Hello. New here. If the following is a bit noobish I am the guy in a SOHO who gets the “computer expert” job. My reaction to being an “Expert” is “seriously? I am your expert? That’s like making Harpo Marx into a formula 1 car driver”. Then I take 30 minutes to recover from this status.
Anyway. I have used the same tower desktop PC since 2011. My monitor is also from 2011. Both have been run 24/7 since 2015. Thus their power on hours have far exceeded any empirical data for going EOL. Indeed the monitor has at least one dead pixel and the computer has begun to reboot at random. It is time for new gear.
Last week I found an Australian computer maker who specialise in making quiet computers with Linux installed. Most people here are American so think of them as being the Australian equivalent of System 76, I bought one and a monitor and a wireless mouse and keyboard. Yesterday my beautiful three box ensemble arrived. Today I have opened it.
Here things get complex. I was correct to predict that a 2023 computer would not have VGA pin connects for my current monitor. I was also correct to predict that a 2023 computer would have fewer usb ports than a 2011 computer. That’s why I bought the new monitor and mouse/keyboard. This computer is very different. My 2011 one had a 90s style case that opens by sliding out side panels. This 2023 computer seems to open by sliding the top panel and sliding it back in place with a click; I found this by accident when I was using some degree of force in the unboxing.
Right now [6 PM AEST] it gets dark early. I will continue in the bright light of day. This is big job. I have backed up the files that I want to keep on a SSD. I have also printed out my email password and bitwarden passwords to be safe. My OS is Ubuntu Studio 22.04 LTS. I know that people hate Canonical. But for my audio books narrations Ubuntu Studio is perfect. I can run my Focusrite audio interface and get the controls by changing one line in a file. Reaper runs fine as my DAW. I do not use Pipewire if that interests anyone.
This will be my first time using an SSD. This will be my first UEFI computer instead of the ancient grub system. I am like a real life computer time machine Rip Van Winkle. I suppose that I should give my new computer specs:
Vdesk QA420
Antec p10 silent tower case with front USB ports
Quiet CPUJ cooler
AMD Ryzen 5 5500 6 core 3.6 Ghz [4.2 turbo]
AMD b550 mainboard
16 GB DDR4 3200 MHZ [2 TIMES 8] RA,M
480 GB WD green 3d M.2 SSD
dual layer optical drive
2 GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GT 730 silent
Monitor and keyboard etc
1 year warranty
This is not designed for playing games or 3D. It’s for what I call low impact power user activity: narrating audio books and various business activities. Note that I have no idea where the AMD specs lie in context because I have never used AMD.
