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Upgraded the PC over the weekend! While I've done small upgrades, I haven't done a full upgrade/build in 5 years. AM4 served me very well and honestly, still probably would have for a few more years.
I originally opted for the Gigabyte B850i Aorus Pro because I wanted to try something new. Plus after all the complaints about Asus and AM5 and so-on, I figured why not. I kept my same case, the NZXT H1v2 as it works fine and I love the design. Well, immediately I discovered a problem. Gigabyte, in all their wisdom, changed where the audio port is located. It's high up on the VRM heatsink. When I go to close the AIO hatch, it clamps on the audio cable and makes it impossible to close without forcing it. This would lead to either the fan being impinged by the cable, or the cable tearing. I'm fairly confident if I just took a dremel to the board and cut the bracket off, It would have worked, but that's some ghetto shit I wasn't willing to try.
So, I had to ditch the gigabyte board and went with Asus. The board is really nice, has a lot of USB3 ports for a mini-ITX, and the BIOS is familiar. I did turn off the AI overclocker which was turned on by default. Additionally, Asus being Asus, had automatic updates for some "AsusHub". So it's good to know their new boards now come with bloatware on them. This did leave a bad taste in my mouth but after some tweaking, I got it all sorted out.
The Ryzen 5 9600x does run warmer than my Ryzen 7 5700X3D, but that's expected. The overall performance is roughly the same, but that's to be expected. The RAM speeds, however, are noticeable. At least it seems everything boots up quicker and operates more smoothly. Granted I did upgrade to the WD Black SN850X, too. I wanted to get a Gen5 SSD, but the price seem prohibitive and supposedly the performance isn't much better.
Overall, I'm happy with the upgrades. I'm also pleased to know Windows 11 allows RGB control without you having to download the garbage bloatware (such as Armoury Crate). I think I'll probably upgrade the case and such come the end of the year.
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