Ongoing Evolution - 2017 to present (2025)

[MrP]

Thought I'd share how my setup has evolved from opening my little computer business in 2017 to now.
Currently where I'm at is sort of where I've settled for hardware for the foreseeable future since prices have been atrocious to this day. I do a lot of photogrammetry on the main threadripper build listed below. So to compensate, I have a second PC that allows me to continue working while the threadripper just renders all day and night. So my current setup is actually 2 physical PC's.
Current build:
Primary Render PC:
CPU: AMD 5995wx
RAM: 256GB DDR4 3600mhz
GPU: RTX 4090 (Sadly I paid 2200 at release)
Storage: 8TB WD NVME

Secondary PC (2 screens on the right)
CPU: AMD 9800x3d
RAM: 96GB DDR5 6000mhz
GPU: RTX 4070ti
Storage: 2TB 990 Pro

Monitors:
3x Samsung G9 Neos
1x Samsung G9 Neo (Yes there are all the same. 3 were bought at the same time, but this one I dubbed the amazon special because even though I selected white, they shipped a black monitor, its also a different model since it has a stupid control bar at the bottom so I can't snug the monitor up to the bottom one) I'll explain later why I can't put this one on the bottom.

2017 - My humble beginnings
I started in my basement just doing remote work mainly.
Starting from the left. I only had my laptop that I bought during college a few years prior. An MSI I forget the model, but it had an i5 4210h, 8GB of RAM and a 950m gpu. The machine next to it was an odd brand that I had never heard of before, but I really wanted to try it out. It was a waste of money haha. A brand called Alldocube, it had an intel atom x5-z8300, 2 gigs of ram (I upgraded to 8GB) and a 32GB ROM, yes ROM. Micro sd card storage upgrades only. It was a horrible experience haha. The asus on the right was a customers laptop I was working on.

Later this same year, I was still in the basement, I hadn’t moved my machines to my physical business location yet. I ditched the cube laptop and stuck with the msi. Picked myself up a used blue yeti from the pawn shop for $15 bucks and a stand from a garage sale for $5, got some used Logitech speakers and sub from another garage sale for a trade in some computer work. The DXRacer chair I’d had since college.

2018 – Frankenstein
I ditched the laptop, got a used desktop along with a bunch of free monitors from an even the school was throwing, they were getting rid of old monitors and other equipment. The only screen that is new is the center asus monitor that I still have today!! Nowadays its just a glorified security camera monitor that has been on and running 24/7 since 2019! It survived a roof leak too haha. The computer had an i3 8100 which was about the newest piece of tech I had personally owned to date, it had just come out about 6 months ago at the time. Loved that cpu, it now rests as the heart of my LANCache. RAM at this time was 16GB, but it was 2 different branded sticks so no dual channel haha. The GPU was a 1050ti that I got second hand from a friend, again trading my I.T. services to help him build a new PC.

2020 – Skipped a year and saved!
So, the roof leaked in 2018 and that was a hard hit. I lost a lot of equipment and at the time my insurance was only for $25,000. Most of that went to repairing the roof and didn’t leave much left over for computer parts so during 2019 I was pretty depressed honestly because of the whole thing. Work was really slow and there wasn’t much business. I used an old laptop during that time. So in 2020 I had a nice break-through! Microsoft Windows 7 reached EOL (End of Life) and boy were people panicking! It seemed like nobody was planning ahead haha. I made almost 70k in profits between January and February that year! Naturally I started planning a new build! Something proper with all new parts for the first time in my life! This is where my business really started to kick off! Faster PC means the renders finish faster and I can work faster in general!! So, I got a sick new case. It had the infinity mirror in the front so it looked like the LEDs kept going and going. Loved that look. CPU was the 3950x!!!! 16 cores of POWER! 128GB of RAM, RTX 2080! The previous 32 inch asus monitor I had was so nice that I was forever hooked on large monitors from here on out. So I splurged and got 4 identical dell 32 inch monitors! Still rocking that used Blue Yeti though! Some may notice the Illidan deskpad.

2021 – Spiraling
I continued to get more business which let me finally get a custom hand made desk of my own design. 4 foot x 8 foot! Complete with a large leg space underneath and 2 massive cabinets underneath for 2x UPS for the whole setup! One UPS for the computer alone and the other for the peripherals! Lots of hidden nic-nacs in the desk! Again I exchanged services a bit. They built and installed the desk for me and I built and installed a high end rendering server for their cabinet/woodworking software for their company! Sweet deal! I’ve been so pleased with this desk that I haven’t charged them for service calls since LOL. The reason for this desk design was something that I wouldn’t be able to fully realize until years later, but the idea was planted in my head for a finished design. So here is a 43 inch gaming monitor in the middle and then two of those 32 inch dells on the sides as well as a 22 inch touch screen drawing tablet/monitor on the right! Away went the blue yeti finally. I got the legendary shure sm7b! Some may recognize the dual monitor case for the asus gaming phone that I used to have as well! No PC component changes yet! The machine was still meeting my needs!

2022 – OLED!! … oh yeah…. OLED
No PC changes again this year, but I changed up the monitors a bit, keeping the 32 inch dells but trying out a 55 inch Samsung OLED TV as a primary monitor. Not great. Burn in on the task bar was real and the constant brightness adjustments that it did pissed me off so much I only kept the TV for a week and went back to 4x 32 Dell screens.

2023 – Uuuuuuultra wide fixation
So, different case. Different a lot of things. Gone are the 32 inch 16:9 monitors. In comes the 49 inch G9 NEO!!! TIMES TWO! Business was a booming and to celebrate, I bought a threadripper! From microcenter nonetheless! My 2^nd  time ever to a microcenter! The closest one is about a 5 ½ hour drive for me so I made it worth my while. So I went there with a plan. 5995wx threadripper, 256GB of RAM, RTX 4090 and a massive storage upgrade of 8TB. So I learned that the 4 monitor limit of graphics cards also has a secondary limitation. Resolution/the amount of data it can push. I thought I’d be able to hook up 4x 49 inch super ultrawides from the 4090, but you can’t, it’s a bandwidth limitation of the card which is pretty lame.

2025 – Almost my final form
So as it stands today, this is where I’m at. I just bought a crap ton of the magnetic cable management things from the ltt store so my next step in my setup is to cable manage the best that I can. I just have a LOT of cables period and im not interested in drilling holes in my beautiful desk. So, my final form so far is this. The same hardware on my primary machine, but then a bought a pre-built on the right to run those 2x 49 inch ultrawides. I needed this because time and time again I was getting more and more work so my main machine is now almost always rendering. Well you can’t do anything when your cpu/ram/gpu are maxxed out lol. I don’t think it looks too bad. Its my own personal achievement complete you know? I finally have really high end hardware and I’m super happy!  Yes, 1 ram stick LEDs died and one other sticks heatsink is lopsided. Still all functions though so idc. I rarely look inside the case anymore now that the build is done. Just maintenance every 4-6 months on the loop to keep it fresh.