My PC has had its first upgrade, a discrete graphics card, specifically the EVGA GTX 1660 Ti XC Black Gaming.

I managed to get it for a bargain £217, it’s B-Stock with a few cosmetic blemishes but nowt that impacts what it does.

I had already set up the PCI-e 9 pin power cable on Sunday, so that was l ready to go.

I also took advantage of having the case open and optimised my cable management a bit more so it looked a bit better.

It was supposed to arrive on Wednesday but never actually arrived until Thursday annoyingly.

And weirdly, despite being a GTX card it says in the side that it’s an RTX card, but GPU-Z is clear, it is absolutely a GTX 1660 Ti, so I am guessing it’s been refurbished with the RTX heat sink, it is after all B-Stock.

The card just slotted in and is very short, but quite wide, taking up 3 slots, and has DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort sockets, I am going to be using the DisplayPort and HDMI sockets.

Once it was slotted in and attached to the case, I powered up the system and Windows installed drivers, but I downloaded the drivers direct from Nvidia to make sure I had the most up to date drivers possible.

In anticipation of its arrival I ran some benchmarks in Heaven using the APU on both High and Ultra settings and the results were ok for what it was as you can see below from the Ultra benchmarks.

But damn, when the GPU went it, oh boy did my performance shoot up, just compare those numbers. Bear in mind of course that right now I am running my system not even at 1080p.

So yeah, really pleased with this but I still need to power up some good games with it yet, might give Tomb Raider a go!

I have sold a few other bits and bobs this week and will hopefully be ordering a pair of monitors towards the end of the week.

Although stock levels mean that my first couple of choices are not gonna happen, but there is a very good third choice which is probably gonna happen.

I want an IPS panel monitor with at least 144mhz, but it’s got to be 24” to fit in the space and therefore is limited to 1080p.

I have seen a Viewsonic one, which fits the bill, I would prefer it if it had a built in USB, but alas it doesn’t.

What I Am Modelling

The week started with something secret so I can’t share photos of them until they are all done, but I am very happy with them!

Then I completed the Zone Mortalis Walls and Columns, was a long hard slog, but worth it in the end.

After they were done, I completed a squad of Death Korps of Krieg Engineers and their Hades Breaching Drill for Niki.

At this point I was going to be streaming, the Dreadscythe Harridans were up next but I wasn’t sure they would be all that engaging, so I jumped ahead and started in the Space Wolves Swiftclaws.

These got done fairly quickly as we recorded this months podcast and I think that’s all the outstanding Space Wolves I have to paint.

Then I picked up a few bits of scenery from Mortal Realms which were sitting under my desk, these were done to add to the city of Esasa.

After which I then turned my attention to the Dreadscythe Harridans, all 20 of them!

They weren’t as bad as I thought they would be and by Sunday they were all finished.

This allowed me to then turn my attention to some additions to my Necromunda stuff, specifically the Palanite Enforcers from Dark Uprising. That is 5 Engorcers and 5 Subjugators, plus a couple of Ambots.

On Monday I also did a little building to get me to the point where the next 10 projects were all ready just to paint. I plan on priming them tomorrow.

So what’s next for me then?

  1. Zone Mortalis Terrain
  2. Palanite Subjugators x 6, Palanite Enforcers x 5
  3. Stormcast Eternals Lord-Aquilor, Lord-Exorcist and Gryph-Hounds x 6
  4. Blood Ravens Intercessors with Stalker Bolt Rifles & Inceptors x 3
  5. Death Korps of Krieg Grenadiers x 12
  6. The Grymwatch & Rippa’s Snarlfangs
  7. T’au KV-128 Stormsurge
  8. Ork Megatrakk Scrapjet
  9. T’au Barracudas x 4, Tiger Sharks x 2
  10. Aeronautics Imperialis Lightnings x 3

What I Am Reading

Not much in the way of prose, but I did listen to a couple of audiobooks.

First was Sons of Behemat which was very good, really interesting to listen to.

And then I listened to Valdor: Birth of the Imperium and I am glad I did cause I spotted a few things I missed when reading it in prose.

What I Am Playing

Not much this week, The Witcher happened as normal, but I didn’t stream Bioshock as I had some recording to do for the podcast.

I also had a game of Carcassonne and Star Wars Squadron on Twitch, both of which were a lot of fun and were done to test out the NVENC Encoder on the graphics card.

What I Am Backing

Nowt, but the backerkit for Chai: High Tea was charged, we ended up grabbing a the acrylic tokens, bags and playing mat for it.

What I Am Cooking

Not much this week other than beans on toast a couple of times.

I did assist on helping make tea on Friday, when we made Indian Spiced Chicken Wings, served with green beans, naan breads and cous cous.

What I Am Spending

Not a lot this week, I bought some stickers for my PC case which arrived.

There is a reason for this, a bloke on a PC forum I lurk in started getting abuse from someone on eBay for putting a Windows 10 sticker on the PC he was selling. He had the fella quite upset and was threatening with the police arresting him for copyright violations.

Turns out the bully was selling similar systems but more expensive and was trying to terrify the competition.

I also bought my new monitors today, they are a pair of the Viewsonic XG2405 and will replace the 10 year old 720i TV I currently use and the 15 year old HP square monitor.

My requirements were for the monitors to be at least 1080p, have at least a 144Hz refresh rate, AMD Freesync and preferably an IPS panel, and if possible a USB hub.

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, PC parts and components have been in short supply and prices have remained high, the monitor I did have in mind, an AOC one, has been out of stock most places for months and those places that do have it in stock have added an average of £50 to the price of it.

So I went with the Viewsonic one, I haven’t had a Viewsonic monitor since the 90s and that was an amazing monitor. This particular monitor uses the same IPS panel as the AOC one, the only thing it doesn’t have is a USB hub.

So yeah that should arrive next week, in the meantime I ordered the cables to hook it up, because I am moving the rig and need longer cables than I have at home, so a 3m DisplayPort and HDMI cable have been ordered, along with a USB hub to be used instead of a bunch of USB extension cables.