The new computer: Installation of everything

First, the bad news: I somehow missed the USB headers and so the two front-mounted USB ports aren’t working. I actually rarely use these, anyway, as I have six USB ports available between the Asus monitor and Seagate back-up drive. I may eventually open the case up to fix this, but in terms of priority, it’s low. Maybe low++.

The good news: On turning on the PC for the first time, it worked. Yay! I got prompted to go into the BIOS because a new CPU had been detected. Once there, I confirmed all hardware was recognized (storage, chassis fans, memory, etc.) and rebooted with the USB drive containing the Windows 10 Pro installation.

The Windows installation went by quickly (really, I think I’ve had games take longer to install) and after answering the five hundred prompts about settings from Microsoft, I logged into my Microsoft account and was good to go. It still feels weird to have my preferred wallpaper already set up.

I installed drivers for the mouse, video card and, well, that’s it. That’s all I needed. I then installed programs I knew I’d be using right away:

  • Firefox (the one time I use Edge is to download Firefox. Well, and view PDFs)
  • Irfanview. Free image viewer/editor I’ve used for a thousand years.
  • Greenshot. Handy screen capture utility. Maybe I’ll try the new snipping tool Windows has built-in at some point, but I’m comfy with Greenshot.
  • Affinity Photo. For when Irfanview is not enough. It’s like Photoshop, but without the rental fee.
  • mIRC. IRC chat client I’ve used for 10,000 years.
  • battle.net. Because I know I’ll eventually play Diablo 3 again.
  • GOG Galaxy. For the games on gog.com I might play.
  • Steam. For the gamews on Steam I might play.
  • iTunes. As much as I dislike the mess of trying to restore my music library, it’s what I need to listen to my music on PC.
  • iCloud. More janky “We gotta have this on the PC I guess” software from Apple I need to access photos and other iCloud junk.
  • Microsoft Office. Mostly for Word and OneNote.

That’s about it so far. I am taking a “do not install until I need it” approach on everything else.

In terms of speed, the new system has some perhaps surprising results. Here’s a look at how the Geekbench 4 results compare between it, the old PC (2013), MacBook Pro (2016) and the Mac mini (2018):

As you can see, the single core score beats the MBP, as expected, but it only edges the 4th general Haswell CPU in my old PC, and actually comes in a bit behind the Mac mini.

On the other hand, the multi-core performance demolishes the old PC and is ahead of the Mac mini, as well. The thought of replacing the CPU with a more powerful one gives me the cold sweats.

So far everything feels snappy and fast and in some ways it’s nice to have a stripped-down set of applications. I’ll resist adding stuff just because, but–you know, as I type this, I remembered another one I need: Calibre. But apart from Calibre, I’m holding off until I actually have a need. No more impulsive installs, ever! I swear.

For now.

Also, the AMD Ryzen 7 CPU has a bright red LED that circles the HSF. It’s weird and somehow I missed that it features this (it is mentioned on the retail box). So my new PC is partially blinged out, despite my best efforts to prevent it.

Also also I’m resisting the urge to get a second SSD already, because only having a single drive for now irrationally makes me feel like I’m going to run out of space any minute.

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