Peter's Computer in 2022

The year was 2022 and I was finally forced to upgrade my old computer that I had made over a decade ago using an old pre-used motherboard. It was a nice stable combination of parts with a lightened version of the Windows 7 operating system that was very fast, however there were some new programs coming out for Windows 10 which would not run on my PC. I was not looking to make a gaming computer, but instead just wanted a fast PC that was as silent as possible. My nephews are all into gaming and their PCs have so many fans that when they switch it ON it sounds like the engines of the Boeing 747 and I definitely wanted to avoid that. Hence, my strategy for noise reduction was the following.

I wanted a processor with low-power consumption so it would not need a high rpm cooling fan making a continuous noise. Hence, I had my sights on the AMD Athlon X4 950 Quad Core processor operating at 3500-MHz. I figured that four cores was more than enough for word processing and graphics work but the downside was that this processor is not in the Windows 11 compatibility list, so I may have to upgrade in the future if Microsoft does not expand their compatibility criterion. Another downside is that it does not have a built-in GPU, which means I will have to use a separate graphics card in one of the PCIE slots of my motherboard.

I decided to find a nice simple video card with passive cooling, but most of the video cards available these days have large fans on them. I bought a few pre-used cards that were Windows 10 compatible, but they did not work so well, and for a while I wished I bought a processor with built-in GPU. However I was lucky to find the AMD FirePro 2270, which was brand new (old stock) and sealed in its original box with the cables, and that worked very well with my new motherboard.

I decided to install Windows 10 on a small SSD drive because it was likely to remain in use all the time and a quiet drive is more useful for these purposes. My other large capacity drives are all conventional and noisy, but at least they will automatically switch off after five minutes of non-use if I set the power save options correctly.

For the motherboard, I wanted some simple modern conveniences such as SATA 6, an M.2 slot so I could play with this new technology, USB 3 for faster data transfers, and DDR4 memory which is supposed to be much faster than the previous versions. I also wanted a board with a header for installing a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) should I decide to upgrade the processor and install Windows 11 in the future. After some research and comparisons, I settled on the Gigabyte A320M-S2H motherboard which was the cheapest available on eBay, however in the end I settled for that motherboard and CPU bundle option on eBay. It turned out to be a good deal as they had professionally installed the heat sink with thermal compound and an Arctic fan which was very silent compared to my old system.

I decided to upgrade the power supply unit as well because the fan in the old one was getting noisy, and its current capacity was greatly diminished after over ten years of continuous use. I used to find that I could not have all the drives powered simultaneously because of lack of current, and sometimes one of the drives would switch OFF. Hence for the power supply, I decided to get a new unit, and bought the INTEGRATOR MOD XT 750W. It was the cheapest new one I could find with modular wiring, and a manufacturer with at least an online site.

For the DDR4 memory I managed to find the cheapest new modules by Crucial, which were 8-GB DDR4-2666 UDIMM 1.2V CL19. I felt it was important to get new memory modules as I did not want to get something that had been used by overclockers, and perhaps may exhibit instability.

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