“New” Computer!

I upgraded my old, trusty rig to some latest Coffee Lake goodness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After about 18 years using the same Antec case, I decided to stripped it down to bare metal and give it more of a clean than a blast of compressed air.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last time I did a generational upgrade (more than simply replacing “for like” parts) was 2008, and the case was reused then! I’m thinking back on when I first got this case, and I think it was either very late 1990s or very early 2000s. Yup! This AMD Athlon case badge confirms it! 2000. The first CPU in this case was an Athlon 1000MHz T’Bird.

 

 

 

 

 

Pre-upgrade benchmark:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the noise level, in a quiet house, before everyone was up. This was measured up by my head. Computer lives under my desk.
Some would say that this is not too bad for an old machine. I say it is too loud.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s what was going on under the hood.

 

 

 

 

 

In my research for the new guts, I was shocked to find that this Zalman CPU cooler is still viable for today’s CPUs. Might need to rejigger the mounting brackets, but the basic same cooler is listed as OK to use with my Coffee Lake. I wanted to remove a point of failure and a source of noise, no matter how quiet this sucker is.

 

 

 

 

 

And here we have the mung in the bottom of the case. At one point back in the day, I was running with the case open, as was the fashion at the time, and I spilled some Guinness in there. I never really bothered to clean it up. It took me a long time to get married. I’m not sure why I brought that up just now.

 

 

 

 

 

Only computer upgrade I have ever performed that involved the bathtub, a bucket, and lots of hot, soapy water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New mobo with NoFan CR-80EH CPU cooler. Fanless, baby!

 

 

 

 

 

Here is everything installed and looking pretty.

 

 

 

 

 

Noise level after removing two Panaflo 80mm case fans (one in, one out) and the Zalman CPU cooler.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Benchmark after all drivers updated and installed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Parts:
Asus TUF Z370-Pro Gaming mobo
Intel i5-8400 Coffee Lake CPU
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE® LPX RAM
500 GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2 2280 SSD
NoFan CR-80EH IcePipe Fanless CPU Cooler

Still waiting on the delivery of the Arctic Accelero S3 passive cooler for my GPU. Sadly, this requires a whisper quiet 120mm fan to be installed on it, so the dB might change a little. I am hoping for it to be quieter than the stock GPU fans.

PS: sorry for the sideways thumbnails.