I forgot how fun it is to build a PC

My new custom built pc is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X 8 core processor
There is 16 GB of Gskill DDR 4 ram 2 8 GB chips.
The motherboard is an MSI X470 Gaming Pro board
I am running a 250GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD drive as well as a 1 TB WD Blue Drive for storage.
The video card is an MSI GTX 1080
The Audio is the high Def Realtek chipset on the X470.
The power supply is an 800 Watt Corsair Modular PSU
The case is the spectacular blue Fractual Design Super Quiet!

All in all the most surprising thing about this build was how quiet all the fans are even when the system is cranking away keeping FPS up high. There is 2 120MM case fans along with the mighty Prism Cooler on the Ryzen chip. There is also the dual fans on the GTX card and a fan on the corsair. That is a lot of air flowing, but its 3 times quieter than my 5 year old Asus Tower I had. Was this a big upgrade for me? IT was. The Asus was an Intel Core i7 3.0 GHZ CPU with 8 GB of DDR3. The GTX 1080 I had for the last 6 months and it worked well in that Asus. (I also got the card right before the price shot up due to all the Crypto Currency mining demand.) I wanted to have good gaming performance so I went high end on the GPU as that is bulk of the heavy lifting when it comes to gaming. I play Grand Theft Auto V and Forza Motorsport 7. Both visually stunning games with heavy GPU needs and a thirst for CPU cycles, both of these games have a stunning amount of detail to them. You will not enjoy them properly without the right hardware to keep visuals looking sharp. Building the new custom rig was a joy to me. I always loved building pc’s and I missed getting to do it on a regular basis. So I started with the graphics card and got the best one I could afford at the time. Then I started looking into CPU and motherboard combos and had to spend a lot of time deciding if I was going go use Intel again or check out the AMD offerings. AMD was always easier on the wallet but at times not always the best when it came to performance and heat dissipation. I liked all the Intel stuff I saw, the Coffee Lake CPU’s looked great. Everyone said you’re a gamer? Don’t bother with AMD! Just get the 8700 and you will love it. I really was leaning towards Intel. This was before the Ryzen 2.0 was announced. But then the Ryzen lineup was refreshed here comes the 12 MM CPU’s from AMD. And guess what, they include a heat sink and fan! I spent the next 2 weeks trying to read all I could about the new AMD stuff. Info was scarce no one had much info as AMD did not want to release anything before they launched.
So I set my calendar. I said let’s wait until the AMD comes out, give it a week then check out some reviews from the field. After that the new Motherboards started being released by all the vendors to support the new chips. I started looking at all those boards and options and finally decided on the 2700X 8 Core Ryzen and the MSI X470 Gaming Pro. I could have gone higher on the board but I do not plan on doing much over clocking, and I don’t need more high end features like Wi-Fi and USB C. They are both great, but I don’t use Wi-Fi on a desktop. I want the best online gaming experience and one small glitch from your Wi-Fi can mean the difference between taking turn 7 perfectly or being pushed into the Wall. Thanks to this well thought out designed case, putting all the components together was easy fun and there was a lot of room for nice clean cable management. A lot of cables can sit behind the motherboard tray and its easy to bend them into a nice clean design. (I still have the front cables to clean up yet but I have one more install to do. I did not realize how much motherboard design had evolved since the last build I did was about 12 years ago!

When did Fan ports go to 4 port? What is that USB connector? I don’t have one of those do i? These were some of the question s I had when I was reading through the Motherboard manual the night before. I always read them cover to cover to make sure I know what I am doing. Ok well this time, in the interest of time I skimmed a lot of the BIOS section. I just wanted to know how to set it on a good stable setting and leave it alone. This case also has a section on the back of the motherboard tray that you can mount an SSD Drive to it. I did not choose to do that as I wanted all the storage in the 3.5 bays in the front of the case.

I was very happy to test the Audio quality once I was booted into Windows 10. I also wanted great sound quality as I do enjoy a lot of music playback on my pc. I stream a lot of you tube clips and like to listen to my Satellite Radio on their web site. The sound is excellent and crisp and will go louder than is allowed in the noise ordinance section of the town code. Performance of this machine has been top notch. The PC boots up in less than 20 seconds thanks to the speedy SSD drive and the Gigabit Ethernet connection keeps me running laps with the best racers in the Forza Community! Performance has been ultra smooth with no glitches that I can see. Shadows and water looks great and realistic in Grand Theft Auto and standing at the Pier watching the sunset in game with the boardwalk behind you is memorizing and leaves you questioning which side of the screen you’re in.
Oh the Operating system is important too isn’t it? I am running Windows 10 with the latest updates. I had installed Windows 10 on this drive a while ago then put it away till the new build was ready. It booted right up allowed me to sign in and validate my copy of windows and everything came up with the settings it brought over from the previous pc. I was able to let it boot up and Windows took care of getting all the drivers in order to make sure it could boot and operate while it found the best drivers during the next update. I ran the pc for 3 days before I even remembered to check out the drivers on the cd and make sure I had the ones I needed. Of course I ran to the website and made sure to get the latest versions of drivers but I did install the CPU-Z that came with the board and I had a blast playing with the LED patterns in the Mystic light app. The LED lighting on the CPU and the Motherboard looks great and with the Window in the side of the case I get a nice colorful glow under my desk.

This has been a fun build and went pretty smooth. Building PC can be a lot of fun and rewarding, care just has to be applied to always be consistent how you build and be thorough in following install guides. Now if you will excuse me I need to practice running some laps on the Indy track..

The Motorola Z2 Play. A premium device with an affordable price.

A few weeks ago I got the desire to try a different device. Not because of any issue or anything like that, I just decided I want to have a different phone. For some reason the thought of jumping between devices to try a few out is appealing to me. And now with the cloud holding most all of the data I use on the phone switching back and forth is easier than ever. I currently have an HTC U11 phone that has been a blast to use every day for the past 6 months. I never had an issue with it, everything runs smoothly and the battery life is great. I get a day to a day and a half if I’m conservative with my streaming. The phone looks awesome it’s a bright red metallic color that everyone notices. I have it enclosed in a clear case and put a shatter proof screen on it. I had a spur of the moment inkling to check out the Motorola phones again after they sent me an email with a large sale on some of their newer flagship devices.

I checked them out and decided on the Z2 play from Motorola. This is a nice thin lightweight phone with a 5.5 inch LCD which is bigger than the screen on the HTC. The phone is so light and easy to hold too. I forgot how much weight the HTC had to it till I picked it up to do this review. Its not a bad thing either its just different.

The Moto has a nice bright screen that is easy to see and everything looks vivid and sharp. The camera is a 12 MP shooter in the back with a 5MP in the front for great self portraits. Pictures look great on it and seem to capture a lot of detail. The phone is quick and responsive and everything is easy to find when looking for your favorite apps. This is an unlocked device that is carrier neutral so there is no bloat ware on it. I love this feature as the HTC was the same way and it is great not to be force fed apps that I cannot uninstall and will never use.

The phone being a bigger size is still easy to use one handed thanks to the thin sized footprint. It has a head phone jack which I like and it also has a usb C connector for the charger. I tried USB C headphones but they did not recognize on the phone so they cant be used unless you have the head phone jack adapter. The battery life has been outstanding I can push this and get a full day and a half out before I need to charge it again. There is also a Moto Mod add on that is an extended battery should you need more juice. I stream quite a bit and run different music apps like sound cloud and the Sirius XM app for on demand shows. I have more than 40 percent battery life left at night before I put the phone down to sleep. The included turbo charge will give it a 50 percent boost in 15 minutes so to get you through a long day should you need it. The phone has one downside when coming off the HTC, it is running Nougat of Android 7.1 and the 8.0 Oreo update is still pending. Moto seems to have an issue getting updates out quickly. This has not been an issue to me except I miss the nice emoji icons when doing text messages. I have not seen any major issues with the phone and it has been a joy to use. I have only seen one small issue and I am still testing to see if it happens on all audio apps or just one. What happens is after some time the volume just decreases half way. The volume is set all the way up on the phone and on the app but it just is a lowered volume. This happens on the
Sirus app and closing the app and restarting it takes away the issue. I have yet to test this on other apps and I am not sure if it’s a power saving feature or some bug. Either way I will keep testing and report back. This is a really great phone and for a less expensive price point it can be an affordable device for someone who just needs a phone and doesn’t need the latest and greatest. I will probably use this for a few weeks then I may switch back to my HTC device. Either way I have two great devices that can get me through a whole day without fail and they are both reliable and dependable. That’s all I want at the end of the day.

3 days with a signal issue can teach you how to be agile with different devices.

Having to switch between 2 devices day and night while waiting for a signal issue to resolve has made me quite nimble and aware of the annoyance it can be to juggle between 2 devices. But since more data gets stored on the cloud it has made it easy to switch from one device to another. In my case I use the regular old text message app that is on whatever device I am using at the time. So when I switch I have to jump around on conversations as they do not sync with all the other data. I really should move to something that will store them in the cloud but I’m still figuring out which app I want to use. But for all my other data the cloud has made it just come across like its nothing. So it made the switch easier. I wanted to get to a point like that because I wanted to be able to try different phones at different times and be able to test them for a bit before going back to my other daily driver. There is a new HTC U 12 rumored to be coming out around April some time I would love to try another HTC phone and the specs really make it worth an upgrade. My U 11 has been a dream to use until about 3 days ago… Let me start at the beginning..
3 days ago I got out of my car and sent a text. But the text never went. It was late and I saw it was not sent and that the service was out and had an x. I dismissed it and went to sleep thinking maybe the network had a glitch and it will be better by morning. I awoke early the next morning to see I still had no service and was not sure what was happening. I had data mostly if I was not on wifi but the data would fade in and out. This was like this inside the house, outside the house, and about a mile down the road before I switched towers maybe and the signal came back full and I then had zero issues. I went about my day at my office and the phone just worked like it always did since I bought it new in September. I never had one issue with the phone. Signal was never a problem in my home. If the phone rang I got the call. But to then have this weird signal issue that is still ongoing and I am waiting for the carrier to resolve the issue. Someone told me it’s my sim. But if that is the case why does it work perfectly 3 towns away all day and the only issue is when I am near my home? And why does the same behavior not occur to my old Samsung device when I put that same sim card into the phone? When the sim is in the old phone there are no issues at my home phone calls and texts come fine. When the sim Is in the HTC phone I get sporadic connections for minutes then the signal will just drop out and not come back. If it was the phone then why would that behavior not continue in other places? When I am anywhere else but my home, the phone works with no issues whatsoever. The data connection that runs streaming and audio will stay up and buffer enough that the stream will be uninterrupted even as the phone switches over to where it can work well. It is about a mile radius away from my home that I cannot get signal then it comes back on that device. Keep in mind this is an HTC phone it is not sold or known well to Verizon at all. It is known as a certified open channel device or BYOD device. When this first came out there was a lot of people online that had issues getting a sim to work with version. They had to work close with Verizon tech to get it to work. And the store techs were not familiar with the process when the phone first came out. My search on google with this issue has not turned up much. Most posts are older and the options and tricks mentioned have been tried. I rebooted into safe mode. Same issue and I even cleared the cache in the device. I also reset the network settings. I called Verizon and asked the first level tech to refresh my device which she did but it did not make much difference. I have another sim card and I will flash it if needed but I am going to wait first for Verizon to tell me what they find. In the mean time, I will be a skilled device ninja deftly moving between devices till this gets sorted. 3 Days later it finally got fixed by Verizon as part of a larger issue. Now I’m back running at 100 percent with the HTC. It really has been a wonderful phone to use and very easy to enjoy. But being the device switching guy for a bit made me realize I want to try another device. Especially now since its so easy to switch back and forth. So in my next post I will be discussing my new device which is on its way to my shop right now. Stay tuned!