My Core i5 13th Gen. in Italy:
By the first months of 2023 the need arose to build a new PC. Speed was a reason, but the main issue was the incompatibility of my Windows 7 with most internet activities: Chrome was no longer supported, it became sluggish and often failed to run online videos, Firefox was better yet it also had difficulty playing videos. As for Games, Ubisoft had become Windows 7-incompatible and Steam announced a similar measure by end of the year. I also wished to be able, at long last, to run Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. Windows 10 is now the minimum required, and having read reviews I decided not to go for Windows 11 for the time being.
In my previous PCs the tower case and its contents had been built from scratch, carrying over from the previous PC only some peripherals. Here things were very different. For most if not all of my peripherals (printer, scanner, joysticks) there were drivers that made them compatible with Windows 10. Therefore all I needed was to replace components inside the good old Enermax Spinerex maxi-tower.
This may seem relatively easy, but was utterly complicated by my decision to build, with the replaced parts, an “old” computer that could for some weeks run aside the new one, so that I could easily duplicate my years of work on installs and settings.
In designing a new computer, a crucial decision that “cascades” all others is the processor. Having initially choosen the intel Core i7-12700, I read in reviews that the intel Core i5-13500 of 13th Generation was in most cases slightly faster, and was significantly more affordable (by about €100). By comparison with my old PC's lastest CPU update, the i7-990X of 1st Generation, the i5-13500 is 4.6 times faster.
The intel 12th and 13th Gen need a motherboard with an LGA1700 socket. I decided to stay with the Asus brand: problem is, there are dozens of Asus LGA1700 models. To decided which “family”, model and chipset to go for required lots of comparisons. Eventually I got the Asus ROG Strix Z690-F Gaming WiFi. An issue with this and most other present-day motherboards is that, in order to hold up to 4 M.2 fast drives, they sacrifice the available PCIe slots: this model has 3, exactly what I need but, alas, precluding any later addition that may require a further PCIe slot.
The above CPU and Motherboard support different memory speeds, and compatibility dictated the choice: a total of 32GB (against the former 12Gb) with two very fast strips of Corsair Vengeance DDR5 4800MHz 16Gb each.
For dedicated graphics card, speed-wise I could have kept the 6-years old Sapphire Radeon RX580 XT, but it has a bug in its internal thermometer and one has to be vigilant with its temperature in order to change fan settings. Anyway it is by now too slow for the latest crops of games and Flight Simulator 2020. Sapphire GPUs were now way too expensive and therefore I went for the MSI Radeon RX6750 XT. With respect to the RX580 XT I got a Passmark increase by a factor of 2.4.
Of the existing SSD SATA drives (1Tb and 2x2Tb) the 1Tb one moved over to the “old” PC, which thus could run staight away with no software changes. I decided to keep in the tower the two 2Tb SSD SATA drives, useful for activities that require no high speed: one for software and multimedia storage, the other for backups. Anyway, plugged to the new motherboard, these SSDs run twice as fast as in the old PC.
This said, the most impressive recent advance in PC technology are the drives. The latest M.2 strips can reach speeds about 10 times faster than an SSD, and the Asus Rog Strix Z690-F can hold 4 such strips. My friends at “Piloti Virtuali Italiani” recommended me the fastest M.2 at the time, the Western Digital Black SN850X NVMe, of which I got two, one with 1Tb, the other with 2Tb. Remarkably, Amazon.IT had them at a preposterous price, while Amazon.UK had exactly the same items at about half the cost. Luckily I had a friend travelling from Edinburgh in those days.
At this point, having checked again with “Piloti Virtuali Italiani” and power calculators online, it became obvious that, mainly because of my new power-hungry CPU and GPU, a 750W PSU would no longer do. The Radeon RX6750 specifically requires 850W minimum, and an efficient PSU is needed to avoid excessive power consumption (at home the PCs are responsible for almost half the total electricity cost). Having seen the Corsair 850W, I found that an old 1000W revamped model was significantly cheaper, so I got the Corsair HX1000i, with modular cables and many outputs. Once the new PC was completed, running the same programs yielded a reduction of more than 10% in power consumption.
The last important element was the CPU cooler. I found that the old Water Cooler Master Lamptron 280L pump could fit the LGA1700 socket, but barely so (online they are actually reported to be incompatible). Top brand CPU water coolers are very expensive lately, and the Lamptron radiator, 311mm long, barely fitted the space in the case. Eventually I found a no-frill model also 311mm-long, with excellent reviews and a ridiculous price (€65), the ID-COOLING Frostflow X 280.
The remaining items were minor fare (although not necessarily easy to find): first a PCIe bracket for the 4 USB2 ports from a motherboard header, the StarTech 4-Port USB A Female Slot Adapter.
Then the Graugear Front panel with USB 3.2 Type A and C.
Finally a 7x USB2 switched hub is useful to keep joysticks off when not flying:
See below a comparison between the last incarnation of the old i7-Win7 and the new i5-Win10: radical changes internally, only minor rearrangements in the front bays.
Finally let us compare the main computer components (case fans are not included below) between the
i7-Windows 7 (last version) and the i5-Windows 10:
| Component | 2022 | 2023 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monitor - Main | Dell U2415 24" 1920x1200px | = | |
| Monitor - Auxiliary | Eyoyo IPS 8" 1280x720px | = | |
| Uninterr. Power Supply | Vultech Pro 1500VA/800W | = | |
| Power Supply Unit | Corsair RMx 750W | Corsair HX1000i | |
| Fan Controller | Lamptron FC5 V2 | = | |
| Motherboard / Chipset | Asus Rampage III Extreme / X58A | Asus ROG Strix Z690-F Gaming WiFi | |
| Memory | 3x DDR3 1600 4Gb | 2x DDR5 4800 16Gb | |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-990X 1st Gen. | Intel Core i5-13500 13th Gen. | |
| Processor Cooler | Cooler Master Nepton 280L | ID-COOLING Frostflow X 280 | |
| Graphics card | Sapphire Radeon RX 580 Nitro+ SE | MSI Radeon RX6750 XT PCIe 4.0 | |
| Graphics memory | 8 Gb | 12 Gb | |
| Sound card | Creative Audigy Rx (EMU CA10300) | = | |
| Disks - Windows | Samsung 870 EVO 1Tb | West. Dig. Black SN850X NVMe 1Tb | |
| Disks - Softw., Docum. | Samsung 860 QVO 2Tb | West. Dig. Black SN850X NVMe 2Tb | |
| Disks - Depot, Backup | Samsung 860 QVO 2Tb | 2x Samsung 860 QVO 2Tb | |
| Blu-Ray and DVD | LG BH10LS30 | = | |
| Speakers |
|
= | |
| Keyboard | Logitech G810 Orion Spectrum | = | |
| Mouse | Logitech G602 |
= | |
| Joystick | ThrustMaster Hotas Cougar | = | |
| Quadrant + Gamepad | 2x Saitek Quadrant + Logitech G13 | = | |
| Scanner | Canon CanoScan 4200F | Canon CanoScan LIDE 400 | |
| Printer | Canon iP7250 | = |