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I have a desktop again! And a job! And the two are related!
Okay, so as I've shared here before I've been trying to make something akin to a work from home situation work for me for a while. I've been trying to find indie devs interested in some of my music work, and I've had a couple of jobs lined up, but the death of my computer a couple of months ago almost killed that opportunity for me.
Until I re-negotiated one of my contracts.
That re-negotiation netted me not only enough to pay my bills for the next 3 months, but ALSO enough to build myself a new rig, one better suited to the production of music art than my older rig ever dreamt of being.
To say I'm happy with the situation is an understatement.
On the one hand, I REALLY don't like taking payment for something before I deliver the goods. On the OTHER, I've already been working with this dev for a while, and the terms of our old contract would have meant me not seeing any income from the work I'm doing for them for potentially years. Part of this re-negotiation ALSO includes the possibility of me acquiring a more full-time position on the game dev team, which would be even better, and all of that without any binding exclusivity contract either.
It's a gift horse, to be sure, and one I'm going to happily ride into the sunset no matter its dental history.
For anyone interested, the new rig is as follows:
Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro WiFi motherboard
Gigabyte GTX 1660 OC (and I'll be OCing it EVEN MORE)
AMD RyZen 5 2600x (3.6 GHz, 6 cores/12 threads)
256 GB PCi-E M.2 SSD
4 TB Western Digital Caviar Blue
16 GB G. Skill FlareX DDR4 (3200)
I think I should be set for the next 3-5 years.
Here's hoping I start spending a bit more time on here soon, too. :)
Melanie E.
Comments
Congrats
It's good to hear that you have solved your immediate problems and have a working arrangement for future work.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Good news!
And an impressive rig! :-)
(Though you might like to run it under Linux, or Windows Server - or else you might be limited to 2 cores.)
Multi-core CPUs
Multi-core CPUs have been the standard for over a decade at this point; pretty much any modern OS shouldn't have issues using one. And as someone running Win10 on a Ryzen 5 1600, I can say that it will happily use all six cores.
Good choices
One day you will be able to upgrade that cpu but right now the Ryzen 2000 series are at clearance prices.
I will probably wait for the last AM4 Ryzen before upgrading, only have a1700X at the moment.
Hopefully you have a reliable power supply.
At a guess, you’ve opted for a CL16 memory kit?
2x8 GB sticks, CL 14-14-14-34
I had a lot of choices, but I spent a bit extra to get the FlareX partially due to its known stability with RyZen since it's specifically designed for AMD systems.
As for the processor upgrade: I put this together and ordered everything the day they released the numbers on the 3k series, which was heartbreaking that I couldn't wait another month and a half, but I really did need to get to work right away. I almost went for the 2700 rather than the 2600x for the extra 4 threads, but I'm figuring on the higher base and boost clocks helping to even out the performance difference between the two, depending on the work load.
I'm still trying to convince myself I made the right choice not spending the extra 130 for a 2060: I know it isn't really worth it given the OC potential of the 1660, but that doesn't stop me from wanting that extra 10 FPS.
My PSU is a Corsair 550M, the one I'd purchased to replace my old one in the last rig and never got to really use there. If I'd held onto the money until now I probably would have invested in a more powerful PSU, since TDP wound up being a factor in my comparison metrics due to its wattage and the way I use my rigs, but I didn't so I didn't so it was: otherwise I probably would have just sprung for a Vega 56 and OC'd it into a 64. As is, though, I wanted enough overhead left in the PSU to cover the fact this thing will run close to 24/7 for its lifespan, so the fact the TDP on the 1660 should be around 1/2 to 2/3 that of the Vega 56 even with a significant overclock helps with that. Heck, that's the same reason I ended up writing the RX 590 off pretty early too.
If you ever wanna chat computer parts I'm always ready to geek on 'em :)
Melanie E.