Upgrades Performed, New System is Functional!

 I posted earlier in the week that I'd bought parts for a new system.  

I'd said that I'd wait for the weekend to strip down my current system and replace the motherboard and supporting parts (GPU, CPU, memory).  Well, I couldn't wait.  The CPU HSF and memory arrived yesterday and waited an hour or two after they arrived to begin the rebuild.

I'd not done this in awhile but it wasn't all that difficult, but was sort of a pain in the ass.  I basically had to strip down the old motherboard while leaving the rest of the system attached to the case, then remove the motherboard, then attach the new CPU to the new motherboard, then attach the CPU HSF to the system, then attach the RAM to the motherboard, attach the back IO panel to the case, then mount the motherboard to the case, then plug in the motherboard power connectors and the rest of the cabling.  I also had to try to ensure wires and cables weren't interfering with the cooling fans.  Some of the wires are very long and some are also very short, so I spent some time trying to route things...I'm probably going to have to revisit this, as I could spend a whole day trying to route and secure cabling using zip ties.

The PowerColor video card was a beast!  I thought my GTX1060 was big.  This one is a bit bigger.  I didn't know it had blue lighting, which enhances the blue lighting I already have in the case.

When I booted up the system with the new parts, I honestly thought it wouldn't boot because of something I'd forgotten.  At least the PSU is sufficiently powerful.  It immediately booted up but was complaining because it couldn't control the CPU fan - I'd plugged it into the wrong outlet, so I had to fix that.  It was a bit of a pain because I'd used a hot glue gun to secure the wires to the frame of the HSF - I had to remove the glue to reroute the cabling and then reglue the cabling so that it wouldn't get caught in the CPU fan.

The system is ultra quick now.

I played a few matches of War Thunder last night and noticed that the system was complaining that Windows wasn't activated.  I'd saved my product key from when I'd upgraded to Windows 10 but the damned key wasn't working.  Apparently, I'd nullified it when I added the new hardware.  It took me maybe 15 minutes to fix that.

I also downloaded and installed the latest RX 6600 drivers.

At some point, I'll probably wipe the drive and reinstall Windows and all of my games and hardware, but for now everything works.

I still need to do some things like find another area to mount my SSD drives, as they're in the way in case I want to add additional USB 3.0 ports in back.  I may end up buying a new case, though...this one is a bit cluttered.

Here's to another seven years!  :D