Turning Back Time And Facing The Future All At Once

Just a very short post to say my old PC finally died. And I'm posting this from my even older PC. 

I forget exactly how old the newer old one was. I found the invoice for it just a few months ago but I still can't recall the exact date, except that I remember thinking it was even longer ago than I expected. I want to say I bought in 2016, which would make it getting on for ten years old but it might be a couple of years either side of that.

It was old, anyway. It's certainly been the longest-lasting PC I've ever owned. I bought it from Overclockers, who build a finished machine from a base model according to your selections. The older machine I'm using now was also from them. They're excellent and I highly recommend them although they're now so focused on the high-end they're no longer much use to me.

At the time, I ordered two identical machines, one for me and one for Mrs Bhagpuss. Hers died last month so it's like they were one of those couples, married a lifetime and as soon as one goes, the other follows on in a moment.

They both went the same way, too. I have no idea what killed them. If I did, I might have been able to fix it. A lot of PCs we've had have "died" and then come back to life after I gave them some kind of Frankensteinian jump-start. I don't know what I'm doing but I know how to google and watch YouTube. Plus I know how to do comparative testing. Together, that'll fix a lot of things.

But not if the machine won't turn on at all. That's what happened to both of them. The first time, when Mrs. Bhagpuss's machine stopped, I did the first, most obvious thing and tried a different power lead. There was a bang and a flash and a small puff of smoke came out the back. I took that as a hint and gave up.

Given the age of the machine and the fact that Mrs Bhagpuss, having come out the far side of her twenty-five year-long gaming phase, is extremely unlikely to need a PC capable of playing anything more demanding than Candy Crush, I didn't bother pursuing it any further. 

Replacing it seemed like a much better option, especially since neither machine was capable of running Windows 11. We had both of them authorized to receive security updates to Windows 10 for another year but we'd already decided we'd need to buy replacements next year so it was just a question of bringing the date forward.

It was very easy to find something suitable for Mrs Bhagpuss. We got one of those clever, new mini-computers, small enough to stick in your pocket. Literally. The main downside is that you can't really add or upgrade anything inside but in the ten or whatever it was years she'd had her last computer, we'd never had recourse to install a single new or alternate component so it didn't seem like it would be an issue. 

She was using a very old monitor because her "new" one, itself pretty long in the tooth, died a year or two back (Anyone sensing a theme developing here?) so we got a new one of those as well, plus a couple of odds and ends and the whole lot came to less than £300. The PC straps to the back of the monitor so you can't even see it and the whole thing has worked perfectly so far. We're aware that these devices have a history of working until they don't, at which point there's not a lot you can do about it, but I figure if we get a couple of years out of this one we'll be ahead and it's under warranty for that long.

In the few days before it arrived, I had Mrs Bhagpuss set up, temporarily, on one of the old-old PCs I keep lying about. (Er... that are always to be found somewhere about the house, that is, not that I consistently misrepresent. English is hard.) That meant when mine died too, I was all ready to go with a short-term alternative.

First, though, I did try to see if I could resuscitate the better one. Since the last time I tried it sparks had shot out of the PSU, I figured rather than a new power cable I'd change out the supply itself.  I swapped in a spare one (Actually a better one. I don't know why it was in the oldest machine.) and... nothing happened. With some trepidation after the previous experience, I tried another power lead. Again, nothing.

A machine that appears to be incapable of powering up at all seems to me to be moving dangerously close to the territory of the electrician rather than the half-assed computer hobbyist. I don't mess with electrics.

Or maybe it was the power switch itself. Or one of the internal cables. Really, it's beyond my ability even to guess, let alone to fix.

And as said, I was going to have to replace it sooner rather than later anyway so my motivation to start learning new, difficult things was very low. Plus, I have a working laptop, so it's not like I was going to be offline.

Still, I prefer to sit at a desk to write these posts and I would like to keep playing the few games I still play these days. So I swapped everything that mattered out of the old machine into the even older one, which was three disk drives including the SSD with the OS on it and the graphics card. I'd have swapped the RAM and the CPU too only the Motherboard wouldn't take either.

To my surprise, everything just worked. Immediately. I've been using it for a day and a half now and for everyday use, there's no discernible difference. Well, okay, it's very slightly slower and it boots up a little oddly but other than that things are pretty much back to how they were.

For web browsing and media and blogging, that is. But what about gaming? Well, it is the same machine I used to play EverQuest II on back in the day so I was optimistic that, at least, would work, especially with the RTX 4060 to do some of the heavy lifting. 

And EQII does work. At least, I can log in and do my Overseer missions, which is about all I was doing anyway. Zoning takes a while and I haven't tried fighting anything yet but I'm fairly sure it would be fine. [Edit: After I published this, I played a little more EQII and ended up in a raid, doing the new, pre-expansion Public Quest in Enchanted Lands. No problems at all. Smooth as butter.]

I can't imagine this set-up will run Wuthering Waves or Blue Protocol or any of the new games I like, though. I mean, the CPU is an AMD Phenom II X4 from 2009 and I'm back down to 8GB Ram. I guess I could try it and see...

Well, as the screenshots in the post prove, all of which I took after I wrote that last paragraph, it is possible. But only just. With Wuthering Waves, it took forever to log in and the only viable graphic setting was Ultra Performance. Everything above was a slideshow.

With that, though, I could move around and even fight although I wouldn't say it was fun. The game does still look great even on the lowest settings, though.

But then, I haven't actually been playing WW much lately, have I? Or at all. I should have. I wanted to. But I haven't. So I'm not missing much there that I wasn't missing anyway. 

I was playing BP:SR though. So how does that run?

Okay, actually. Pretty solid, in fact. And on "High" graphics too. Eminently playable. 

And as for all those Steam demos and point and click adventures, I haven't done any testing I'm pretty sure they'd run just fine. Most of them would run on the integrated graphics of my laptop.

So I guess I don't need to make any snap decisions. I can carry on like this for a while. Which is just as well because it's beginning to occur to me that although I play a lot of games and write about a lot more, I don't really have the same needs as a typical "gamer", not when it comes to the quality of equipment I play them on. 

All the reddit threads and reviews I read seem to assume I'm going to want to play the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 on the best settings at the highest resolutions or be ready for GTA6 when it comes out whereas I'm far more likely to be playing the latest mobile port on recommended settings at 1080p. Buying a proper gaming PC for what I'd use it for would be akin to buying a Ferrari to pootle along to the supermarket for the weekly shop. 

For the last three or four changes of PC, I've generally tried to come in somewhere around the low end of mid-range, which has always been plenty, but given that I've been doing very well with a machine that was that a decade ago - and now I'm getting by on one from five years before that - it's a pretty safe bet that even an entry-level gaming PC would put me at least back where I was and most likely a little bit ahead. (I did look at the possibility of building a PC from scratch and I'm sure I could do it but I just don't want the fuss.)

If I also swap in some of the bits and pieces I already have then that machine is going to be significantly above entry level and well above what I've been using for the last many years. I really can't see why I need anything pokier. I just have to make sure I get something with a motherboard that will take the GPU and extra RAM I already have and also, if possible, be good for another round of upgrades in a few years.

My plan, which may not survive contact with my patience, is to wait until Black Friday to see if any suitable bargains turn up. It would be very annoying to buy something now and then see it going for fifty or a hundred pounds less a few weeks later. For the time being, though, I shall muddle along as best I can. We'll have to see how it goes.

Also, that really wasn't "just a very short post", was it? Or a post at all, come to that. More like me talking out loud to myself. Thank you for listening!