Swapped out the two 1TB Western Digital HDDs for two other drives. One is a 500GB PNY XLR8 CS3030 M.2 NVMe SSD that I am using for my OS, programs and file storage. The other is a 2TB Crucial BX500 SATA SSD that I am exclusively using as a game library. Now that I've separated my games from the rest of my system storage, I have a lot more space. The install process wasn't great though.

Due to my motherboard coming pre-packaged with a Intel Optane drive in the M.2 slot I needed for my NVMe, I took it out...not knowing how heavily my OS had integrated with it. I assumed that Windows was on my C drive which was still in the system as I needed to clone it to the new SSD, so I figured it would be fine. I was wrong. The Optane memory must have been storing some critical part of the Windows boot kernel that I didn't know about. I made the mistake of swapping the Optane out before I had turned off Optane utilization within the BIOS (which I also needed to do for Windows to even locate the drive), so when my PC booted up, it was looking for critical code to boot into Windows that obviously was stored on the Optane...and the Optane was no longer in the system. This caused many Blue Screens of Death as my PC refused to boot into Windows.

Sadly, I was left with no other option to completely reinstall Windows. My files all remained intact but all of my programs were lost. Thankfully, I was able to recover pretty much all of them with no issues due to Windows providing me with a handy little HTML file listing most of the programs that it had wiped so I could find, redownload and reinstall them (plus I had taken screenshots of my list of programs myself before all this happened which helped too).

The Crucial SSD installation went a lot smoother after that. I got all my stuff reinstalled and was blown away by the speed difference. Now my PC boots faster than my monitor which is just crazy to me.

A few weeks after that, I purchased a Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 3070 Master on eBay. To the gaming community, sorry I paid scalper prices but the way I look at it is this...games aren't gonna get any easier to run for GTX 10 series cards like the 1070 Ti I had in this build before. In fact, by the time this demand spike levels out, the RTX 30 series might already be on their way out in terms of gaming performance. We're talking 1-2 years here. I figured I would rather pay the premium and enjoy the smooth gaming performance now for upcoming games than watch as my 1070 Ti slowly becomes less and less capable over the next 2 years and slips down the GPU tier list. When the time comes, I will sell this RTX 3070 at a loss to another lucky gamer...but I needed to ensure I was good to go in terms of performance for the next few years.

That being said I LOVE the Aorus Master. Initially, I wanted to stay brand loyal to ASUS, but I was underwhelmed by the look of their RTX 30 series cards. The ROG Strix cards were just kinda meh. The only card that looked somewhat interesting was the KO, but that would have clashed with my black and red aesthetic. That's when I saw the Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3070 Master and thought it was gorgeous. The RGB on the sides and backplate, the angular design and especially the customizable LCD display on the side...all without the ROG tax? Sign me up. I also enjoy how the "GeForce RTX" branding on the side is bigger and more pronounced so everyone can tell I'm rocking that Ampere tech, unlike my old 1070 Ti that had the "GeForce GTX" branding really tiny in the corner like it was hiding itself out of shame.

What are my future plans? First and foremost I would love to upgrade my power supply to something I know can handle this card. Beyond that...I think there isn't much left I can do to perfect this rig. Sometime in the next 4 years, I would love to take the GPU out of here and build an all-new rig with it, AMD-based this time. Back when I built this rig, the ROG branding was kinda sparse for AMD-based platforms as ASUS saved all their best boards for Intel. Now that RYZEN has gotten significantly more popular than Intel, ASUS has paid attention and given their AM4 socket boards just as much love as their Intel ones and I'd argue that now the AMD ROG Mobos are even sexier than the Intel ones. I might keep the Lilith branding or I might not. As much as I love my succubus-inspired rig I have now, I think going for one inspired by sirens with maybe a white/teal color scheme would also be sick.

I hope you all enjoy my upgrades and I'll catch you next time!