The gaming PC I'm assembling in my mind¹ is slowly coming together parts-wise, but although it looks like I can get all the core components by September, the case I want won't be around until October. (My second choice launched in 2013 and is now unobtainium.)
So I think I might get an openbench / Streacom BC1 for the interim...
(This is a terrible idea)
That gaming desktop I've been planning for a couple of years now is now close enough that I have the motherboard on order. (ASRock X870E Taichi Lite.) The CPU and GPU I want aren't out yet (Zen5 X3D and either an RDNA4 model or a Battlemage card, depending on Debian support at launch) but I know I'll definitely be using an AM5 CPU so I can at least get that ball rolling.
It begins!
Yay, motherboard is ready for pickup!
Dear AMD: RELEASE THE 9950X3D ALREADY PLZ
My current plan is still to build this new gaming rig around a 9950X3D processor when they're eventually released in Q1 2025, buuuut that 9800X3D is out now (stock availability gaps notwithstanding) and it's really very good...
đŸ‘€
No, no. Stick to the plan.
All right, I'm snagging the RAM and power supply for that gaming rig today. After this the only major components left will be the case, CPU cooler, CPU itself, and the primary storage drive.
(Well, plus the GPU, but I'll be waiting until Q1 2025 (CES + delay for reviews) before making a decision about that piece. Everything else I've more or less settled already.)
One of the other reasons I'm not rushing this gaming PC build is that I want at least the option of picking an Intel Battlemage GPU - not because I expect it to offer anything but middle-of-the-pack performance, but because I expect the Linux drivers to be solid for the expected lifespan of the device. The xe2 driver should ship in the 6.13 kernel which I expect will appear in the Debian backports sometime around the end of January 2025.
Plenty of time, no need to speed ahead.
@gnomon I look at those nice PSUs every so often and then I remind myself that my desktops tend to run at 100 watts measured at the wall even on active days (okay, maybe 200W if I'm building Firefox).
(Actually I see I got the desktop with a GPU up to 258 watts once. https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/PowerConsumptionV (which might be lower today, that was in the spinning rust days).)
@cks plus I'll definitely be putting a GPU in this thing which I expect will be able to pull ~200W on its own.
(Which still seems absolutely wildly profligate to me, but... well, it's just what they do now, apparently. At least the ones I'm looking at. If I was willing to tolerate closed source drivers then total power draw might even be around 300W for the GPU alone.)
@cks it does have a passive fan mode down at the bottom of the thermal envelope, yeah, and although the efficiency does indeed drop under super light load it's actually still above 90%!
https://hwbusters.com/psus/corsair-hx1000i-review/#wonderplugingallery-container-103
Ben Zanin
Chris Siebenmann