Snapshot of my tools

This post is aimed at future-me, so he can check in a year or two or five what hardware and software I was using at several points in time. I don’t think it’ll be useful for anybody else, but if it is somehow: let me know how.

2019

Hardware

After about 10 years using my old trusty box with Intel i7-970 CPU, at the end of 2019 I decided it is time for a new computer. I immediately knew I wanted AMD Ryzen CPU, but everything else was up for grabs.

I settled for this rig:

I’m typing this on Vortex Race 3 keyboard with Cherry MX Clear switches, which is a long-time favourite of mine among my keyboards (others are Leopold FC 660C with Topre switches, and Leopold FC 900R with MX Brown switches).

2024

Hardware

Five years later and it was time to treat myself with a hardware update. The update wasn’t planned, it happened bit-by-bit over several months of 2024.

The updated stuff:

Even though my new CPU is now two generations old (the Ryzen 9xxx was recently released, and Ryzen 7xxx few years ago), it is the last generation on the AM4 socket and with this update I didn’t have to change my motherboard and I could still use my DDR4 RAM.

The 16 cores (32 threads) require a proper cooling: for the first time in my life I have a water cooling in my rig. Since its radiator is huge and my new GPU is very long, this didn’t fit it my old computer case, so I’ve replaced it with Lancool II: I’m impressed with its practicality and small useful details.

I’m still satisfied with my Vortex Race 3 keyboard, but I decided to try a split keyboard. I got a Ultimate Hacking Keyboard 60 v2, with box-brown switches. I’m still using Colemak keymap (and I don’t see me stopping using it).

I was using Logitech MX mice for more than a decade (starting with MX510, replacing it with MX518), but the cable on my MX518 got damaged causing the right-click to be erratic. I decided to replace it with G502 Hero. It remains to be seen if I’ll be as satisfied as I was with those MX51x mice I had until now.

My monitor is still the same as in 2019: Philips 21:9 34” 3440x1440.

Software

Unfortunately, I didn’t make a list of software I had used in 2019, but here is the situation in 2024:

While I’m quite sure I’ve used Manjaro with i3 back in 2019, as I did Vivaldi browser (as I am an original-Opera user from ~20 years ago), one thing I definitely haven’t used until some point in 2024 is Emacs.

I was a long time Neovim user, then I had a period (2023? and the first part of 2024) where I’ve used VS Code. In 2024 I decided to bite the bullet and betray Vim give Emacs a chance. Using vim-keybindings was a must (I’ve used them in VS Code too), and I didn’t want to learn elisp and spend days (months?) customizing Emacs until it becomes useful for me.
Enter Doom Emacs.
After maybe a week of getting used to it, now it feels like there’s no turning back. But I still feel like I’m using maybe 2% of its capabilities. Maybe in five years I’ll manage to bump that to low double digits.