After many years of thought and consideration and several months of serious internal debate, I decided it was now time to update a few components in my personal computer. It has served me well during this time, but now we need to move on to 2020s technology. Here is the list of items I’m upgrading to and what I chose to replace them with. It was a wholesale replacement, except for the storage. Storage upgrades will require their own upgrade plan, and I also need to update my backup procedures.
The next thing to determine is whether I will stick with Kubuntu (we love KDE!) or go with Pop!_OS.
| Part | Original | Update |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i5-4460 @ 4x 3.4GHz | AMD Ryzen 7 7700 3.8 GHz Eight-Core AM5 |
| Motherboard | MSI H81M-E34 | MSI PRO B650M-A WIFI AM5 Micro-ATX |
| Graphics | MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti | Gigabyte Radeon RX 7600 XT GAMING OC 16G |
| Memory | Kingston 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3L 1600 | Crucial - Pro 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 5600MHz C46 UDIMM |
| Power | EVGA 450 80+ BRONZE 450W | Corsair RM750e 750W 80 Plus Gold |
| Case | Cooler Master Silencio 352 - Silent Micro ATX Computer Case | - |
After spending what seemed like an entire day on disassembly and assembly, I spun up the machine, and it worked. Because I did not change any disks, I did not even need to reinstall an operating system.