Recently I purchased a new desktop computer for use in writing and other things. I decided I wanted one which will stay relevant for some time. At my age it might have to last me for the rest of my life. I looked around and decided I wanted one of the most powerful ones I could get, but I wanted it built for me as I no longer wanted to build computers. First of all the parts cost so much you can’t really save a lot on a top of the line machine by building it yourself. While I wanted a powerful computer I also wanted the most bang for the buck. There are things I knew which would factor into what I bought.

The first thing I knew was multicore machines really weren’t any faster than one core if you were using two machines with the same clock speed and traditional software. The reason for this is most software wasn’t written to take advantage of multiple cores. The second thing I knew was all the tests seem to show dual core memory is as fast as quad core memory. Another thing to consider was what is the machine you buy going to be used primarily for? Is it going to be used mostly to play games, write software, write articles, maintain a website or for something else? If it is going to be used to play games there are some which can take advantage of a multiple core machine. Game machines should have a powerful graphics card capable of not only playing the most recent games but also have more capability for future games.

My computer would need to have the ability to maintain my website, be able to write articles and use several advanced pieces of software for designing and creating code, creating art, adjusting photos, not to mention be capable of copying very large files in a reasonable amount of time. I looked at the Intel I9 18 core chip, that is only the CPU chip and not the entire computer and the chip alone was almost $2,000. That was an incredible price to pay for a chip and building a machine with that chip which would have been to my liking would have cost about $4,500. That was out of the question even though that computer would have been the fastest home computer made. Intel chips have the fastest clock speeds when compared to AMD chips. I have to admit I would have loved to have had this machine, but I couldn’t afford it. On the list of fastest multicore machines after two with these awesome I9 chips was the AMD Threadripper 1950X a beast with 16 cores and which actually beat the I9 in some areas. I decided to take this route.

When you buy a powerful computer with a top of the line AMD CPU, you have to consider the fact it uses more electricity than the I9 chips so it runs a little hotter. Knowing this I opted for something I never have before and that is liquid cooling. Over the years liquid cooling has received a bad rap. People say it can leak and there have been a couple of stories of this happening, but not many. I also got the full complement of fans for the case. The difference in energy usage between the Intel and AMD chip is about 40 watts more for the AMD chip.

I opted for an SSD drive for Windows of 1 terabyte. This is a solid state drive without moving parts. This speeds up the loading of windows when the machine is first turned on or reset. There is an internal drive of 3 terabytes and two external USB 3.0 drives of 1 terabyte each. I have a 3 terabyte drive which I hook up to back everything up once a week and then disconnect to protect it. There is also a Blueray disk reader which reads and writes to DVDs and CDs. The motherboard is an AMD X399 Professional Gaming board with 32 Gigs of DDR4 memory. I also have a Nvidia GeForce FTX 1050 TI graphics card with 4 gigs of memory. That is a little weak for hard core gamers but good enough for me.

One of the things the AMD 1950X chip is known for is its ability to be overclocked. That means speeding up the clock speed. While this may interest some people, truthfully it doesn’t interest me. I don’t feel like experimenting with my expensive CPU and having to run tests for days to see if it is stable. This also makes the machine run hotter. When I bought the machine I decided it was time to update my monitors and purchased two 27 inch curved monitors. I bought two Viotek monitors but had to return one which didn’t function correctly. I thought the color was slight duller than usual so the second monitor I purchased was an Acer. They match up very well together if you don’t mind one having a thin white frame and one having a thin black one.

Here is where the machine really shines. I have very large files I move around every day which are connected to my website. They total about 18 gigs of data and are in 9 different folders. The machine can copy the entire bunch at once far faster than my old machine, but if I copy each folder at once it doesn’t take any longer than copying one of those folders when I use the Microsoft copy command. That is a big plus for me. I tried other copy commands which were said to be even faster but none were and some were even unreliable and would stop in the middle of copying.

All in all I am very satisfied with the new computer and it fits my needs very well. I matched the computer with a Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse which are a pleasure to use. The keyboard is a Wireless Desktop 5050 Keyboard with customizable shortcut keys and plenty of program keys. The only thing is it takes a little bit of getting used to since the keyboard is ergonomic and for me the apostrophe key is in a place which is not comfortable for a typist. The mouse has the two usual keys with a button on each side and a scroll wheel which has several functions. One thing I am very happy about is the computer was perfect right out of the box. Sometimes when custom computers are built there is a problem when they reach you. It could be caused by them being bumped around in shipping or improperly tested before they leave the facility. There are all sorts of horror stories about this on the internet, but thankfully I didn’t have any of these problems.