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State of the PC November 2025

 Following on from the CPU upgrade mentioned in my last post I am going to record my current build for posterity. 

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9800x3D

Motherboard: Asus TUF x670E plus Wifi

Ram: 2x16GB 6400MHz DDR5 (running at 6000MHz CAS 32 for stability) 

GPU: Nvidia RTX 56070ti

SSD: 2Tb DDR 4 NVME

HDD: 4Tb HDD with 512Mb ssd cache

PSU: 850W EVGA

Case: Still using my old Fractal Design Define R5. No window and no RGB. 

Screen: MSI MAG274QRF-QD 27" 165Hz 1440p monitor + Dell P2719HC 27" 75Hz 1080p second monitor 

Sound:  Swan OS 10 speakers + Sennheiser HD598SE headphones

Peripherals: Logitech G915 keyboard / Logitech G502 X mouse / Microsoft Xbox One controllers (x2), Lenovo 500 FHD webcam. 

Operating System: Windows 11 Pro 25H2

The Lenovo webcam is a recent acquisition because it was the cheapest webcam I could get that has the infrared camera necessary to support face log in with Windows Hello. It works but after it arrive I realised that it doesn't have a built in microphone so I currently have an old webcam hidden behind my monitor with video disabled which I can use as a USB microphone. 

I use this machine for work and play and it copes admirably with both. We have 500Mbs fibre internet due to be upgraded to 1Gbs so all is well on that front. 

I find a second monitor essential for additional screen real estate.  The Dell monitor I bought second hand from a company closure sale, is the same 27" as my primary display but has only 1080p resolution rather than 1440p. I downscale the image on the second screen from 1440p to 1080p in order to  get the  same pixel density on both screens. This means you can drag windows between screens and they stay the same size. The downscaling has surprisingly little impact on image quality and because it is a second screen you don't really notice it. 



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