Shane_B.

They're handing out CDL's to them here like they are candy. They can't speak or read English, which is kind of important, you know, when you're reading signs on the highway. Maybe they taught them to recognize the important ones like "One Way" and "Stop". Why they allow them to drive 18 wheelers is beyond me and it's becoming a deadly problem across the country ... I work at an apartment complex. The number on our street address happens to be the same as one of the apartment numbers. I would say that 85% of everyone's deliveries go that apartment because they don't or can't read the packages when they label says 15 xyz St, Apt 30. They just see the 15 xyz street and drop everything off at Apt 15 even if it says a different apartment number.

Well this feels weird. I got this overpriced behemoth put together and Win 11 Pro installed and activated from a thumb drive without a hitch. The only hiccup was Win 11 couldn't find my Wifi drivers. I downloaded them and put them on the install thumb drive but it was an EXE. During install, at the point where Win 11 says it can't find your internet adapter and asks for drivers, you have to pull up a dos box and manually execute the EXE, then it finds it. Other than that, it went really smooth. That was the first time in, geez, 30 years?? that I had to manually execute an EXE file. I can't believe I remembered how to switch drives and find folders. It's so quiet I have to keep checking if the pump thingamabob is working. I literally hear nothing. Windows 11 feels like a cross between a Mac and my Android cell phone. It's different, but so far it's running fine and I like it. Same shtuff, different layout if you know what I mean. The 10,000 LED's inside are kind of neat. Win 11 and the mobo is set up to let you control them. It looks awesome, but as soon as I put the side on the case I might as well turn them off. These fancy cases with cable management are a joke unless you get extension cables. I may not be able to get my GPU in because the pump cables are so short they aren't long enough to go over, let alone around, the GPU when I put it in. I have 5 fans and they are all running and I literally can't hear it. Things sure have advanced. Maybe once I get my GPU in and do some stress tests it will be different, but just for normal stuff it's completely silent. I thought for sure the pump or the radiator fans would make some kind of noise, but I can't hear a thing. So other than the highway robbery for the ram and m.2 drive, it's a pretty good day. I can't complain.

I recently watched a video on YouTube by a lady that cured her lactose intolerance by bombarding herself with dairy. It was youtube so take it with a grain of salt. But your story reminded me of that. She said it was awful the first day then her symptoms faded away, and now she's no longer lactose intolerant.

That's for DDR5. DDR4 is a bit less. I read an article that said there's a shortage because of AI and bit mining farms popping up all over and they are buying up all the RAM and chip based drives. SSD, M.2. The estimate was the prices will continue to go up and then stabilize some time around 2029. But nothing is set in stone. So it's hard to say if you should wait. I bought 64GB of DDR5. I know that's way overkill for most tasks, but I do do heavy video editing on rare occasion and I thought it would help when I get back into recording and using large sample libraries. 100% of everything will run fine on 32GB DDR4, even 16GB DDR4. Games may suffer a frame or two drop if you are a hard core 4K gamer. Maybe. But this is my last build and I wanted to future proof it so to speak. I bought all parts so they would run native 5600 and full pci 5 lanes without splitting lanes between the GPU and M.2. So when the I eventually have to replace my rtx 3060, I can put in a full pci 5 GPU and not cut/split the speed with the m.2 drive. I've always built my systems this way and I've always had rock solid performance. I can't remember a single system based crash in 10 years on my current pc. I have to do this now before the end of the year for tax purposes. I was going to wait, but since I started putting together a parts list this past summer, prices have been steadily going up. If I would have built this when I originally started, I would have spent well over $1000 less. I'll post the original pricing and what I actually paid now later. I have all the original prices in an excel spreadsheet somewhere. I'm upset, but it isn't the end of the world. I got 10 years out of my old PC and it still runs great. It just won't run Win 11 without a few hacks and I don't want to get into that. This new build will be all stock speeds at jedec standards. No overclocking. You pay a premium for non overclockable full 5600 ddr5 ram. That's part of the cost for me. The trick is finding a mobo that will support the cpu/ram and drive controllers all at full jedec speed in a world where everything is sold to be overclocked ... .. .

And today's price .... $840. If my maths is correct, that's a 500% increase from the pricing a couple months ago. As Roy Orbison once opined ... it's over, it's over, it's over! It's ooooooooooovvvveeeerrrrrrrrrr Lol.

I thought he was referring to the bottle neck stuff I read about the gpu/cpu. But I wasn't sure. 🙂

Just for kicks and giggles I just checked the pricing on the 2 sticks of ram I bought. Original Price: $168 I Paid: $486 (1.5 weeks ago) Today's Price: $619

No. The internet. Lol. I did a lot of reading before I pieced out this build. I even emailed a couple of the manufacturers and got quick responses surprisingly. But I never officially asked about the bottlenecking of a pci 4 gpu on a new pci 5 compatible system. I got a mobo that supports full lane width for the gpu and m.2 drive., which is hard to find actually. That said, I can run this rtx 3060 in 4K with no problems with the 1 game I play now. I just have to turn a couple of eye candy settings off that I dont care for anyway and would never have on if I had a system that could handle it. I can live without the game if it won't run properly so it's not that big of a deal to me. 99% of what I do would run off th3 3mbedded gpu. I read there will be significant dropped frames and others say it will run even better. I take the net with a grain of salt so time will tell. I got the final pieces yesterday. I'm so disgusted by being forces to do this because of windows 11 and the astronomical price increase that I just threw everything in my.office and have no motivation to put it together. Normally I'd be up all.night as soon as I ot rhe final piece, but I'm really feeling crappy about this build for several reasons. I don't like being forced into it then being robbed at checkout. Sorry for the long rant. LOL. I'm sitting at work waiting for an inspector and I'm bored and completely burned out. I worked 7 days a week for the last 4 months doing gut and remodels and as soon as this guy gets here and leaves, I'm outta here till 1/1/26. Unless it snows or something breaks. Then I'll be back. 😔

I can't explain why without "going there" but I do believe there is a process in the works to, uh, undo the halt that was previously implemented. It wasn't an overnight process to rebuild our buffer so to speak, but it has started. And by the time it gets fixed, a different idiot will move in and undo it again. I've lost faith in all of them to be honest. I no longer support one or the other. I just want to be left alone to live out my few remaining years in peace 'cause there ain't a darn thing I can do about any of it. I'm really sick to my stomach over this memory thing. It literally happened overnight while I was busy working and didn't have time to watch. But it wouldn't have mattered anyway. It literally happened overnight, not gradually. At least from what I've read. I have a spreadsheet I created months ago when I finally decided which parts I was going to go with. $1305 for the fastest pc you can build. I don't know if Amazon screwed up, but I got a steal on the cpu and I've never seen it that low again. I should have bought 10 and resold them on ebay. Because of the memory, my great deal DIY build went up to almost $2300. I didn't listen back in June when everyone said there is something coming and ram prices would skyrocket and nothing would be available. Yeah, I could have built a less powerful pc, but at the time the deal was so unbelievable on the cpu, I built the system around that never dreaming this would happen. Anyway, it's all been purchased. All I'm waiting for is the RAM and case, which I got screwed on too. It says in the specs that the case supports a 360mm top mount aio and bays for 5.25 drives which I have to have, but what it didn't say was they both couldn't be installed at the same time. The only case that allows both at the same time that I could find, and I had to use AI to help, is $450. I'll leave the freaking sata wires and power supply wires hanging out the side with the drive dangling there before they suck another penny out of me for this garbage. Lol. Btw, that price does not include a video card. I'll be using my old 3060 which everyone tells me will bottleneck on my cpu and run worse than it does in my current system. I'm going to have to wait until the vram price hike hits before I can even think about a new gpu.

I bit the bullet and bought the ram and m.2 last night before stock ran out again. I paid as much for it as I did for all the other pieces of my new build. I'm building my dream PC and could have often away with a lot less, still doesn't make.me feel any better. I did my research and this thing will scream for a very long time, but it really is a terrible time to build a PC.

I was reading about the memory prices skyrocketing. From what I've read it's due to all the AI and bit mining farms popping up all over and there is a shortage on ram and its only going to get worse. The memory I was going to get was $84 each x 2. Now it's $234 each x 2. And the m.2 drive more than doubled as well.

Melda's EQ's have a saturation section built in. I think it may be there on most of their plugins but I can't honestly remember.. I really like their Auto Dynamic EQ. I prefer it as a de-esser over de-esser vst's. Stand alone de-essers seem to shave the entire top end off. With a dynamic eq you can zero in on the problems and leave everything else alone.

Thankfully mine is still appraised at the pre-housing crisis assessment. That said, they just raised mine this year here in NJ. To put it in perspective, I had a 2200 sq/ft house on 5 acres in MO. I also had a 1200 sq/ft Morton building. They also tax you on your vehicles. FF to being back in NJ. I have a 1500 sq/ft house on 1.25 acres. 1.25 acres here is a luxury. 5 acres in MO is bare minimum. My property taxes in NJ are over $2,000/year more than in MO. I can count on 1 hand the amount of times my power has been out in the 25 years I lived in rural IA and MO. Here, it's out at least 3 times a month. Schools, utilities, roads, law enforcement, hospitals, jobs, quality of life, the people, it was all vastly better in MO and even better in IA. I don't know who is benefitting from my tax dollars here, but I assure you it is not the citizens. I got 1 of the 3 parts I was able to order for my new PC build. I have no idea where the h e double hockey sticks this AIO is gonna fit that I was told I had to have. Lol. At least it got here before the below freezing temps hit tomorrow. I was a little worried about that.

I saw some great software deals, but everything else was a joke. I've been watching pc part prices. They jacked everything up, then gave a discount to what the original price was. And on memory, better get some KY while it's on sale. It's gone up 200% plus (ram and drives) and none of it was on sale. If I want to build the system I've been piecing together for months now I literally have to cut the memory and m2 drive capacity in half to get slightly higher pricing then I could 6 months ago on double the capacities. Frustrating.

What they didn't think about back then was ... wood swells and contracts and those nails eventually come out. I've seen that video too and its amazing watching that guy. I do a lot of drywall repair. 99% of what I do is caused by nails popping out, mostly on the ceilings. Only at the coffee house can we go from digital eq's to 1950's drywall. Love it.