So its done. I ditched the grueling, agonizing, torturous, process of picking a new laptop/2-in-1, and went with a beefy desktop to do all my main work. Later I’ll decide what to use while traveling… for now, it’s my iPad.

So what did I go with? An Alienware Aurora? Or an Area 51? Some Top-spec Dell, or a questionable PowerSpec from Micro Center? No… I built my own. And it was HELL.

 

The Why

First, WHY? I came to the realization that while I love the OPTION of working from the living room, I really HATE doing REAL work there. I like having my big monitor, comfy keyboard and mouse, and fewer distractions. Honestly the only thing I do from the couch when I tell myself I’m going to be working hard, is Email and Browsing. I have an iPad that does a pretty good job of that. If I’m going to sit at my desk doing the ‘power’ work, then I’m going to get a POWER machine.

 

The Hunt

It’s been well over 15 years since I’ve built a desktop, and while the romanticized notion of building my own desktop, and getting the Geek Glory, was enticing… the realist in me said its better to have something that will work, and I can go complain when it doesn’t. And so I set out on the task of finding the best power machine that I could, with a hopeful $1,500 budget. Why $1,500? No clue, felt less guilty than $2K+, and I seriously doubted that I would be happy with a $1K machine.

The hunt was pretty bad. I want all the Bells and Whistles, but I’m too much a Miser to PAY for them. I drooled over the Alienware Aurora and Area 51. I decked out the options to the max… came back to reality, and put them in middle tier… and still had heartburn looking at the $2-$3K price tag.

Days went by of me keeping 20-30 tabs open with different options, and flipping back-and-forth trying to keep a comparison matrix. Finding models be happy with, and then agonizing over finding out if its cheaper to buy through other stores, or if I can take their stock build and chose their upgrade options, vs taking their high-end build as-is.

I watched tons and tons of reviews on YouTube. I trolled Forums and Reviews. Ultimately I ended up with the HP Omen as my target.

 

So the Omen met the majority of my geek wants… SSD to boot and run apps off of, a beefy enough storage drive, a good GPU and CPU… and enough RAM.

… But “enough” is never enough for a Geek. I’ve got 16 GB RAM on my Macbook Pro… and I want MORE power. So I then created a table to figure out how much it would be to UPGRADE that model to what I WANT.

 

But now I’m back to the $2K+ realm. Hunting for those upgrades also made me think about how to build a similar system myself. So I decided to price it out and see which method is better.

To Match:

[wp_table id=613/]

 

So not Terrible; it is at least under $2K… JUST. But it at least got me thinking, maybe building will be a good choice. However, once I changed the specs to the DESIRED specs, then I’m well over $2K again. Plus that GPU price was REALLY sobering. I learned that GPU prices are insane because of Bit Coin Mining… “Gee, Thanks Money Launderers” (more on my view on Bit Coin in another post). Plus the process is agonizing to find parts, and have no clue about dependencies and compatibility. Short of a LOT more reading to learn about all the new hardware changes since I’ve built, this is no longer fun.

 

Enter PC Part Picker

OMG where was this tool 15 years ago… or even when I started this hunt. OK, its been around a while, but I didn’t know about it. PC Part Picker makes it INSANELY easy to make sure you’ve considered the main components, but it even calls out things like “This CPU doesn’t come with a Heat Sink”, and does all the price hunting for you. You can build your list, share it, and people can even make recommendations… which came in handy. Later I discovered Gamer Meld’s Discord channel for Build Questions: http://discordapp.com/channels/316432360524742656/319179501202440192, and got some advise there when I realized I had no wi-fi or bluetooth, and could barely fit the current components in my case.

So here was my original build:  … oops, I guess I forgot to save. So instead I’ll share my final build (look at that, a TL:DR in the MIDDLE… muwahahaha): https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Node0/saved/2FqJVn

The exception being that the RAM there is 3000, and I have the 2666, since Ryzen doesn’t support 3000. The original list also came out at about $1,500, but notice it doesn’t have a price for the Case or the GPU… that’s because of availability… aka, “good luck finding a GPU under $1K”.

 

Now to Micro Center

It’s been a long time since I’ve been to MC, and never to the Westmont. It isn’t as big as the Chicago one – at least from memory – but it was enough. I wondered for a bit, avoiding eye contact of any “sales guys”. I just wanted to see if I could price it for cheaper than I had on Part Picker. Since I knew the GPU was going to cost around $1K, I needed to cut at least $500-$750 from the build to stay at the “bearably over-budget” range.

I found an open box motherboard, saving $80, and they had the Ryzen 1700X for $100 cheaper than the 1700 I originally had on my list. So far, great. Then I checked the website for availability of the GPU, and they said it was in stock, but I couldn’t find it in the glass case (yes, people would walk away with them I bet). A rep said he can help, but after not finding it, failing to up sell me to the $1,800 one, and a half-hearted attempt to keep me looking at something else, I started to walk away. In swoops another rep. I kick myself for not remembering the question he asked, but it was the GOLDEN QUESTION. It literally stopped me in my tracks, and I was like “ummm, yes, please help me”.

The rep – Joe Hubecek – went line-by-line of my Part Picker list, and looked everything up, and even made some tweak recommendations to get be back in budget. The only thing they didn’t have for cheaper, was the RAM. This dude actually got me almost in budget, and I was HAPPY with the changes. The best part was the steal I got on the GPU. Roughly $1,600 walking out of the store, and I had just about everything I needed. Tara and the Girls were waiting in the car (they went over to Hobby Lobby while Dad geeked out), and I was smiling huge, so they already started with the “how much over budget are you?” questions. Happily I could say I wasn’t… YET. Lets head over to Fry’s since they are close, and see if I can get RAM.

 

… But first a stop in the Park. Ty Warner park has a zipline now… kick ass.

Back to the geek hunt…

 

The Horrible, No Good, Rotten, Store… Frys

Ok, you can guess how this is going to go. I’ll start with a positive. This place is HUGE, and has WAAAAY more than just computers. It has hobby stuff, other geeky electronics, home stuff, even a Cafe. This SHOULD be an enjoyable experience. However, it seems that EVERY SINGLE TIME I decide to come here, I get temporary amnesia and forget the absolutely MISERABLE experience I had the last time[s]. No really, I FSCKING HATE THIS PLACE!!!!

I think the problem is this place is rotten in the bones. It’s an institutionalized mistrust and disdain for the customer, and terrible unprofessionalism from “Management” to the rest of the employees. I have made 4 trips here, and now that memory returns, I have NEVER seen a SINGLE interaction between employees that wasn’t bickering, or down right disrespectful. I literally almost jumped into this last conversation to chew the supervisor out. I was praying under my breath that the employee got up and smack the SH**T out of the supervisor. No really, it is ACTUALLY that bad. I waited almost 30 minutes at the register for them to grab the box from their secure cage (which isn’t locked btw), when the dude who has “access” ignored my cashier asking repeatedly until I stared him down, then he picks it up looks at it, then puts it down, to go argue with someone else. Three trips back to the cage, nasty comments about the woman who was at the memory desk not doing it right, and then her stomping up and yelling at the dude, them continuing the argument in the cage…. stomping, slamming the door, stomping. Eventually he gives the cashier the RAM that was always there, was always the correct package, and my time was COMPLETELY wasted. Oh and get this… this is the FIRST time I get to LOOK at the package, because apparently customers aren’t allowed to see it until its paid.

ARE YOU FSCKING KIDDING ME!!!!!

At that point I was too pissed to sit there and confirm compatibility, so I went home. Get home, put in ram… nothing. Turns out she grabbed 3000MHz, not 3200MHz. If only I could SEE the damn package before having to wait 30 more minutes of torture, and I could have said grab something else.

I will never come back to Frys!!! Oh crap, I have to return the RAM. AAAARRRGGH!!!!. I ordered next day delivery on Amazon, saved $50, and it worked right away. 1 week later – putting off the heartburn as long as possible – I return the ram.

 

One more switch up, and The Build

In classic indecisive geek fashion, while assembling the box – which btw, I forgot how painful and tedious it is, especially if you want to have decent cable management and visual – I decided to not install the SSD and instead return it for an NVMe drive. 4X the speed is worth it, even if it means going from 1TB to 500GB. Madi was my helper in building, and also helped me analyse which open is the best (see her white boarding… proud of my geek bebe).

 

 

And THIS is why it was worth it:

But does it work?

 Nope. Well, to be fair, the HARDWARE works, but not the OS. Apparently its “common” (read “acceptable”) for Windows to be stuck in a “Getting Windows ready” install loop every reboot. Any the “solution” is to just let it run. So I did… for HOURS. No joke. On a NVMe drive and 32GB ram, ANY install should be pretty blazingly fast. NOTHING should take hours. Anyways, I didn’t believe it would work, but after letting it sit there for 3 hours it completed. But then that happened EVERY time. So I reformatted and re-installed… 3 TIMES.

IT ALIVE!!!

After multiple battles with Windows, Gigabyte Drivers, installing a new network card (did I mention I forgot Wifi and Bluetooth, and I only have a bluetooth keyboard?), several rounds of installing Windows Updates, some of my main Apps (Photoshop, Lightroom, Atom, Chrome), and a constant battle with the Bluetooth drivers failing…

I have a functional machine.

yes… my man cave is a DISASTER, as its doubling as storage.

 

1 Week Later

I’m writing this exactly 1 week from starting to put equipment together. The process was frustrating at times, but it was worth it. That said after shouting at the computer last night that I’d trade it in for an iMac. I think part of the geek “fun” is the struggle. I still have some minor driver issues, but I was able to transfer over HALF of my photos. It turns out the brand new drive I bought a month ago to be my new photo backup, is already damaged… after ONE use. I can only copy 92%… and sadly no way of knowing which AREN’T copied, as it copied directories first, and there are some 92K files left to transfer, distributed amongst some 1K folders. Yes, I have a LOOOOOOOT of photos, too much… and I suspect 1/3 are duplicates of some manner.

Windows isn’t my favorite yet. I’m still learning my way around the settings options. My biggest gripes so far:

• I have a Mac keyboard (though it supports Mac and Windows configs), and it’s not easy to remap keys like it in on Mac.
  • I’m stumbling a LOT with shortcuts
• I miss iTerm2
  • Yes, even TERMINAL is prettier on Mac 🙂
• No OmniGraffle, and no Sketch
  • I’m actually working on installing OS X in Virtual Machine right now so that I can have them back
• File manager
  • Ugly.. yes, I’ll say that about nearly everything
  • No tabs
  • Not able to do quick preview with Space button
  • Can’t create quick launch buttons for apps (I drag files/folders to Atom editor LOTS)

 

Other than that, I’m functional. Sadly it’s taken this long to get to that point, and now I’m away for a week in San Diego. Downside of desktop is its a pain to bring with.