The other day, my main desktop computer started making a grinding noise coming from one of the cooling fans. I took the opportunity to pop it open. There are two system fans in the system, and one on the GPU. The fan that was making the noise is inside the power supply.
This isn't a specifically difficult problem to solve. It would take some work, but it could be done. The trouble is, I really don't have time to either be without this particular computer or to go find the parts, take everything apart, discover I need a new tool, go get that, and then rebuild the power supply with a new fan. If this system is about to kick it, I'd rather just put the superslab on the dock and
It struck me that the machine itself is five, perhaps six years old. The body double is, of course, basically the same age and its life has been similar – they both came from the same environment, and I more or less have used the two 24/7 since I got them. Knarvik has perhaps just a few more hours on it, by virtue of being the first one I used.
Once I got used to having relatively new computers, I just sort of presumed that I always would. I sort of prioritize it, but what has happened in the years since I bought the T400 in 2009 is mostly that I bought a series of secondary and toy computers. They each do a specific task well enough, but even my newest computer, which is impressive in its own right, the Surface 3, isn't really ready to be my main computer.
There are a lot of reasons for this, but regardless of whether I need or want it (and I want it very, very badly) a new computer isn't exactly in the budget for this year. If things continue the way they have, I might be using what I have today for a very long time.
I'm hoping to make some kind of change (the easiest one would be to get a housemate) to help the situation out a little bit. I have been trying to make updates to my diet that should help both my physical health and my budget, but that has been slow going. November will be difficult as well, due to NaNoWriMo.
If the desktop gets worse, I think I will end up just turning it off or putting something else I can use to type in that spot. I have a functioning secondary T400 (vaxjo) that is running and more or less ready to go, some Windows RT devices, and so on. Most of my critical data, I have saved on the Surface 3 itself, on my file or SharePoint server on TECT, or online somewhere, so it wouldn't be the end of the world if I couldn't recover the data – although I will definitely be able to recover the data, so I'm not specifically worried about that as a problem.
Perhaps ironically, should, magically, the budget for a new computer appear, I have no idea what I'd actually do. I like a lot of different types of machines, and have no trouble seeing myself with any number of different systems.
Of course, all of this is a prioritization game, because while I need a new powerful desktop-experience computer, I also need to set aside for a new mobile phone, and that whole "virtualization server" I beefed out with 96 gigs of RAM this year needs some kind of reasonable backup solution, whether that's a USB 3.0 card and RDX cartridges, or an internal SATA RDX mechanism, or a giant external disk (perhaps even a drobo) or a NAS, I don't really know.
We will see how it shakes down with NaNoWriMo coming up. If need be, I'll just turn the whole thing off for the time being.