End of Year PC Build

In that case, the 7900 will serve you for a long time. Gaming is completely different.

When it comes to modern gaming, CPU is now the playing catch-up with all the fast GPUs like the RTX 4090. Even Intel's 13900K struggles to keep up in a lot of new titles.

I'm actually waiting for the Zen 5 CPUs because of it. Even if I upgrade to a 7800X3D from my 16-core 5950X, I can improve my PC's gaming performance by as much as 50%.

No, Hitachi bought Deathstar. They supposedly managed to fix them too, but that's all water under the bridge now. After Hitachi fixed them, WD bought Hitachis HD business, which is probably where you got that from. WD have then phased out that market line.

Seagate bought Maxtor and Connor, two very smart purchases, technology wise, Connor being the supreme technical leader of its time and Maxtor being Maxtor.
At that time Seagate was hopelessly behind and without those technology transfusions Seagate wouldn't even exist today.

Nothing is as bad as the old IBM Deathstars. They had to warranty replace almost every one they sold. Complete ruin.

I checked around, and the 8 TB Barracuda seems fairly reliable. However, you're right, it seems to have a warning of workload rate limit of 55 TB/year.
I don't think I'll reach that, but what the hell, I can buy Ironwolf or WD Red instead. I just don't want a 7200 rpm drive.

I've found a few rare 5400 rpm versions, but they're really expensive for some reason.

Good morning. So in regards to the post I made two days ago about deleting my email account....can anyone tell me what the warning about "device reset" is all about? Microsoft doesn't explain or describe it very well. Help and clarification would be appreciated.

Hotmail.com specifically....thanks. sorry I thought I had mentioned that.

Cheers,

I was at home on my PC, and yes....Though MS has valiantly attempted to convert Users over to their Outlook/365 Services, Hotmail.com and Hotmail.ca accounts still exist.  I suppose because for Users like me they have been grandfathered.   Whatever the case, my hotmail.com accounts are still useable so I have deleted the secondary email account that I was using for Gaming and Newsletters, but before I completed the process to slate my account for deletion in 30 days it reminded me of a laundry list of TO DO items, and the last one was a warning of "Device Reset" and to ensure that it was turned OFF (however when I followed the instructions and logged into the Devices tab.....there was NOTHING that in any way showed Device Reset or clued me in to "it may be here.....".  Just nothing.     So whether it was ON or OFF, I have chosen to ignore it and went ahead with deleting the account.

But that was not before setting up a completely new account and transferring all my Services to that new account.  In any case, since deleting that older account and even removing it from the "Windows Log-In Services" within Settings > Control Panel> User Accounts....I have not had any issues.

Thanks for your reply, Vanguard.

Yes I have several email accounts.  One main personal email, one for Gaming/Newsletters, one that is tied to my phone, and of course a totally separate account for work.

Question for y'all, as a casual gamer running Windows 11, how much RAM is enough? What about SSD size? I currently have 16 RAM and 1 TB in SSD with 2 TB storage in an external spin drive.

So. Starfire2023 is up and running, has been for some time. R7950X is vvvvvvery fast, I can run full mastering chain with the insane quality in realtime. On previous machine it would display something like 240% CPU usage. Now its 55%.
WD Black 850X is insanely fast. Machine boots in 4 to 5 seconds, after spending 10-11s in BIOS though. It is my C: and project disk.
RME (the audiocard) worked instantly, I can run 32 samples with only 3% CPU usage (idle), which is insane. I wont though, 128 samples is enough.
Asus Prime X670-E is very low latency too, no problems at all.
I cannot hear the machine, until I play some games, then there is small fuzz from GPU fan, like always before. Its the GTX1070OC from previous machine. Games I play run bit faster, fex. DAIMP now runs most of the time 60fps instead of 30fps
I do not have Defender installed and I disabled automatic windows updates via GPO (this is Win11Pro).

Modifying Win11Pro install image and installing all the software and plugins took two days. Next I will have to get USB-nvme enclosure and new nvme for backup.

I found out my m-audio Radium61 midikeyboard was not recognized by Win11, neither it does have anymore drivers available, but I hooked it into MIDI cable and voila, it works. Now it gets power only via usb and signals via OLD MIDI Thing I had to buy was longer cable, 3m from Roland cost me 9,90€. Much cheaper than buying new midi keyboard/controller for ~250€

If running Windows 10 or earlier 16GB would be fine. Though since Windows 11 almost demands the use of DDR 5 and we know that there are models of RAM being made at the 128 GB and at least the 512 GB ranges -RAM won't be a problem much longer but some may have to save up for it since these latter ones are expensive. However if your planning on doing triple A titles that are still to come out I would go at least with 32 GB on the ram -at the least if Windows 11 -1024 GB (1 TB) at the most but that is overkilling the over kill in my opinion. 

As to SSD's...
It really makes no difference be it Sata, M.2 or Nvme -the fuller the drive the less its performance it can maintain. In my opinion SSD's only matter if your filling it to more than the halfway point. So if your SSD that you currently have is over halfway full -I would suggest upping the size -if its not then keep the size you have. Personally it may be better to keep the SSD main OS and your regular Hard Drive but get another SSD and set it to be a complete Paging file drive. Just be sure to remove the paging file from your hard drives. Though again with the size of DDR 5... -The paging file just may be better removed. 

As to storage space for games it should be known if not already that games are getting exponentially bigger. So in the coming years games probably will exceed the 250 GB size mark. Especially if you game with mods installed in games. This will quickly eat into a 2 TB drive -especially if you plan to use mods.  MK11 is just over 100GB default and Fallout 76 is currently about similar size after all the updates and also taking into account I currently have over 100 mods in F76 as well. With that being the case these 2 games are already close to 200 GB. My advice is to get a second spinning drive and keep one as a spare if your hard drive space is being used up quickly. No guarantee that you go to get a drive and it will be there in the next few months as the holiday season ramps up.  

Hm, if C: is nvme and D: is sata-ssd - should not be confusing I've had this setup for years and years and years, with different disks of course. I have one spinning rust in the house and its in PS3. I also have to get "on-the-fly" replaceable nvme+sata-ssd in enclosure to get backups. Thats later.

Yep, no problem with Win11Pro, seems to take a bit more of memory than Win7x64 but its basically nothing on 32GB. I also updated all the software to latest, which is something I could not do with Win7 as large portion of them did not support (I tried to install, only two worked) it anymore.

Nah, I wont end up with hidden drive letters, at least I hope so (never have), also they're named SYSTEM and WORK - like my Amiga HDD's were back in the day (though it was first Workbench and Work).



This was a tactical upgrade. With PC+Win in audio world its 10 years and you will need to upgrade at least OS, with Mac its 3 to 5 years ... depending on the whims of Apple. In audio plugins the newer versions have better optimizations and of course bug fixes. So I opted with fastest CPU for audio and latest OS locked down.

Uh I have no idea why the picture does not link. Anyway, was just a screenshot of my A4000's Workbench