but I appreciate it way more than the Pixel band, which is mostly closed off and thus was irritating my wrist because that part of my skin couldn’t breathe as easily.

    The Pixel Watch feels a lot like something that’s trying to constantly make its presence known. Its Tilt to Wake feature makes me think of some obsequious servant who is always there when you need them. With the Forerunner, it feels more like “You come to me if you need anything.” Which I guess I like? I’m realizing as I use it that I’m definitely an Elder Millennial, because a lot of aspects of this watch that I like are things that I’m familiar with.

    Like, for example, the LED screen, as opposed to Pixel’s AMOLED. I know I should probably like the latter more, but honestly the LED screen of the Forerunner makes me feel like I’m playing a Tamagotchi game, except instead of a little dinosaur I have to feed at 7am sharp or else it’ll dieThis is an example and something that I literally had to do in 7th grade, with my little t-rex tamagotchi. That lasted maybe two or three weeks., it’s me. I’m the Tamagotchi! And I do have to feed myself. Hell, the watch even prompts me to move and has a little “move bar” which starts to turn red if I don’t move. Fitbit does this too, but it’s much more of a pleasant, “You’re an adult” chime coupled with a graphic showing you how many steps you have left that hour. The Forerunner, at least with the watch face I’m using, just shouts “MOVE!” and then when I move enough it says “Move Bar Cleared!” which, I’m telling you, as a gamer, fills a niche in my soul I didn’t know I had.

    I got the aqua band because you gotta have some color in your life, you know?

    Speaking of watch faces, Garmin provides a bunch as do third parties. I got one that has a “kitchen sink” approach because I like data and I like all of it in one place. The Pixel has watch faces too, but again, they are more elegant and for business people. You can track steps and calories and such through the Fitbit app, but it takes a bit more swiping. It’s all very nice, honestly. Very 2023, very cool and sleek and rounded.

    One thing on the Pixel I’m surprised I wasn’t a fan of is the crown on the side. This is a selling point of the watch, that you can press the crown and spin it to go through apps and such, but I really only used it for that and it felt more awkward than just making the whole thing a swipe function. Plus if I bent my hand back enough, which happens occasionally, it would press the crown which was annoying. (Obviously this only happens if you wear it on your left hand.) The Forerunner, meanwhile, has buttons on the side, and I appreciate the tactile aspect of it, which I think is another Elder Millennial thing. I often found when I was running or walking with the Pixel that it was swiping through the screens on Strava on its own and I’m not sure how. Brushing my sleeve or something? But that won’t happen with my Forerunner and I like that.

    I think most of all, though, I like that Garmin has a wider array of statistics than Fitbit or Strava. Fitbit was sort of driving me nuts. It’s clearly designed for casual exercisers or people who don’t care as much about stats. Which is fine! Whatever gets you out of the house, right? But I like stats, I like seeing the data progress. I like that Garmin has a coach feature and suggested runs. I like that I can see how terrible my VO2 Max is. I’m not even quite sure what that is, but it’s not great! Garmin also has a better recovery system than Fitbit, which has a more general “Readiness Score,” which is helpful if you just need to know how hard to go the next day, but Garmin uses recovery to help suggest workouts, which I think is better. Fitbit has a bunch of exercise videos that you can watch and follow along with, but it’s not the same. Again, Fitbit is totally fine for a certain type of person, and ultimately I don’t think I’m that person.

    The only thing so far that’s been weird with Garmin is the sleep mode, which thought I fell asleep at 9:30pm last night even though that’s just when I went to bed. (Yeah I went to bed early last night, deal with it.) It also said that I never woke in the middle of the night, which is absolutely not true. To be fair, Garmin’s own website says that their sleep profile is about 70% accurate. I think Fitbit was erring too much the other way though, saying I was awake for over an hour every night, which also cannot be true. If I had to choose, I’d rather err on me getting more sleep, because sleep is good.

    So what do I do with my Pixel Watch? Well, hopefully I can sell it. That’s the most ideal option. But in lieu of that, it’ll probably sit collecting dust in my drawer, acting as a backup in case my Forerunner explodes or dies somehow. It is surreal to think that I am trading in my $400 watch for my $160 watch, but it’s true. I think overall, except with computer parts, if I can buy the thing for $200 or lower, I’ll go that route. I don’t need a super fancy smartwatch that has a bunch of apps on it, I need a watch that helps me get better at running. The end.

    Also, I’m aware of the irony that I got this watch with the LED screen pretty much the day Garmin announced their AMOLED watch series. I don’t really care, because like I just said, I don’t want to pay more than $200 for non-computer electronics anymore, if I can help it.

    Alright, that’s it. Time to get back into the swing of things. Parkrun #6 tomorrow!

  • Technology Woes

    Folks, I think I made a mistake. See, a few months back I decided to trade my Samsung A71 in for a Pixel 7 Pro. I was enticed by Google Fi’s “Pixel Pass,” a $50/month option in which you get a free phone upgrade after two years. I liked the Pixel 4 so I decided to give it a shot.

    That, so far, had been fine. The Pixel 7 Pro is pretty cool and fast and good. I’m starting to have a more existential objection to the size of the phone itself, but that’s a topic for later. The phone works and is good.

    Then, a couple months after that, I took the plunge and got a Pixel Watch. At this point, I had decided: I am a Google Boy. I will get all the Google things. Why not. The Pixel Watch seemed neat and I’d never had a smartwatch before (aside from a very cheap, very defunct watch I bought from China a few years ago). So I bought it. It is the crux of this conversation so I’ll come back to it.

    Month or two later, I bought the Pixel Buds Pro. These I like, and I hate earbuds. I really had to hype myself up for these, but they sound great and they don’t make me feel like I’m compacting my ear canal with wax, which is what other, cheaper earbuds feel like. I like this.

    Now, as you may know, I am in my 2023 Marie Kondo mode, getting rid of stuff and trying to make my space simpler and sleeker. I’ve also been running, which you definitely know about because I won’t shut up about it. One of my problems with runs is that I have this Pixel phone which is pretty big and heavy, heavy enough to notice when I’ve got it in my pocket for runs. Long story short, the damn thing pulls my joggers down when I’m running and it’s kind of obnoxious. I even bought one of those armbands that holds your phone but that is also a pain in the ass. So, know that that was in the back of my mind when I thought, “Why did I get such a big phone?” which turned into “Why did I get such an expensive phone?” which turned into “Why did I get a Google phone?” etc etc etc.

    And so I went to Google Fi, my carrier (which is a good carrier, btw, never had a problem with it). This is when I realized that I was locked into all this stuff: Pixel Pass means I can’t trade in my phone. In fact, Pixel 7 phones aren’t even listed among the items I could trade in. If I cancel Pixel Pass, I have to pay the remainder of my phone’s cost. Which is absurd–why not just switch it over to month-to-month, like you do with every other phone?

    That’s alright; the phone is good, if big. I can deal with that. Pixel Pass is nice, and the added features (device protection, YouTube Premium, Google One, and $5 off my plan) are worth it. I just wish I had a smaller phone! Never thought I would think that, but now that I’m running I need something a little smaller and lighter.

    The Buds I don’t want to trade in. They are great, no issues.

    The watch. The damn watch. I can’t trade it in because there’s nothing to trade it in with. It’s a fine smartwatch but here’s the thing, the wrinkle that helped spur my desire: my health insurance include Rally, which is a whole service dedicated toward fitness and health and wellness. Part of this includes “coins” you can earn which go toward rewards. One of the recent rewards is 25% off a Garmin smartwatch (and $60 off an Oura ring, which is also kind of tempting). This made me think of recent YouTube videos I watched from the Running Channel, in which they tested Garmin’s “suggested” feature for runs based on your activity, which I thought was pretty neat.

    Fitbit does this too, but not to the degree Garmin does. And then this morning I was thinking: What do I want out of a smartwatch? Like, what do I use my Pixel Watch for? Heart rate, Strava, Fitbit, and sometimes I use the voice recorder if I had a particularly weird dream. But … I realized I don’t even look at the watch for the time of day. Thus, it dawned on me: I don’t need a smartwatch, I need a fitness watch. I need a Garmin. I barely ever wore a watch in my entire life and I certainly don’t need a watch to tell time. It’s the long battery life and the nuances of exercise that the Garmin offers that I want. Curses!

    Honestly, the problem is less that I have this watch and not that watch. The problem is that I locked myself into something I ultimately don’t want, which is frustrating for anyone. And the truth is that I probably will end up getting a Garmin watch and wearing both when I run like one of those dorks. A first gen Pixel Watch will depreciate in value pretty quickly, especially when V2.0 inevitable releases in the future. I think I made a costly error. Thankfully, at least the Pixel Watch still does a good portion of fitness monitoring and does it well. I just wish I had the added features of a Garmin.

    My point is this: Don’t be a Google Boy/Girl/Person. Or an Apple X/Y/Z! Just get the stuff that works with what you want. All these brands talk about “seamless integration” but it’s all seamless. It all works together, more or less. Get the iPhone and the Garmin watch and the Pixel earbuds. It won’t be as difficult to pair them as the brands would make you believe! Meanwhile, I’ll just keep using this Pixel watch until I inevitably get the budget Garmin Forerunner and then end up wearing that all the time instead. LOVE TECHNOLOGY!

  • Technology & Life Musings

    or, Spending Money to Give Away Things

    It’s just my luck that I am considering this year my Marie Kondo year, when she in fact has stopped Marie Kondoing herself. I’m always late to the trends!

    I’ve decided to downsize, particularly in the technology category. I’ve been meaning to do this for some time, but this year the exercise and shit like that has pushed my endorphins high enough that I actually feel like doing it. Plus I realized that FreeGeek is just a few blocks away. I have a lot of old tech (and cords … oh god the cords) and electronics that are just gathering dust, when they could go to people who need them.

    But it’s funny how, in order to downsize, I actually have to buy things. For example: I have this big asshole gaming desk.

    I bought this sometime in 2021, before I moved to my current apartment. It’s pretty big: about 63″ wide and 30″ deep. Large enough to hold all that stuff you see in the picture. It’s also, admittedly, kind of shit. It’s two top pieces (likely particle board) put together and held in place with metal plates. Those then sit on two wobbly metal legs and a cross bar. There are no triangles down there, you know, so it wobbles and the whole thing feels flimsy. But hey, it’s a desk, and it was way better than my desk before it (though that one had extra support to prevent wobbles).

    My old apartment was around 600 sq ft; this one is 450. The difference is noticeable but it’s alright. I traded space for location, newer building, better amenities, etc. Ever since the move, though, this desk has been bothering me. It’s just too big. It’s not just too big for this apartment–it’s too big, period. I suppose a year ago I was doing streaming stuff and thought that the space would be helpful, but I can’t stand it anymore. It’s too big, there’s too much going on, I want to downsize.

    Well, that means I have to buy a new desk. Which I’ve done. But that desk is probably too small for a computer tower, an ultrawide monitor, and a second monitor. So I thought about it for a bit. What do I do with the second monitor, anyway? Usually I watch YouTube videos while I play video games. Do I need a huge, 1920×1080, 75mhz monitor for that? No, of course not. Well, what if I used my newly refurbished laptop as a second monitor instead? That presents a couple of problems: first, my laptop is so old that I don’t want it to be on that much, and second, it’s so old that the moment it gets anywhere near hot, the loud obnoxious fan inside kicks on. Don’t want that either.

    So then I thought, what if I had a little tablet? Something smaller that would definitely fit and could act as a second monitor, or just be there if it doesn’t work as a second monitor? I ended up pursuing this idea and bought a cheap Samsung tablet. It’s only a 10″ screen but I don’t think that’ll be an issue, because I can set it up closer to me for watching. Plus, it’s a tablet! I had thought of getting one of those portable LCD screens, which are about the same price but have a larger screen, but I settled on a tablet because it can do other stuff. Plus, it’s much smaller, and that’s what I’m about right now. Downsizing.Big TV is an exception. Big TV is Good.

    I could try to sell my monitor and recoup some costs, but I’ll probably just give it to FreeGeek. Selling stuff is a pain in the ass and I want to give some low income kid an opportunity to play some PC games on a decent monitor. I tried selling my other other monitor through Nextdoor and it didn’t sell. At this point I’m just sick of having all this stuff. I want to get rid of as much of it as I can. But unfortunately, that means spending more money. Hopefully, this will be the absolute end of money spending and I can use the rest of 2023 to pay off these damnable credit cards.

    So, you know. Growing pains. Or shrinking pains, really. Sometimes in order to pursue the life you want, you have to buy some shit and give away some other shit. C’est la vie.

  • An Ode to Graphics Cards

    It may come as no surprise that I have been gaming for a very long time. Over 30 years at this point! From sepia-toned Space Invaders on my dad’s old computer, to Super Mario Bros on the NES, all the way to today. Video games are important to me, not just because they’re fun, but because they help me calm down and chill out. When I’m particularly stressed or anxious, video games give me an outlet to vegetate and just work on simple tasks, like puzzles, or follow a story that I am guiding with my choices. They’re good, is what I’m trying to say.

    And all along my journey of gaming, one near constant has been graphics cards. See, back in the 90s, 2d gaming was commonplace, but 3d games were becoming more and more popular, thanks to games like Doom and, perhaps more importantly, Quake. Quake was one of the first real 3d games (not just 2d sprites put in a 3d environment). As such, it was very resource heavy and slow. Lots of games were slow back then; FPS wasn’t really a concept because a lot of games couldn’t get up to 30 FPS in the first place.

    Then a company came along called 3dfx. They began selling what were basically proto-graphics cards to help boost graphics for intensive games like Quake by allowing the card to process the graphics (known as hardware acceleration), allowing the CPU to process everything else. 3dfx made a graphics card called Voodoo, way back in the late 90s. I had one! Specifically I had the Diamond Monster II (I think), which used the Voodoo graphics chipset that 3dfx created. It changed everything. Suddenly games were running great, with little hiccups, just in time to play classics like Unreal and Quake III Arena.

    The box for the Diamond Monster II. Look at that angry car!

    3dfx later made the Banshee, which was a cheaper alternative, and then in 2000 the company was bought by Nvidia. Nvidia, by the way, claims to have made the first real GPU, the Geforce 256, but to me, the Diamond Monster II will always be the first GPU, even if it didn’t have all the modern bells and whistles.

    The DMII was installed on my father’s computer, but once I started college I bought my first computer: ALBATROSS, aka the Fortress of Consternation. This computer came with an integrated GPU, a S3 ProSavage with a whopping 32MB of RAM. Integrated GPUs still exist but they have fallen out of style, which makes sense when you think about it. I thought I had upgraded the GPU on this one but if I did, I didn’t make a note of it anywhere. (My emails only go back to 2004, sadly.)

    So I had that computer for seven or eight years, but it eventually went kaput (I swear I wrote about this somewhere but I can’t find it) and I bought my next computer, called MAGRAGEEVES. This is when I started naming my computers demon names. It’s just … you gotta spice up the little things, you know what I mean? Old Mags was a prebuilt computer and came with this GPU:

    I swear I have dust and/or cat hair everywhere. I’m sorry.

    I still have this for some reason! The Radeon HD 3650, Over-clocked Edition (guitar riff). This was my first official foray into AMD territory, although this was after AMD bought ATI but before they stopped using the ATI name, so this is technically an ATI Radeon card. This was, as always is with these things, a very good GPU to have at the time.Fun fact: I still had this computer tower until a friend of mine needed a computer. I repurposed it with an old SSD and sold it to her for, I think, $50. She used it for a few months before rightly thinking, “Why the fuck did I buy this?” It served me well … for a couple of years, before I bought another computer called CABERTOSS in 2011. Cabertoss was a very cheap Chinese prebuilt computer — seriously, it cost $280 at the time. I’m surprised didn’t explode on me. I splurged and spent $70 on an ATI Radeon 4650 with 1gb of ram to go with it. A whole 1000 higher than the last GPU! Wow. I suspect it ran about the same as the 3650.This computer was given or sold or whatever to my friend Nate many years ago. Again, I would be surprised if it still worked.

    At this point I was living in Portland and was getting A) student loans and B) free unemployment checks (thanks Obama!) and so I decided to finally build my own computer. And thus, GARGAROTH was born. Gargaroth had too many fucking fans and in the early 2010s these big fucking heavy as shit computer towers were en vogue so there you go. The GPU I bought with this was the MSI Radeon 6950 Twin Frozr III with 1gb of ram. But then I quickly upgraded it to this, the Radeon 7950 with 3gb of ram:

    Twin Frozr III at top, with the VisionTek below for comparison.

    For the record, the 3gb and 1gb versions of the Twin Frozr look the same. This was my first real “Jesus Christ, look at the size of that graphics card” GPU. It really is very big, and heavy! This card was nearly top of the line at the time, which isn’t saying much because the line would jump like 50 notches higher every three months. Still, it handled pretty much any game thrown at it and let me watch HD videos with no problem. This card still works; I recently installed it into my HTPC and it would play HD videos up to 4k without a problem.

    The Twin Frozr III was my card for nearly ten years, and showed its age about two years into my owning it. The 2010s were like an arms race for GPUs (and computer tech in general), and soon AMD and Nvidia were battling it out for supremacy. I, meanwhile, graduated from Portland State with a nigh-worthless Theatre Arts graduate degree and was broke, and continued to be mostly broke until…

    The pandemic! I was lucky to have a job and get stimulus checks, which I used to begin construction on a new PC, the one I currently use: THARGORAD. For this computer I bought a Radeon RX 580 with 8gb of ram. It worked great! And then, like I mentioned earlier, I took the Twin Frozr and added it to some other parts from Gargaroth, bought a old mini-ATX motherboard and a small form case to make my HTPC, known as SMÖLCOMP because it is small.

    And that was my setup for the past two years, until recently, when I decided to splurge again and upgrade my GPU, purchasing a Radeon RX 6700 XT (look at all those letters), with 12gb of ram. This is probably the most top of the line card I think I’ve ever bought, as it was released about two years ago. Thus, the RX 580 was moved to Smölcomp, and the Twin Frozr III has now, officially, been decommissioned, because I really have no reason to build another computer. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. The 3gb 7950 is selling on ebay for $80-90, while the 1gb 6950 is going for much lower, around $30-40. Even the 3650 is going for $30. These things aren’t collectors items. I think I’ll just take them to FreeGeek and give them away.

    Anyway, this is all just a nostalgic trip through my history with a silly component to a computer. But it’s important to me, because these cards helped me play video games, and video games keep me alive. So thank you, MSI Radeon 7950 with 3gb of ram, for playing all my favorite games over nearly a decade, with maybe a few hiccups and some lowered graphics settings to assuage poor framerates. You did your job well and I hope you and your brethren enjoy retirement.

  • The Tale of the Laptop Update

    So, I am attempting to fix and update my 2011 Dell Inspiron laptop, codename FIRGADOR, The Ceaseless Reverberance. It’s a nice little laptop, works alright as-is, but with two glaring issues: 1) the battery does not charge/is dead, and 2) it has an HDD instead of an SSD, so it’s slow as hell. (Also, 3) only 6gb of 1333 Mhz DDR3 RAM, which I’d like to upgrade to 8gb 1600 Mhz, but that’s for another time.) This whole debacle started because of my dad. Or, moreover, because he’s sick and I’d like to see him. I have two laptops, this Dell and an Acer Chromebook that is even slower than my Dell laptop and has the ChromeOS thing, which is fine except I want to have a laptop that I can use for work purposes, on the off chance that I have to remain in Idaho for an extended period of time.

    I thought briefly about buying a new laptop, but decided I didn’t want to dig further debt into my Best Buy credit card. Thus, this project.

    The biggest problem is the charging issue. One day, several years ago, the laptop just stopped charging. For the life of me, I could not figure out why. I think it’s ultimately just a battery issue, due to a recent battery test. That is, I just think the battery stopped holding a charge for some reason. I didn’t think it was this at the time, because the laptop was still new enough that I couldn’t imagine that the battery would die like that. But I have scoured the internet for answers, mostly to discover that many, many other people have had this same problem and nobody has a definitive answer. Bad adapter? Bad battery? Loose AC connection? Central pin broken/bent? Etc etc etc. I’m working with the simplest answer (the battery is broke) is the best.

    Eventually the battery drained to 0% and since then it has not charged. In fact, until recently I couldn’t even get the damn thing to power on with AC power, but then, in my attempt to find a laptop for travel, I plugged it in a couple days and it actually started. A good start!

    Then came around EIGHT HOURS of installing updates, including a grueling Windows 7-to-Windows 10 upgrade which took almost all night. This is completely the HDD’s fault. It is slow as hell. It was slow as hell ten years ago. My idea was to get it fully updated and then create a system image, which I would transfer over to an SSD I pulled from my home theater PC (which, by the way, I barely use anymore because Big TV does pretty much whatever I need) to boost the computer speed by a significant amount. I knew the process would be slow but I didn’t think it would be eight hours. And that was last night; I’m still installing updates this morning!

    The next issue is that while it’s easy to upgrade the RAM on this thing, installing a new hard drive requires me to take the entire thing apart. I can do that! I already did it last night, after watching a YouTube video of someone else doing it (side note: there are tech YouTube videos of EVERYTHING) to check and see if the AC adapter connection was in fact working properly. (I think it is.) It’s a pain in the ass but it’s also, ultimately, just about unscrewing stuff and removing cables. I am about to do this now so I will let you know how it went in the next paragraph.

    I did it! I took everything apart and then swapped the SSD in and put it all together and it still works. I am now in the process of reinstalling Windows 10 so I can install my system image because it won’t let me do it from my external hard drive.

    UPDATE: I didn’t even have to do that! I didn’t have to do ANY of the updates, I could’ve just installed Windows onto the SSD, because it recognized my laptop and activated my copy anyway because of the internet and stuff. I wasted all these hours! Aaaaaagggghhhhh

    Anyway, SSDs are amazing. Completely upgraded the speed on this laptop. It’s certainly not as fast as my desktop PC, but it’s not a sluggish beast either. Windows 10 works fine on it, though Dell does not have any drivers for Windows 10, which has made software upgrades a little weird. I’m pretty sure Windows is doing it all for me, save for a couple of things (like Dell Touchpad, which makes it so I can actually use all the little fiddly gestures and stuff for the touchpad).

    I forgot this but the Inspiron back cover can be removed and replaced with a more artsy one, so I’ll add “buy a new cool back cover” to my list of things to do as well.

    Technology. Ain’t it grand?