I replaced the case on my desktop recently, though not without a few struggles. A damaged motherboard in the move, and then a DOA replacement caused me a bit of a headache while troubleshooting. Fortunately, I was able to get a few minutes with Glenn Berry to find the issues. Things are back up and running now, which is good. I like my desktop and I'm more comfortable doing most of my work there.
The process got me thinking about upgrades, especially when I got a look at Glenn's newest machine. He hasn't published details, but he did post a few results for his Intel Optane 900p PCIe cards. He also dropped a picture on Twitter of his Threadripper CPU. That's quite a Task Manager display for a desktop workstation. I don't know that I need that much power, but it's still impressive and exciting. Seeing a recent picture of Andrew Kelly's 38" 4K monitor for his new workstation has me drooling a little, even though I don't really need more hardware.
It's Black Friday, and while I doubt many of you are out shopping for yourselves, I do wonder if there are upgrades that you'd be excited to get. If someone were to gift you some computer hardware, what would you want? It could be hardware or software, desktop, mobile, whatever type of upgrade you'd want. Let me know today what you wish someone would give you for a present.
I'm not an enthusiast. I think my son spent almost as much on his video card upgrade as I did for a motherboard, CPU, and RAM. However, I did get a little excited in looking at the various options in the Denver Microcenter store last week. From 3D printers to CPU water coolers to fancy video cards, I was tempted by no shortage of high end hardware. I don't really need anything, and even passed on adding RAM to my desktop. 32GB works great for me, and while I might squeeze a touch more performance out of another 16 or 32, I don't really need it.
I am tempted by a set of larger, high resolution monitors. The idea of a couple of large, 38" monitors that would spread work across my desk is tempting. Probably overkill and silly, but enticing. If I were to really dream about some upgrade, I'd like to get some faster internal 3D storage for my system. I hate waiting for programs to start, and getting some faster internal NVMe storage to replace a legacy 1TB HDD and get my system moving quicker.
At heart, I'm a practical computer user, but I can appreciate the effort that some people put into build their systems. I'm just not sure that I'd want any of the fancy RGB lighting or as many cores in my video card as I have in my CPU. I'm also quite pleased with my mobile devices, so I don't want an upgrade there, though I wish I could get a device with a different (bigger) battery.
You might feel different and perhaps you can change my mind today. What cool upgrades would you make if cost were not an issue?