I bit the bullet and spent a chunk of my Stimulus Check on building a new PC!  It has been well over a decade since I’ve had a “new” computer, and I’m just tired of dealing with hand-me-downs and frankenstein’d PCs.

I got home from work a little early yesterday, and spent the entire evening working on this project. It wasn’t just building the new PC, but I had to dismantle all the technology in my office, clean, rearrange, migrate, a server, and more.  I realized about 10:30pm I hadn’t eaten dinner and ordered a pizza, I was that enthralled by the entire thing.

I had a few miss-steps along the way.  Missed a setting in the BIOS that would let Windows boot properly, and before I realized it I had lost all patience and was formatting the drive I had wanted to migrate.

Also had to rebuild my Windows 10 Install drive, as somehow it screwed itself up over the course of the night and wouldn’t BOOT anymore.  Had a few minutes of panic as all my window’s PCs were out of commission and wasn’t sure how I could create a new install drive, as you can’t do it on Mac or Linux.  Then I remembered I had my Dad’s old laptop here to reload, and it saved the day!

The new PC wasn’t all though, as the second phase was migrating the system from ancient Dell PowerEdge into the small form factor case I had been  using as my desktop. She’s running pretty good, and not taking up as much space or using nearly as much electricity!  Also, my office is noticeably quieter now.

The new PC (which I aptly named Palpatine) is running GREAT!  I’ve only done some light testing with some games, but I can tell you Minecraft is soooo much smoother and more beautiful. I can finally play with SHADERS!!

Palpatine’s Specs:
Processor: 3.7 GHz Intel Core i7-8700K
Memory: 16 GB DDR4
Storage: 512 GB M.2 SSD & 1 TB SATA SSD
Graphics: ATI Radeon RX 580 (4 GB)

Here are some pics I snapped throughout the process.