"The Truth"

"'The Truth' is never black and white." I use this machine to consume a lot of information, so the black and white motif stands as a pretty good reminder of the nuances of information in the digital age. It's black and white when it's off, but springs to color when energized. I think it's poetic, in an enlightened-fifth-grader kinda way...

Aesthetics aside, this thing is a veritable beast. 4.3MHz stable, 24-threads, 64GB ram at 3000MHz, PCIe 4.0 1TB NVMe OS Drive, 3.5TB of SSD storage with a Thunderbolt 2-bay extension; this thing can do it all. The only thing that I need to change is moving from the respectable 1080Ti to a 3080 when the inventory gods decide to bless me. Although the 1080Ti still holds up some respectable north-of-60 FPS in most modern games (Modern Warfare, Apex, Monster Hunter World, Death Stranding, etc.) at 3440x1440. When not serving up frames, it's rendering videos comprised of hundreds of GBs of clips at 4k 10-bit 4:2:2 footage. I do promotional videos for non-profits and occasional event videography semi-professionally. My prior system built around my old 6700k got the job done, but it sure did show its limitations during those LOOOONG rendering sessions. It did double as a space heater, but I live in TX so that feature wasn't super useful most of the time. This thing devours 4k footage and craps out the most beautiful renders so quickly that I don't even have time to go out on beer runs anymore! The renders, which used to take hours, would be done with just enough time for me to watch a video of BitWit Kyle roasting PC builds on my phone.

It was also my coming of age build. My prior builds were full of mistakes (i.e. intake fan on the back panel!), but this build was the first time that everything came together almost flawlessly from inception to design to POST. After months of research and budgeting, I was ready to pull the trigger when I saw the 3900x on sale. The build process was slow and satisfying as it should be. I was able to hit a stable 4.3MHz, which was my goal from the beginning. The only thing that didn't really hit the mark was my RAM speed. I did a lot of research on which RAM modules work best with the Ryzen platform, but I went with the Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro after finding a good deal on it. Needless to say, the X.M.P. profile DID NOT work and I had to do my own RAM timing calculations using Taiphoon Burner and a nifty tool by 1usmus called Ryzen DRAM Calculator. Unfortunately, even with all the neat tools, I was only able to get my system to POST at 1500 MHz. In the end, I briefly contemplated doing an RMA for the RAM sticks, but the performance gainz I was seeing had me all starry eyed so I decided to keep her. The build is about 3 months old and I'm still in the honeymoon phase. I have finally opened up my eyes and my heart to The Truth.