2023 – I installed 128GB RAM into the AMD 7950X to do 3d reconstructions of Iceland with Metashape – had to lower the RAM speed manually to 3600 (from 5600) to get it to work with four 32GB DDR5 DIMMs.
2022 Built my first ever AMD PC! Zen 4 Ryzen 9 7950x. I was excited to try the 16 core CPU I was using as an example in my lectures!
2020 Covid lockdown meant I finally rebuilt my PC with a 10700K 8 core CPU which is much nicer for video editing and quadcopter photogrammetry! I delved into M.2 NVMe SSDs – which boosted bandwidths to several GiB/s! In this decade I also use a lot of embedded computers from Raspbery Pi to Feathers.
2017 I built myself a liquid-cooled PC for the first time – based on a 4GHz i7-6700K. The aim was a quiet PC while working but a fast one for video, gaming etc. However long runs of photoscan were leaving the CPU hot for a long time – so I swapped to a dual fan larger liquid radiator mounted in the top of the case – it ran much cooler (<70C) under stress.
1990s: SUNs were my main systems for developing image processing (see libVIPS). Very costly and extremely slow by today’s standards. First was a 3-150 16MHz/4MB RAM with then 100 MHz later with SPARCstation 20). They let us explore parallel CPUs and massive amounts of optimisation for speed. 1997 I switched to a Silicon Graphics O2 at Southampton (a big OS and CPU switch!).
1980s: from an Apricot computer for wordprocessing to custom 68000 based image processing boxes and Vax 11/750 for my PhD. 1987 I had a Sun-3 with three boards (R+G+B) to store a 720×575 image. 16MHz 68030 CPU and 12MB RAM really helped focus the mind!
1970s: My first was a Commodore Pet which helped me learn so many basics!