Building Computers & Playing Fortnite

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current stats as of 6/8/2024

I built a second gaming computer for personal use, compare it to my primary, I will be upgrading when the next generation comes out.

2nd Gaming PC

Primary Computer

I’ve thought about doing a few things, I’m just waiting for the next generation graphics cards because DDR7 & PCIE5 bandwidth will really change things up & my current hardware is compatible with it, but, you know how the industry is they’ll keep releasing newer, faster, processors & chipsets & I’m just going to maintain with my current budget because I’m not just building computers, you’re talking about displays & peripherals & many other things, including paying for the software.

all these HDDs I need to get rid of but don’t just want to throw away so I may end up having to give them away

Fixing Up PCs

Things are going pretty well in that department. I do my best with people & try to give them a nice deal. I am currently working on an Alienware R5 Area-51 Desktop & I’ll post about that later. Here are some systems I worked on earlier this year.

I built this other computer..

But then I listed it as well as the parts & yeah, now I’m just going to part it out & use the case for another build next month. There’s nothing wrong with the parts, it’s just that the 2080 TI sold & now I don’t have an extra graphics card. I now have several spare motherboards, including two MSI z370 gaming plus motherboards.

Picked up like 5 of these, down to one. Not bad for an extra SSD or a laptop, or whatever, not that fast compared to an M.2 but for a secondary drive or for an older machine it’s an increase, plus it has a 5 year warranty. I am glad I picked these up but the next batch I get will probably be 1TB. I have a 2TB M.2 & two striped 1TB M.2s in my main machine & I have room for three more & even with my 12TB Ironwolf I’m always seemingly out of space.

I also have various 1TB to 3TB drives just sitting around, I need to collate all my data so I may turn my old gaming machine into just a data server but it seems like a waste of an i9 since it’d only be me using it so maybe downgrade it with an older i7 & sell the i9 & then on the new i9 build put my GPU in, but eventually I’m thinking the next generation of GPUs will be out, maybe, maybe not, depends on how soon I build.

I am planning a 13th generation build since the forthcoming 14th generation sounds to be focused on laptops & may not see a heavy desktop release, if at all. I guess we’ll see but people are speculating that 15th generation will be the next desktop platform next year, we’ll know likely in a couple months at the most.

Sold my old Alienware

I picked this thing up at a Goodwill & had to gut it entirely & even take apart the power supply & clean it & replace the fan. I cleaned all the other fans & bought a replacement side panel. I also replaced the M.2 & upgraded the ram. In addition to that, I took apart the graphics card, cleaned that, & reapplied thermal paste. I then installed an oem version of Windows 10 & all the latest drivers. I had updated the bios earlier & yeah, it ran great, the guy who bought it got an incredible deal, I sold it for a mere $350. Still, it’s an i7-7700 w/ a 1070 so it’s pretty much entry level at best at this point, despite how well it runs things. I guess I do have a 6th generation i7 with a 960 that can do basic things, but the 1070 at least can hit or break 60 fps in most things.

I never really used it much, it was another box for Save the World sometimes.

I won’t miss it & likely won’t ever buy another one, this just came at the right price at the right time. I actually have another Alienware case, which I’ll get rid of here at some point.

Consumer Addiction

I am a bit addicted to consumerism. Almost as much as I am to sugar.

I was called into an office building to do some work, it went fast, but I took a photo on my way out.

I don’t normally do anything for Halloween, but I remember I bought this mask for a party in Chicago back in 2019, so I wore it briefly to take this photo.

Excuse my hair, I had a NES hat on the entire day.

Here’s kind of a secret game room in Minneapolis. It’s open to the public, but only some people know about it.

Speaking of NES games, these were sold overseas. I picked this up years ago, along with so many other games. I kind of lost track of all the games I’ve owned over the years, but, in the last few years I’ve cut down on them dramatically.

As some of you know, I am in Pat’s book, the Ultimate Nintendo: Guide to the NES Library.

This is actually a Jackie Chan game titled Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu.

I recently picked up some more Famicom games, replacing a copy of SMB3 I sold awhile back & picking up Super Mario USA aka Super Mario 2 (in the U.S.) for the first time on Famicom. Of course I’ve owned the game since I was a kid & beat it when I was 7 years old. I bought this bundle from a Japanese vendor & it included SMB1, SMB2 USA, & SMB3. I’ll clean up SMB3 a bit & put it in my Famicom collection.

Check out this cheddar burger! Honestly, Culver’s hadn’t given me a good burger in awhile, so this one came out of nowhere.

I still have this hacky my friend gave me in the 90s. I used to keep everything but I lost a lot when my family raided my storage unit while I was in Hawaii.

Now look what a water company built. If you don’t know, Vivendi owns UMG which distributes Def Jam. Vivendi evolved from a water company founded by Napoleon III of France.
& now look at what tobacco money built – of course the Wilfs who are fraudsters according to the State of New Jersey, will reap all the rewards

Random blog thoughts, yes, we developed an online game titled Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in the 90s. I sent an idea for a TV show many years ago based on that game. I also submitted ideas such as Lower Decks & Captain Worf. However, they’ve made it clear that they want nothing to do with me. Rod Roddenberry said to me one day, why can’t you just be a fan? I’ve stopped speaking to him after that. Aron Eisenberg & I remained friends until he passed away. I remember when Aron showed me his script for the final episode of DS9. Everyone signed it. He was well-liked.

Look at the price on this TV! 65″ for $398! Anyways, I don’t even own a TV nor do I watch TV, but that seemed pretty good to me.

I bought some socks & these VW T1 toys. Typically I keep toys like that in the box & sell them later when the price goes up. It just depends. I had a lot of success with these particular toys. For example, I bought a Toyota truck from Back to the Future & sold it later for hundreds of dollars. Typically I buy stuff with some kind of following, such as Coca-Cola.

Ash recently made it into Fortnite!

I was going to write more in this post, but my host is having issues today. I’ll be back with more at a later date.

bought a case, not bad