Week 1

 Hello everyone, my name is Ryan Bryngelson.

I am enrolled in the BSIT200 course at Bellevue University, and throughout the course, I will be posting to this blog weekly to share some of my findings of the IT world as it relates to Computer Hardware and Software management.

I’d like to say I think I am proficient in terms of computer hardware at this point as I’ve been building and tinkering with computers since I was around 12 years old. I also like to keep on top of current trends in consumer computer hardware, whether that’s by just learning about the current offerings in the market or choosing from those offerings to build/upgrade computers of my own.

To give a little idea of my experiences building computers, I think I’ll share my timeline of my main computer’s upgrade path:

2012: I finally convinced my family to move the family computer into my room and started treating it as my own. It was a prebuilt computer made by Gateway, nothing special, but did everything I wanted it to...

2014: …until it didn’t. I wanted to play Tomb Raider which I had just got on Steam, but my computer wasn’t powerful enough to even launch the game. I got an EVGA GTX 760 SC and a Corsair CX750 PSU to power it and the PC.

2015: I got my first CPU upgrade, an Intel i7-4790k which needed a motherboard (Gigabyte Z97X) and ram some generic 16GB DDR3 ram kit. I found out that the motherboard did not fit in my existing case, so I bought the coolest case in my budget: a Phanteks Enthoo Pro, and a Corsair H110i AIO to cool the CPU.

2016: I worked all summer mowing lawns and picking up odd jobs and was able to finally afford top of the line GPU available at the time the EVGA GTX 1080 FTW (back when an 80 series GPU was top of the line and a few hundred bucks under $1000)

2017: The 4790k was starting to show its age a little bit with the tasks I was giving it, so I upgraded to the i7-7700k with a gigabyte Z270X Gaming K7 motherboard, and a 16gb kit of Corsair DDR4 RGB ram.

I knew the 750W psu was fine for the 1080, but I wanted everything to be top of the line and the CX750 was starting to age so I went for a Corsair HX1000i as an upgrade.

2018: It was finally time for a case upgrade and ended up going with the Cooler Master H500M because it had dual 200mm fans at the front with RGB and a separate back compartment which was perfect for managing all the cables.  I also got a Corsair H150i Pro AIO to replace the aging H110i.

When I did that upgrade, I put the old 4790k, motherboard, ram, cooler, and psu in the old case, and sold it to my high school friend.

2021: The upgrade bug bit me again and I bought an intel i7-11700k because the 11900k was out of my price range, with an MSI Z590 Pro motherboard to go with it. I think I stuck with the corsair ram I used with the previous 7700k build.

2023:

January: The 4090 had been released for a few months now, but stock was still unobtainable, so I searched online everywhere for release schedules and update newsletters. One lucky restock day I was sitting at the computer hitting F5 constantly hoping to see the status change from Out of Stock to Available. It finally did, and after 10 minutes or so of having troubles actually adding it to my cart, I was able to purchase an MSI RTX 4090 Suprim Liquid GPU

March: The price of i9-11900k came down to less than what I bought the i7-11700k for, so I sold the i7 and bought the i9

October: Launch day of the 14th gen Intel came out and I caved and bought an i9-14900k with motherboard and a 32gb DDR5 ram kit.

I ended up buying another case to put the 7700k build in, and gave it to another friend, and took the 11700k build to my work office.

2024:

May: I got nervous about the news that the 14th gen Intel CPUs were frying themselves, so I sold my 14900k, motherboard, and ram to someone on Facebook marketplace and replaced it with an AMD 7800X3D, MSI MAG X670E Motherboard and a 32GB kit of ram.

2025: No upgrades so far, though I have purchased a rack mount case and installed my components into that. I am waiting on some optical DisplayPort cables I ordered to arrive so I can finally move my main computer down in the basement with my other rack mount computers and networking equipment. As budget allows I *may* consider getting an RTX 5090, but with the burning cable connector issue still being prevalent as well as the >$3000 price tag in most places, I don't know if I can justify that purchase to myself. 

 

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