Hi all,
well, this is the rambling forum, so let's ramble a little. For Christmas, I'd gotten Star Wars Outlaws, and that game was - well, playable on my laptop, but at like 20 FPS peak, with drops in the middle. I also had a PC from 2018, but when I started the game on it, it would not even finish compiling the shaders. Whenever it got to 17%, the screen would shut off, and this would indeed be a total system crash (system was no longer responding to pings).
OK, so I need to upgrade before I can play that game. Early in the year, I'd wanted to hold off on that, though, because news of the RAM crisis was going around. But I reconsidered because it seems the prices are only going up and up, so waiting longer will only cost me more. And if I wait for the AI bubble to burst, it seems more like I may as well wait for Stuttgart 21 to finish.
So I went online, and clicked my components together. New motherboard, new CPU, new cooler, new RAM, new graphics card. Total about 1500€. I seem to remember that it didn't use to be that expensive, but then my dad says the same thing about ice cream.
That shipment reached me yesterday, and I started with a smoke test. That is where you unpack everything, put it together quickly on the table, start it up and see if you get a video signal, or, in the alternative, if the magic smoke is coming out. Smoke test worked, the smoke stayed in! But by the time I'd gotten to that point it was 7pm and I could no longer be bothered.
I also notice that the air cooler game has totally escalated. The 386 you could run without cooling, the 486 would need a single small fan, my old PC has a passive cooler of ca. 6x6x6 cm and a matching fan strapped to it. But the new cooler is 12x12x12 cm with two fans.
Today, I dismanteled my old PC to put the new components in. First shocker: I still have an old DVI monitor, and the new graphics card has no DVI output. Yes, that one is on me, I should have checked. But anyway, I headed out to a local electronics retailer to look at my immediate options. I found a DVI to HDMI adapter for 12€, or in the alternative I could buy a new monitor for 100€. That one would even be 144Hz. But since I have no real need to throw out the monitor, I opted for the adapter. I'm not a good enough gamer to take advantage of the better refresh rate.
Anyway, returning from the store, I removed all the components from the old case, and then had the next revelation: The old graphics card was already a monster that made me get a bigger case, but the new graphics card was bigger still. Too big to fit the case.
So I went to look for retailers in the area that were stocking PC cases. And you wouldn't believe how hard it has gotten to buy something like that. I found nothing sensible. Best I could have done was pick up something from Kleinanzeigen (German Craigslist). So in the end, I decided to order a case online.
And that is where I stand now. I don't even know if the thing will do what I want yet because I have no case to put it together, and from experience, plugging everything together without a case too wobbly to do anything more than a function test with.
Silver lining: I wanted to give the old components away, and due to the case blunder I can now give them away in the old case. So that's one transport problem sorted.