Tristan Cole [elocnat]

Up until recently I've been gaming and developing games on a PC I built sometime back in 2016-ish. I think the 1080ti was installed shortly after I got the rest together, but besides adding storage I don't think I've touched it at all besides cleaning the case/fans once or twice. I don't even think I've re-applied the thermal paste!

It was past time for an upgrade, but I kept putting it off for various reasons. I had been eyeing the AMD 9950x3d for a while and signed up on a waitlist: got the email and decided to just go for it! I didn't have any of the other parts picked out yet but knew I wanted a complete build separate of my existing system (which I have plans to turn into an HTPC at some point).

Ignoring the horsepower, the main goal of this build for me became the aesthetics. I stumbled across a case, the Antec C8 Curve, and I knew that was it. I _love_ mixed wood/glass/metal mixed construction, and the curved glass gives it that little extra touch. I thought that case coupled that with the TRYX Panorama 360 would match very well and be kinda unique - hopefully without looking too flashy (if only I could manage it with Pop!).

Somewhere along the line I found the Asus ProArt motherboard and loved the black/gold, so I ended up going with that theme through the entire build. I'm not usually a big fan of gold, but it kind of gives a warmth when paired with black, so with the wood it felt like everything meshed really well together. The interesting thing is that in limiting myself to mostly gold/black parts, I ended up with some parts I probably wouldn't have initially picked but which turned out to be some of the best for the category/price from what I could see.

I was thinking of ways to match the wood inside the case. Initially I thought about finding wood colored or stickered fans; the closest were Noctua fans, but I didn't like the white casing and others I looked at were too loud for this build. Then I saw fan grills and was reminded those are a thing: and I found some on Etsy that were really cool. Especially with some light underneath I figured these would complement the build well! I ordered a gold anodized GPU bracket but that never arrived, so I used a cheap RGB one until I printed a custom support for it (initially a steel beam, then the figurine). I've considered re-sleeving the PSU cables in black/gold as well, but that's not high on my list of priorities right now.

I'm not [wasn't] a huge fan of ARGB stuff. I hate the rainbow rotating default colors and all; it's tacky, distracting, and I don't even like them generally when they're full blue/green/etc. Honestly it's kept me away from anything ARGB for a long time. I did regular LED fans back in the day a few times but my last case only had lights from the hardware logos & mobo. I've never looked into ARGB controllers or fancy patterns or any of that shit: even my KB/M choices have basic leds only.

Because of this I initially pursued black and gold no-led case fans. I sifted through all the crap on the internet and came up with only a few viable options. The first ones being ALSEYE X12 in gold. I really hoped these would be okay in person even if I didn't love them, but nope; they were gaudy cheap plastic pieces of shit only in 120mm. The alternative I found was the Alphacool Apex Stealth 3000rpm Gold, but it wasn't available on major sites for a decent price, 120mm only, and I was too cheap to take the risk on buying 10 of them and not liking them. I ended up buying one, and it's a solid fan, but you can't even really see it in the back of the case. Does match the RAM though...

Before going the ARGB route, I settled on the Arctic P12 & P14 slim PWM PST fans. For the price they seem to be pretty good fans and made cable management pretty easy. The one downside was I think I got an older 140mm version and it would just randomly go out of balance and scrape; really annoying. But they were just boring...the RAM and video card had ARGB but that was it. Where it sits you can't even really see much due to the tinted glass.

I installed OpenRGB? and set my RAM colors to gold which looked pretty good. [The 9070 isn't recognized right now, need to do more tweaking.] So I decided to say screw it and found some SilverStone Technology Air Slimmer 140mm ARGB fans and figured I'd try the same. After installing them...I admit I became a fan. They look pretty good spinning with just faint gold LEDs and it just adds a nice little touch instead of feeling overpowered or tacky. I honestly had no idea the range of ARGB and options in the tooling; it's pretty cool even if it's not really my thing!

For my old build I started on Windows 7 and eventually migrated to Windows 10. I set it up to dual boot Ubuntu at one time; that was abandoned after a week but it's still there as the default boot drive to remind me every time Windows updates overnight. There's zero fucking chance I'm going to Windows 11, so I decided to just dive full into Linux for the new build and avoid any dual boot shenanigans this go around.

After very little research I chose to go with Pop!_OS 24 (Cosmic). It's still in Alpha (think it's beta as I review to post this, they released/showcased some updates recently), but it seems like Pop is relatively stable and well liked, has a lot of support/a company behind it, and just kind of works for gaming etc. And so far, minus a few things I've been trying to do custom like run Windows programs or get `.heic` wallpapers to work, it's pretty good! There was some initial setup with drivers and updates and all the usual shit, but pretty much everything I use was ready to install or had an easy alternative.

Steam runs great out of the box, and most games I've tried so far have too - even Tristan Cole's Pro Driver (GO WISHLIST NOW)! I had some controller issues initially which I fixed with a few random packages after searching. One indie game demo I wanted to play had some bad graphical glitches, and I've had another game I think just not work altogether, but everything else I've tried has just worked. It's truly remarkable how far Valve has pushed gaming on Linux ahead with Steam and Proton and all their compatibility layers. I would have no problem recommending this to the average end user building a new PC in 2025.

All that said, because Pop!_OS 24 is still alpha/beta, I've had a few compatibility issues with certain apps and CLI tools I've had to build manually or find other solutions for. I feel like if I went with the LTS build it would be fine, but I know I can work around things if I run into trouble. Everything like that feels like work to me so I hate it - which is why I stopped using Ubuntu before - but Pop!_OS has only given me that feeling once so far and that was just me trying to do custom wallpaper shit. I also haven't been able to get Davinci working yet as it gives video errors, but these are small things I can work through. I have Wine (+ wine) if things get too bad!

I specifically went with an AMD video card because I feel like Nvidia has taken a "fuck you" stance to their non-business customer base. They've catered to the :hahabusiness: "I'll spend a billion dollars to make ten and prove I'm hip with AI" crowd and outright taken advantage of gamers and regular consumers. I don't give a fuck if they can offer a better card for just a bit more money. AMD has shown they're at least willing to try, and I'll support that instead as a lesser of two evils if nothing else.

I'm also done with Windows. I liked Windows 7 a lot, Windows 10 was okay but got slower and slower and more intrusive as time went on. Then Windows 11 comes out with even more anti-consumer bullshit and "features" nobody asked for with more telemetry and tracking, and is basically a forced upgrade with the TPM shit. I don't love OSX but I'd rather use it than Windows daily; but since I am a gamer, Pop!_OS works for me. I'll see where the future leads but it's definitely with Linux: shout out to Valve for Proton. As soon as TCPD is finished my Windows installation will be wiped for good.

My theme of 2025 is that I'm done with the bullshit. I'll pay more money to support a company that even acts like they give a fuck versus ones that clearly are hostile to consumers through anti-privacy, anti-competitive, or whatever other tactics they want to use. I'm not gonna shout from the rooftops about stuff but I'll gladly take my money + time elsewhere and steer anyone away from bullshit if it comes up in conversation.

Later.