What computer(s) are you using? Home/Work 2018

I got this

ASUS X99-E WS,
i7-6900K,
64GB DDR4 (Kingston HyperX I recall, 4x16GB modules),
GeForce GTX 750Ti,
1TB Intel 540 SSD,
LSI SAS 9271-8i + 6x 6TB WD spinning drives,
Power supply like 1000W something, can't recall manufacturer.
 
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Geez, don't feel bad! All my stuff is old and very used.
I look at all these sooperdooper units and think "I'm doing it wrong?"

Probably not. I have the rig I have because I need it in my line of work. I was actually considering dual processors when I was building this, but decided it would not be cost-effective for me.
 
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I'm not using anything that impressive, actually. The best computer I have is my HTPC which I recently built and mentioned in other threads. 8GB of RAM, i5-6400 4 core processor, Asus Q170T/CSM mini-ATX motherboard. The sweetest thing about it is the Corsair Obsidian 250D case.

To be fair, though, I couldn't care less about computers. I know, strange for a computer guy, but it's true. I only ever liked the technical end of computers. The tinkering. That's why I absolutely love being a computer tech. Back in the day I did some gaming and some tinkering pretty much non-stop. My then girlfriend, now wife used to get upset with me for being on the computer until 3 AM. Then I started doing it for a living. My computer knowledge went WAY up. It's a lot harder to fix other people's problems than your own because other people use their computers differently and, thus, have other problems. But the joy I got from computers went way down to pretty much zero unless I'm working on them. I still LOVE working on computers. I love to fix them. But I reached the end of the Internet years ago (and some things you can't un-learn), I've always had a bad memory, so now I find that I'm much less capable of learning new things and you just can't get more technical than fixing, in a good week, 6 or 7 computers a day that you've never touched before that day. So there's not much left that interests me; not much I need a lot of power for. Building that awesome rig just doesn't give me the satisfaction it once did. Once it's done, there's nothing I want to do with it.

I will be building a new work PC soon, though. Right now I have case and motherboard, an Asus TUF Z370-Pro Gaming motherboard. I haven't decided yet on 8GB or 16GB of RAM, but I think I'll go with the i5-8400 processor. That is, unless all the bills are paid and I have an extra $175 in my pocket at the time to go with the i7-8700k. I kind of want to go big with it, but then I kind of don't want to spend any more money than I have to on it. But, since it's a work computer and "faster" means "work done sooner", I'll probably go as big as I can afford when I decide to do it.
 
Building that awesome rig just doesn't give me the satisfaction it once did. Once it's done, there's nothing I want to do with it

I know how you feel. I'm always get excited when I buy something new but after a bit it's just kind of whatever. When I built my last computer I just threw it together. I was mostly just happy to get it done and be done with it. One case fan started getting loud,I never did anything......it did quit making noise. I'll live with all kinds of problems at home until I cave and fix it. Just don't feel like doing more "work" when I get home.
 
I dont care about "NASA" like setups with all the monitors and I don't game any more.

My Main desktop is a simple Thinckcenter M81p Full tower . I5 12gig ram 256ssd 1tb storage.
Bench/data recovery computer. Thinkcenterm58p full tower core2 8 gig mem side cover off and cables hagning out for hooking up drives.
Laptop- Dell e6520 120gig SSD 8gig memory.
Nothing fancy here.
 
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I get excited about the idea of building a PC. Coming up with the parts, doing research to find best value, etc. Then I usually just don't order anything and the newegg/amazon wishlist sits there until obsolete and becomes a poor value. I think its mostly because despite how much better the new equipment might be, I likely won't notice much of a difference for my usage and all the gains will simply be to increase a score for a benchmark I wont even bother to run.

Thinking about it now, I haven't bought any new PC or PC components to upgrade my machine unless something failed and needed replacement. The machine I posted is essentially the result of a rolling series of repairs to a PC I had built in 2004.
 
I know how you feel. I'm always get excited when I buy something new but after a bit it's just kind of whatever. When I built my last computer I just threw it together. I was mostly just happy to get it done and be done with it. One case fan started getting loud,I never did anything......it did quit making noise. I'll live with all kinds of problems at home until I cave and fix it. Just don't feel like doing more "work" when I get home.
I don't mind fixing the computers at home, with one caveat. I MUST have adequate room and lots of bench space to work. If I don't have room to work it irritates me to no end. I need a nice big, uncluttered bench with lots of space if I'm going to be tearing into it. When I build a computer here I take up 2 bench spaces until it's done. I won't start it until I have 2 free bench spaces, one for the computer, one for the parts. And the tower box is the garbage. Everything within arm's length.

Unfortunately everyone in my house but me is a slob. Every square inch of space on a desk or table is taken by "stuff" that we can't throw away, but we can throw into a pile on any open counter space to leave until we've forgotten it completely. It drove me nuts for the first 25 years, but I'm getting used to it now. That's the only reason I dread working on computers in my home. Otherwise I don't mind at all.

Now, one pet peeve I DO have is people wanting to talk to me about their computers in my off-hours, and ESPECIALLY those people who think I'm going to come to their houses on a Sunday afternoon to work on their computer because they can't be bothered to bring the thing to me during normal business hours, all for free. My friends mostly know not to do this, but I do have some family without boundaries of any kind. Of course, mom is a different story. But there is one niece (by marriage, no less), that would hit me up EVERY TIME she saw me, wanting to talk about her computer. Every single time! And when I said, "Just bring it in Monday and I'll look at it" to politely end the conversation with "Just bring it to me and I'll fix it for free", she actually responded one time, "No, you're coming to my house to look at it." That DID NOT HAPPEN. That WILL NOT HAPPEN. You can have free OR quick and convenient. You CANNOT have both. It is the most ungrateful thing anyone has ever done to me.
 
I get excited about the idea of building a PC. Coming up with the parts, doing research to find best value, etc. Then I usually just don't order anything and the newegg/amazon wishlist sits there until obsolete and becomes a poor value. I think its mostly because despite how much better the new equipment might be, I likely won't notice much of a difference for my usage and all the gains will simply be to increase a score for a benchmark I wont even bother to run.

Thinking about it now, I haven't bought any new PC or PC components to upgrade my machine unless something failed and needed replacement. The machine I posted is essentially the result of a rolling series of repairs to a PC I had built in 2004.
LOL, THIS!
 
Thinking about it now, I haven't bought any new PC or PC components to upgrade my machine unless something failed and needed replacement. The machine I posted is essentially the result of a rolling series of repairs to a PC I had built in 2004.

The last machine I got new for myself was the ThinkPad T430, and while I've wanted some of the newer ones that I've set up for clients (for lighter weight, mostly) I haven't cared enough to spend the money on one. The T510 I'm typing on was handed to me for recycling, along with a ThinkPad W500 that's not nearly as usable (but that 15" 1920x1200 screen is nice, if dim) because of switchable graphics issues.

I should probably get a desktop machine set up again, and that'll probably be the Core 2 Quad sitting under my desk that I also received for recycling.
 
My wife won a bit of money on a scratch ticket once and I bought an Asus gaming laptop. The thing was huge and heavy, so I never used it. It went off to college with my son. Other than that, every computer I now have (except the HTPC) is made of recycled parts. The 3 kids still at home each have a desktop and one has a laptop. I have one "main computer" at home and 2 computers at work, plus the HTPC. Every part in every tower, every screen, every keyboard and mouse, every screen on my bench, all pulled from recycling. With the exception of the screen on my bench. That was a return because it was too big for the customer I sold it to. And I only have the HTPC because of a snafu on my part where the wrong motherboard got ordered, it was $150 and I wasn't going to just let it sit. But given the cost of the motherboard and the general "weirdness" of it, it wasn't something I would have ever sold. Just too damned expensive for what you could build with it. And even that has an M.2 wifi/Bluetooth card in it pulled from recycling. The computer I'm on right now has a Phenom 9850 processor in it. My main "work computer" is the oldest computer I own. But it will be getting an upgrade soon.

That's why you a) find someone who will pick up your e-waste for free and b) tell your community that you are a drop-off point for e-waste.
 
I've been slowly scaling back. I have a Thinker Cube which is like a Surface Book, but stopped using it.

I've been using my recently acquired Dell Latitude Convertible, SU9200 ULV 1.0Ghz, Windows 7. Great little machine. Upgraded the 1.8" to an SSD.

I also bought from work for $40 a Toshiba USB LCD 14" 1366 x 768 which works awesome with my phone. The goal is to get a USB C PD hub and my phone can be a computer. Why pay more for something when you hardly use it?
 
Dare I ask, why you need so much power in so many machines?

What do you do, which is different from the rest of us, who get by with what we have?

I mostly use Adobe products (Photoshop, Premiere, Dreamweaver, etc.), internet browsing with HUNDREDS of tabs open at a time, I do website design/development, I play games, do a little bit of programming using tools such as Autoplay Media Studio, I run VM's for older software, etc.

Most of what I do needs RAM more than anything else. I mean, technically I could get by on an FX series AMD processor, but things are much smoother using an i7 and since I need at LEAST 32GB anyway (if I'm being honest with myself, 64GB is really my minimum these days), I might as well do the upgrade. I've been holding off upgrading my systems with new motherboards and putting in 128GB of memory because of the cost of memory right now. I mean, just the memory is $1,800 per machine:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...128gb_corsair_platinum-_-20-236-159-_-Product

So unless I want to spend a minimum of $5,000, I'm going to have to hold off upgrading my other two main systems. I went ahead and bit the bullet and upgraded my main computer to 128GB, but I just can't stomach paying $5,000 for what amounts to RAM, because the processor/motherboard upgrades will be barely noticeable. In fact, these newer motherboards have even less USB ports than my current boards. I have at least 12 things plugged into USB on my main invoicing / imaging computer and I don't like using those cheapo Chinese knockoff PCI USB cards if I can help it.

It's very expensive to do what I do. I wish it wasn't, but that's just life.

Shots fired!

I don't really know what that's supposed to mean. I'm sure there are people on here with better systems than I have. My main office machines have 4th gen i7's in them.

He's a miner. Got that crypto fever. :D:rolleyes:

Nah he doesn't have enough graphics cards for that.

Nope, no mining. I've built tons of mining rigs for my clients, but I never wanted to get into it personally. My best card (an Nvidia GTX 970) is pitiful for mining anyway, and my dual GTX 770's would actually COST me to mine with because they eat up so much electricity vs. computational power compared to newer cards.
 
I don't really know what that's supposed to mean.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Shots Fired

Current RAM pricing is ridiculous. the 16GB DDR4 in my rig at home was I think $69.99 when I brought it. Now the same kit is around $180 on Newegg.

Recently I was thinking of getting an i5-6500 for my main work machine but I don't really want to plop down over $170 for DDR4. I have enough DDR3 laying around or I can use ram that's currently in there. Might go for a 4th gen.
 
I had a nice little first gen core i7 machine that recently bit the dust.... rebuilt with a Ryzen 7 machine.

Work Machine (Home Office)

MSI X370 SLI plus motherboard
Cyroig H7 cooler (since the ryzen chip I bought didn't have one)
Corsair Vengance LPX 16GB DDR4 3200mhz ram (which won't run that fast...)
EVGA G3 550W Gold PSU
Corsair Carbide 200R case
Reused Radeon X5870 GPU (which is loud as hell, bad fan?)
Reused my old DVD RW and BD RW drives
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X
Reused the crucial 525GB MX3 SSD

It's a great machine, sad that my old x58 machine died. I did buy a gigabyte X58 replacement board
but it wasn't very stable. I was on the fence, to rebuild... or just buy a used opitplex off ebay for two or
three hundred bucks... slap the SSD in, reload win 10 pro and call it a day.

In the end, I guess I decided to splurge. Having 16GB worth of ram is really nice... 6GB was super painful
trying to run a VM on top of the regular host usage like chrome (mainly). Right now with less than 10 total
tabs open in Chrome, and one VM which is allocated 2GB of RAM... I'm almost at 8GB used of the 16 total.

Sometimes when I'm studying for my amazon aws certification, I have another VM spun up.... puts me at
nearly 10GB used. Fairly "light" usage, given my line of work... but I feel anything under 16GB really wouldn't
cut it.


Backup

Thinkpad T520 with a Core i5 and my 250GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD.... I have a docking station for it so I can
connect it up to my two 24" monitors. I have a hard enough time with those.... really wouldn't like to do my job on
a nice small 15" single screen.



The nice part about my job for the most part, is that my local machine is basically a thin client. As long as I have
access to a computer with reasonable horsepower, I just need to VPN in to the corporate network and then RDP
to my corporate VM. The biggest issue really becomes the monitor size and count. But, in a pinch, if I have to
suck it up and work on a single small laptop screen... at least I'm still getting paid!
 
The other day I bought an HP Enterprise server, just because it was cheap.... When I was unloading it, I realized that I have a hoarding problem and have too many computers at home. I have 13 systems at home, doing various things. Four doing Crypto with several thousands in graphics cards (they have paid for themselves several times over)...six laptops (samsung, couple of HPs, two apples, and an asus).....an intel NUC for the TV....One tower running as a remote support server / media server...the latest build is my gaming pc.
I actually gave away a couple of laptops a few months ago, to my sister and mom.


As far as at work, nothing special. All scrapped together from recycled crap, mostly. All in all, eight systems at my work bench for work related functions
 
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I moved away from having a lot of equipment after a few years with a retired server as my desktop. After I'd shut it down when I got my first full-month power bill without it on 24x7 the bill was $10-20 lower, and that seemed to hold over a couple of months. I decided that for the savings I could get much smaller and cheaper to run newer equipment.
 
It's a lot harder to fix other people's problems than your own because other people use their computers differently and, thus, have other problems.
And it's very hard to resist the temptation to make it "work like mine!" Meaning that the way I do things doesn't mean it's the way they do things!
Even though there are plenty of ways to make it more convenient to do work on a computer doesn't mean others find it as convenient!

"see....now you just click here and voila!"
..."but I used to click here and then here and ...can you put it back the way it was?...:rolleyes:
 
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