The Need For Speed

Building a PC for the next decade

 

  Pirate Press         October 2020

Now with Lemongrass for 33% less Methane!

It’s been a long, winding road to get to this point. I built my last PC in 2012, and around 3 years ago, started seriously considering my options. I was looking at Intel’s new i9-9900 since I’d had such good luck with their processors over the past 25 years.

My first ever x86 chip was a Pentium 200, and aside from a couple rival AMD CPUs, it’s all been Intel. The few times I chose AMD was because they offered better performance-to-price ratios. Funny enough, the last time I bought an AMD CPU was 2007, and it was an Athlon X2 4800+. I was pretty happy until Intel’s Core 2 Duo arrived and wiped the floor with it. Following that, I switched back to Intel where I stayed ever since.

Truthfully, the four-core/eight-thread i7-3770 I bought in 2012 (and ran overclocked at 4.6 GHz) has performed admirably. But the increasing file sizes for Blu Ray and 4K movies have meant longer and longer converting times, something my aging processor has been struggling with. Although an old Seventies ABC television show would have you believe that “Eight is Enough” even Dick Van Patten couldn’t convince me otherwise.

Converting media files to DVD requires as much processing power as you can throw at it, so I knew I wanted something with at least 16 threads, which was double my current rig. However, building a new PC from the case up is a very daunting task. So, for the last couple years, a combination of laziness and fear was responsible for convincing me not to undertake the challenge. However, the larger Blu Ray movies were taking up to an hour to convert, and during that time my PC’s processor was pretty much maxxed out. Playing games was out of the question, as with the DVD conversion hogging all the resources, the frame rate was extremely choppy.

Eventually, the aggravation of all those hour-long DVD sessions forced me out of my comfort zone, and I began looking in earnest at a more robust setup. Well, that and the fact that Amanda got so tired of me complaining about it that she basically told me to build a new PC.

SKYLAKE ON STEROIDS

With that ultimatum, I naturally leaned towards Intel’s new top-tier i9-10900 as a logical upgrade with its 10 cores and 20 threads. It certainly sounded great— 3.7 GHz, a 5.3 GHz Turbo Boost, and being labeled as “The World’s Fastest Gaming Processor.” But, once I got past Intel’s glitzy marketing tactics, I started to see that the new 10th generation CPU, codenamed Comet Lake, was actually based on a pretty old platform. Indeed, it traces its roots to Broadwell’s 14nm architecture from 2014. Furthermore, the core design is essentially the same as 2015’s Skylake, just with more cores, faster frequencies and higher voltage. Unbelievably, over the past five years, there has been no significant increase in IPC from Intel. Comet Lake is clearly a desperate stop-gap until the long-delayed 10nm Alder Lake arrives in 2022.  

Yet, despite the aging 10900 crammed to the max with cores and juiced to within an inch of its life, it’s also sold-out everywhere. The retail price is $488, but the cheapest reseller I could find wanted $675, a markup of nearly $150!

RYZEN FROM THE DEAD

Disillusioned with the 10900 market, I began looking at AMD’s offerings when I came across the Ryzen 9 3900X. Ugh, I hate the crazy naming conventions and miss the days when a processor’s name was self-explanatory. Unless I’m missing some really arcane formula, the 3900X nomenclature literally tells me nothing about the processor itself, which runs at 3.8GHz, offers 12 cores and 24 threads, and has a 4.6 GHz Boost Clock. 

A little deeper investigating turned up a much cheaper price ($419) along with an included Wraith Prism fan. Surprisingly, Intel does not include a fan, which to me is a slap in the face when you’re already shelling out $500 for their top-of-the-line processor.

 

 

But what really sold me on the 3900X was the advanced 7nm lithography, PCIe 4.0 support, and continued upgrade potential with the x570 chipset. My main gripe with the i7-3770 was that I had no ability to drop in a faster processor when it was needed. Intel is terrible at switching sockets between generations, and my 3770 was the end of the line for the LGA 1155. Ultimately, I suppose that’s my fault for not researching it better, so I was determined not to make that mistake again.  In May of this year, AMD CEO Lisa Su pledged that their forthcoming Zen 3 architecture would be fully compatible with the existing AM4 socket which has been around since 2016. That not only gives me the leverage to move up to a 16-core/32-thread 3950X a couple years down the road, but also to an assortment of as-yet-undisclosed new processors in the works.

The X570 chipset also ushers in support for PCIe 4.0, which doubles the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0, increasing the per-lane capacity to 2 gigabytes per second.  With the 16x slot, which is typically reserved for the graphics card, this bumps the maximum potential bandwidth to 64GBps. Presently, no current video card requires such an extreme amount of data traffic, but it’s all part of my plan to make my new PC as future-proof as possible. There’s speculation that Nvidia’s 3000-series graphics cards—which are the first to utilize the PCIe 4.0 interface—will see a slight advantage versus the same cards in Intel motherboards that are limited to PCIe 3.0. Whether that’s the case or not is immaterial to me, as I have plenty of headroom for future versions which will surely benefit from it.

But while that sounds great after I’d finally decided what route to take, choosing the actual components became the most agonizing part of all. That’s because I spent 2020’s first six-month researching the various brands—and if someone had an issue or problem with a piece of hardware—they wanted the whole internet to sympathize with them by bashing the product and company behind it. Essentially, if a regular customer ordered a motherboard and was happy with it, they wouldn’t necessarily be as prone to zealously post their review as would an enraged buyer who received a defective one. Of course, this terribly skews the metrics and makes it difficult to arrive at an unbiased and informed decision. I’ve been buying Gigabyte motherboards since 2008, and have always had great luck with them, but the reviews were so poor on the X570 models that I was afraid to risk it.  

Compounding my difficult choices was the abbreviated stock trickling out of China thanks to the nasty Bat-Flu going around. Like Amazon, Newegg has started allowing third-party vendors to advertise on their site, and the result is a lawless marketplace with individual sellers pitching $700 motherboards and other criminally gouged electronics. As such, I started relying on private forums to determine the best stock availability and pricing. Eventually, I managed to get almost everything from Newegg itself, although it was spread out over nearly a week and in several separate shipments. And when those packages did arrive, some of them were so battered and bashed-in that they looked like they’d been used as Conor McGregor’s punching bag.

The Case: Ultra Rogue M925

In a group of already eclectic pieces, this was definitely the outlier. It was purchased in 2015 as a deal that was too hard to pass up: a brand-new, full tower gaming case that was just $25 after two separate rebates and free shipping. I bought it with the intention to use for my new PC which never materialized. So, over the ensuing five years I shuffled the 32-lb. box between three different houses, and it even spent 13 months in a climate-controlled storage unit before finally being opened this summer. I’m guilty of largely believing that you get what you pay for, so I honestly wasn’t anticipating much when I liberated it from its Styrofoam coffin. I was also coming from a premium Antec SX1030 SOHO File Server Case that had served me well for the past 15 years. It was a rare item that I paid $125 for at Comp USA in New Orleans, just a month before Hurricane Katrina swept through.

So, given my lowered expectations, I was increasingly surprised as I began inspecting the Rogue tower. For starters, I liked the more modern, angular shape of the M925 as opposed to the Antec’s curved, Art Deco architecture. I also appreciated that the Rogue was jet black and looked sinister enough to be Kylo Ren’s personal computer. The Antec was a dull dishwater gray, and black peripherals like the DVD drive always clashed with it. Furthermore, the Antec case didn’t have any external USB ports, so I had to rig up a 3.0 drive in the floppy drive partition.

Conversely, the Rogue offers four top-mounted USB slots (Two 2.0 and Two 3.0) as well as audio inputs and a 3 in 1 card reader that supports Memory Stick, MultiMediaCard, and SD Memory Cards. These are all located behind a nice, sliding cover to conceal them when not in use.

I was also impressed to see the integrated cable management where everything was already wired up and hidden. And while the Antec used 80mm fans, the Rogue shipped with three 120mm units, a considerable step up in size and cooling. The two front fans have bright blue LEDs while the rear fan is translucent. All three can be controlled from the top-mounted panel, including an adjustable fan speed, turning them off and on, or even disabling the LEDs. In fact, there’s almost no end to the modularity with optional cooling for a bottom 120mm fan, two top 120mm fans, and a ridiculously large 200mm side fan. Aside from that, I only have a couple small gripes— I suppose they were trying to helpful, but I didn’t like that the tiny, gold motherboard posts were already installed. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to building a custom PC, so I had to unscrew each one with a pair of needle nose pliers. Also, I wasn't thrilled that the side panel has screws as opposed to a hinge like my Antec case. Other than those tiny nitpicks, I couldn’t be happier with my brand new, five-year-old case! 

 

The Motherboard: MSI MPG X570 GAMING PLUS 

A lot has changed since 2012 when I last purchased a motherboard, and by that, I mean prices have gone absolutely bonkers! When I was looking at all the MSI X570 offerings I was stunned to see the “PRESTIGE X570 CREATION” for $499 and the “MEG X570 GODLIKE” for $699. And these weren’t some ridiculously inflated amounts due to scarcity and COVID, this was the regular MSRP for these models!

When it comes to motherboards, I’ve always been a no-frills kinda guy, because all you really need a board to do is work. So, I scrutinized the boutique brands and didn’t see anything that I couldn’t live without on my $169 board. Items such as Wi-Fi 6, 10G Super LAN PCI-E card, two extra Lightning Gen 4 M.2 slots, and an extended Heat-Pipe across the MOS to the chipset certainly didn’t add up to an extra $500 for me. Of course, MSI would have you believe otherwise as the profit margin for those little doodads is ridiculous. It’s the same reason when you order a steak at Ruth’s Chris that they offer to top it with shrimp for an additional charge.

But even after I had narrowed all the boards down to just the essentials, I still couldn’t decide which one to get. So finally, and in perhaps the least scientific decision I’ve ever made, I picked the MSI MPG X570 GAMING PLUS simply because the wicked red-on-black color scheme looked the coolest.

Interestingly, under the board specifications on Newegg’s website, I spotted the most bizarre disclaimer ever: “Thank you for your purchase, CR2032 button battery is not pre-installed on this motherboard. The coin cell battery is easy to find and cheap. $0.5 to $1 each. You can buy it in advance.” Needless to say, when I received the actual board it did have a battery in it, but I’m still puzzled as to why that statement was included? I’m wondering if this is possibly some new, impending cost-cutting measure? After all, 30 years ago, American Airlines eliminated one olive from each passenger’s salad and saved $40,000 annually. This could very well be a similar scenario. First, it was toilet paper and now watch batteries? Get ready for the big CR2032 shortage of 2021!

The Hard Drive: Corsair Force MP600 M.2 2280 1TB PCI-Express Gen 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD

If there’s one infuriating thing I dealt with besides the lengthy DVD converting times, it was the constant lack of hard drive space. That’s because when I bought my first SSD in 2012, it was 120 GB which was plenty. But as time (and technology) marched inexorably on, I had less and less room. Leading the charge was Windows 10, which itself can greedily consume 30 GB, and then you have games like Gears of War which chews up 90 GB. I was at a depressing point where I was forced to play one game at a time because I simply didn’t have the space to install anything else. Eventually, I added my old 250GB Seagate Barracuda from 2008 just to have some extra room, but moving anything to or from it, led to exasperatingly slow transfer rates.

SSD prices have fallen so much now that it’s possible to get a 1 TB drive for $100, the same price I paid for 120 GB eight years ago. But I wasn’t concerned about getting the cheapest drive I could find. For all those years of suffering with an undersized hard drive, what I wanted to buy was the fastest SSD possible, and all my research led me to the Corsair Force MP600.

Speed costs money, and some people might call me crazy for spending $250 on a 1 TB hard drive, but the best is never the cheapest. It was also my first experience with an M.2 drive, and quite frankly, I was thrilled to finally be rid of the SATA cables. Of course, I started out in 1997 using the horrible 80-pin IDE ribbon cables which were really wide and obnoxious! They were so unappealing that I used to take an Exacto knife and slice the cables up so I could bundle them together for better aesthetics and airflow. 

How times have changed, and the MP600 runs so hot that it sports heat fins! That’s right, I can remember a time when even video cards didn’t need heat sinks, and now hard drives are using them! Of course, this is due to the blazing PCIe 4.0 interface which enables maximum throughput read/writes of 4,950MBps and 4,250MBps. In comparison, the very best PCIe 3.0 SSDs top out around 3,500MBps. But speed without durability is pointless, so the MP600 comes with a TBW (maximum terabytes written) rating of 1,800, significantly better than the highly-rated Samsung 970 Pro at 1,200 TBW. 

The Flash Drive: Transcend USB 3.1 Gen 2 USB Type-C 240GB Portable SSD Solid State Drive

I bought my first flash drive, a 1GB unit, in 2002 for $100 and still have it. Sometimes, I even use it if I need something small quickly copied from one computer to another, although it is painfully sluggish. Several years back, I ponied up the money and bought my first USB 3.0 flash drive. I enjoyed the speedy file transfer, but I loaned it to Amanda for work and she promptly lost it. Henceforth, I angrily refused to buy another and attempted to make do with the ubiquitous USB 2.0 flash drives that are practically given away these days.

So, when I was spec’ing my new PC, I wanted a flash drive that wouldn’t bottleneck file transfers. I found the Transcend drive which sported the USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C interface and promised maximum reads up to 1, 050 MBps and 950 MBps writes. That’s nearly 10x the speed of a regular USB 3.0 flash drive, so I overlooked the slightly portly dimensions: It’s roughly the size of a credit card (but much smaller than a full-fledged external hard drive) so it fits in your hand, even if it isn’t tiny enough to carry on a keychain.  

  

The Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Z + Inspire 6300 Speakers

Sound cards haven’t kept pace in evolutionary improvements like processors and video cards have, but discreet audio still sounds better to me than even the best onboard units. For that reason, I wanted something to replace the Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Sound Card that I’ve had since 2012. Purchased then on sale for $35, it represents the singular best hardware investment I’ve ever made. That’s because I was able to recently sell it for $35, effectively costing me nothing to own it for the past 8 years.

Since I’ve used Creative-branded cards going all the way back to an AWE64 in 1998—and there’s no real competitors in the market, or a compelling reason to switch—I decided to stick with another Sound Blaster card. From a purely aesthetics standpoint, the new Sound blaster Z certainly looks impressive. Next to the bare-metal X-FI card, the Sound Blaster Z is all business with a shiny aluminum case that blocks EMF interference and a bright red LED. The internals aren’t necessarily ground breaking, but it does utilize a new Sound Core 3D chipset, 24-bit 192 kHz audio, 5.1 surround support and high-quality Nichicon capacitors.

The only drawback I’ve found from 22 years of Creative products is the annoying bloatware bundled with them. They are hands down the absolute worst, and in this day of nonstop marketing practices that’s saying something. Pushing their advertising as a “Critical Update” is pretty shady, so I only install the driver itself. Other than that, I’ve always been happy with their sound cards.    

The Memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 3600

Back in 2003, when I paid $200 for a Western Digital Raptor hard drive that was 36GB, I never imagined that   one day I would have nearly the same amount of system RAM. The Ballistix Sport XT 16GB DDR3 1866 held me over well for the past 8 years, but in some games, I was noticing that total memory usage (~12GB) didn’t leave a lot of overhead. With my new memory, I was essentially able to double the amount and the operating frequency, for not much more than I paid in 2012, which is definitely a win in my book. 32GB is truly overkill right now, but I have an eye towards the future, and there’s no doubt I’ll eventually need it.

The DVD Drive: LG Super Multi Blue 16x Blu-ray Disc Rewriter

Of all the components I purchased in 2012, only two failed me, and the DVD drive was one of them. Given that I had probably burned over 1000 movies with it, I wasn’t too shocked. Thankfully, DVD drives are about the cheapest item to replace in a computer, so it wasn’t a big deal to buy a new one. However, I did take the opportunity to move up to a Blu Ray writer so that not only can I watch Blu Ray discs on my PC, but I can also burn them. It supports all the way up to quad-layer BDXL discs which are 128 GB. Again, definitely something I won’t be using immediately, but nice to have when I do.  

The Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower PF1 850W 80+ Platinum

I loved my OCZ Fatal1ty 750 Watt power supply, and it’s held up admirably well, but I felt it was time to get something a little more robust. The Bronze certification—which is just average—as well as the knowledge that power supplies decline with age, steered me towards a Thermaltake. With the anti-vibration mounting system, fitting it into my case was tighter than a virgin on prom night, but after that it was good to go. It’s also the first fully-modular power supply I’ve ever owned, and I enjoy the freedom of picking and choosing which low-profile cables to use, rather than just having a huge rat’s nest of unused wires hanging there.

It boasts an “Ultra Quite Smart Zero Fan” that would satisfy even the snootiest Librarian. Typically, high performance fans generate a lot of noise, and that cacophony can be amplified in small office settings like my study. More than once, Amanda has walked by and commented that it sounded like I was participating in World War III. However, Thermaltake’s fan only spins up when the operating load exceeds 40%, minimizing excess noise and unnecessary wear. Accustomed to a loud fan, I was concerned the first time I turned it on and didn’t hear anything.

Finally, the “Platinum” certification—the highest available—ensures 92% efficiency to maximize energy savings. I proudly told my wife that while the power supply was $200, I was helping the environment with its Eco-Friendly energy consumption. I explained that it was an upfront investment, like solar panels, and that the longer I used it, the more money we would save. I don’t know if she believed me, but I’m just glad it has a ten year-warranty since I may have to keep it that long! 

The UPS: APC Pro 1350VA Battery Backup & Surge Protector

Unlike a flashy new CPU or sparkly video card, there’s nothing inherently sexy about a battery backup. But like marriage, there is a certain comforting sense of stability that comes with it. And it doesn’t just work for computers, either: After Katrina, I used my UPS to keep the aerator going on my wife’s fish tank, and it doubles as a great way to charge cell phones during temporary outages.

Like my eight-year-old power supply, I was concerned about the future longevity of my APC 750 battery backup. That it was still working fine was both a blessing and a curse. Every day, I’ve expected to be greeted by that shrill, high-pitched cry that announces its demise. After all, in my line of work, I’m genuinely surprised if I come across a battery backup that hasn’t expired in two or three years. And I’ve never known one to go for eight years, as mine has. Of course, my buddy Dusten said that if I was concerned about the reliability, I could just swap in a new battery. And while he was technically correct, replacing the battery didn’t address the fact that I desired one with a lot more power reserve than my 750 could accommodate. For that reason, I decided to nearly double it to 1350.

I used to buy these same units for the bank’s servers, and they were as expensive as they were heavy. Thankfully, while the weight hasn’t come down, the price certainly has, and I managed to snag one on sale for $149. I particularly like the LCD screen which broadcasts the expected run time, as well as the power draw. I haven’t measured it when gaming, but during regular tasks like emailing, internet, etc., it advertises an uptime of 70 minutes. With the increasing frequency of hurricanes, I might just have to use my new APC for something besides my computer!

The Benchmarks:

So, what’s the net-result of all this time, electricity and money? Read on to find out if it was worth it!

Cinebench Release 20: It’s unfair to compare a CPU with 8 threads against one that has 24, so I tried to isolate the tests as much as possible. Fortunately, Cinebench allowed me to run the complete test on a single core, thereby eliminating any advantage from the extra cores and showcasing just the processor’s abilities. Although the 3900 was at a slight clock-speed disadvantage (with an observed 4.1 GHz Boost Clock to the 3770’s overclocked 4.6 GHz), I was fairly confident that AMD’s newer architecture would prevail. Sure enough, the Ryzen’s Single Core Test was 530 points, an impressive 69% improvement over the Intel’s 313 points. But with the cuffs off, the multi-threaded showdown was a bloody massacre. On paper, AMD possesses triple the performance, yet with a score of 7179 to 1489, the real-world gap was nearly five-fold (~4.7).  

Futuremark 3DMark: This is another good benchmark in that it’s largely dependent on the video card, and not the processor. With my 1080 Ti being the only component I didn’t change out, the onus was put squarely on the shoulders of the CPU to reflect any potential gains. Even being GPU-limited, there was still an impressive 20% boost from 7,799 to 9,390. But I was most excited for the physics-heavy test that really strains the CPU. Previously, it had brought my 3770 to its knees, scoring just 13.8 FPS, so I had been itching for a rematch. Thankfully, the 3900 didn’t disappoint with a resounding 36.8 FPS, removing the previous stuttering and choppiness.  

Geekbench 5: This is a new testing application that I employed to illustrate the enhancements that nearly eight years’ worth of cutting-edge R&D is responsible for.  Restricted to a single core, AMD was 50% more efficient with a score of 1317 to Intel’s 894.  And in the Multi-Core benchmarks, the gap was exactly a textbook, three-fold difference: 3,704 to 11,297. 

Crystal Disk Mark 7.0: While I was excited to test the CPU, I was almost as thrilled to try out the new PCI-Express 4.0 NVMe SSD, which arguably was the most significant upgrade in the entire computer. As mentioned above, the theoretical maximum speeds were 4,950MBps and 4,250MBps, and it actually exceeded them: It hit a sizzling 4,993 on the reads and 4,417 on the writes. It was a staggering fourteen times faster than my previous SSD’s reads and an unbelievable eighteen times faster on the writes. So yes, the radical SSD was an even bigger improvement than the processor, although in all fairness, there was a harmonic synergy between them— had the Corsair been held back by a PCI-E 3.0 interface, the results wouldn’t have been nearly as dramatic.

 

Of course, I was also eager to test the Corsair flash drive to make sure I was getting the speed I paid for. It didn’t quite hit the advertised numbers of 1,050MBps and 950MBps, but it did manage 1,026MBps and 762MBps which is still light years ahead of a conventional USB 3.0 flash drive. Interestingly, when I removed the USB-C cable and used a standard USB 3.0 interface, it dropped significantly to 464MBps and 447MBps. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to buy this drive unless the motherboard expressly supports it.

 

  

CONCLUSION:

 

I set out to build a blazing fast PC, one that could potentially last me until 2030, and I couldn’t be happier with the end result. Windows loads to the desktop within 5 seconds of the POST and the immediacy and speed that applications respond is intoxicating. I’m the type who needs to quantify and justify purchases, so the before-and-after comparisons validate all the cost and effort.

Even games, which typically don’t require massive core-counts, have benefited from my new hardware. I’ve been playing The Outer Worlds which listed an i7-7700K as the recommended processor. That’s definitely a few generations ahead of my i7-3770, so my new 3900X really smoothed it out. I added a command to “USEALLAVAILABLECORES” and now I can even convert a Blu Ray in the background without any annoying hitches or pauses. Furthermore, the 24 threads have cut the conversion time down from as much as an hour to just ten minutes. As of October 1st, my system has slightly over two months under its belt, and I’m delighted to report that there hasn’t been a single blue-screen or crash.

Quite frankly, my system would be overkill for most people, but the demanding 4K games I play require it. Neither the upcoming, much-ballyhooed Playstation 5 or Xbox Series X come close in terms of raw processing power with each only having 8-core systems. Furthermore, their AMD-based RDNA 2 graphics cards fluctuate between 10-12 Teraflops while my 1080 Ti sits squarely in the middle with 11 Teraflops. Of course, now that Nvidia’s 3000 generation has been announced, my new video card will be capable of an astounding 30 Teraflops.

However, Microsoft and Sony have been hyping a new PCI-E 4.0-based storage architecture that is said to virtually eliminate load times with lightning-fast transfer rates. Whether it will deliver the promised benefits remains to be seen, but Microsoft has announced that the same technology is coming to Windows in a DirectStorage API update for the DirectX library.

It’s a good thing I don’t plan on building an entirely new PC until 2030, because with all the anxiety, expense and frustration, it may just take me that long before I’m ready to do it all over again!

Gotta love that Chinese Engrish!

 

TEN YEARS AGO (2010):

As an ephemerist, I enjoy looking back to see how far I’ve come, and a decade ago I had just built my first quad-core PC, an Intel Q9650 overclocked to 3.33 GHz. Surprisingly, today I’m still using three of the same programs for benchmarking and testing, though they had slightly different versions and names back then: 3Dmark Vantage, Cinebench Release 10, and Convert X to DVD 4. But while the cost of living has definitely gone up in the past 10 years, technology has certainly gotten cheaper. In 2010, I paid $330 for the Intel processor, a cost of $82 per thread. By comparison, my new AMD 3900X only cost $17 per thread. There might not be a lot of bright spots in 2020, but that is surely one of them! 

 

Pandemic Paradise

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

  Pirate Press         September 2020

 

As my fourteen year-old daughter dry-heaved by the side of the road at 6:30 in the morning, I wondered if our spontaneous trip to Universal Studios might not have been the best idea. Fortunately, it wasn’t anything life-threatening, but like mixing Mentos and Diet Coke, she learned never to take antibiotics on an empty stomach and then chase them with a Red Bull. She then proceeded to sleep for almost the entirety of our 8-hour trip, something I certainly wish I could have done.

Truth be told, Amanda and I didn’t know what we would be getting ourselves into when we undertook a spur-of-the-moment trip to Orlando for Independence Day weekend. Months prior, we had booked a Disney trip for that weekend, but as Covid cases began blowing up in Florida, the House of Mouse got cold feet (paws?) and cancelled all our reservations. Meanwhile, Universal Studios, which is begrudgingly accustomed to playing second fiddle to Disney, saw the opportunity and seized it, reopening all their parks on June 5^th.

Emboldening our rather risky decision was the furtive hope that enough of the frightened chicken littles would stay away so that we could sufficiently enjoy everything that Universal had to offer. After all, Universal is well aware of the massive summer crowds and specifically sells Express Passes designed to mitigate those infuriating delays.  But at a cost of $60 per-person per-day, we were looking at over $500, and that didn’t even include the standard park admission, our hotel, or food. Suddenly, our little weekend getaway was adding up to several thousand dollars.

Even so, our first—and last—visit to Universal was during Spring Break 2018 and, unlike Disney, there were plenty of new things for us to ride and experience.  So, we rolled the dice and pointed our Santa Fe towards Orlando, all the while hoping that we weren’t making a very expensive mistake.

Florida has never looked so beautifully empty!

Although we didn’t spot any Silver Alerts this time, Florida was testing their Interstate Messaging system with hilarious results. An “FDOT Message” appeared to indicate that “FOOT Massages” were available at various exits and I had to wonder how many motorists stopped to fruitlessly inquire at gas stations and local businesses about the non-existent podiatric treatment. I bet some older, Robert Kraft-types were even hoping for a “Happy Ending.”      

But rather than stopping at the Pensacola Rest Area as we’ve done in that past, we held in our bodily fluids so that we had an uninterrupted 4-hour trip to Tallahassee where we exited for lunch. Previously, our favorite place to eat there was Chuy’s, a Tex-Mex chain that I’ve delightfully rhapsodized about in these pages before. But as of late, it seems that we’re about as welcome as Thanos, as three out of the four locations we’ve visited recently have permanently closed. To wit, our first-time dining at the Atlanta Aker’s Mill location in October 2018 resulted in it folding in March 2019. Similarly, we then visited the Tuscaloosa outpost in June 2019 only for it to be shuttered in November. And finally, our beloved Tallahassee venue served its last meal in March of this year.  That leaves our nearest location now as the one four hours away in marshy Lafayette, Louisiana. How that isolated eatery has managed to survive is beyond me, as I would have expected it to be the first casualty in the initial round of closings.

Nevertheless, vacation is an opportunity for me to indulge in all the delicacies not available in Mississippi, so after checking into our hotel, we ended up at the Chuy’s on International Drive. Orlando might be a city of 2 Million, but just about everything you want or need can be found along International Drive. Even with limited seating, the restaurant was nearly vacant and I refrained from gushing enthusiastically to our waitress about how thrilled I was to be dining there for the first time in a year. Amanda discouraged this behavior because she claimed I’d look like a “weirdo” because “no normal person gets that excited to eat at Chuy’s.” But, despite her opinion, and my personal belief that it’s bad luck to have the best meal on the first day of the trip, I did like Chuy’s more than anything else I ate, including the 75-day dry-aged Australian Wagyu ribeye at The Boat House in Disney Springs. It's a prime example of the most expensive food not necessarily being the most enjoyable.

The True Secret to World Peace? More Chuy's!

Of course, opinions on whether we should visit Florida during the height of the pandemic were divided; Most understood our logic that this would realistically be the best time to visit as crowds would be thinnest, while a few such as her jealous sister proclaimed us to be “crazy.” But as we learned during our five days there, with the constant temperature checks, hand sanitizer before and after every ride, and mandatory mask policies, it was actually safer than grocery shopping at our local Wal-Mart.  The only issues were that for the 3D rides (and there are a lot in Universal Studios) wearing a face mask caused my 3D glasses to fog up. My solution for this was to quietly slip the mask under my nose once the ride was underway and they were none the wiser. Secondly, the brand and viscosity of the hand-sanitizer varied greatly from ride to ride, but at a few stations it was so slimy that I’d swear they’d gotten it confused with bottles of Astro Glide.

As for our face masks, there’s a funny story surrounding that: Last Summer, we took Victoria to the Ariana Grande concert in New Orleans and one of the overpriced pieces of merch she bought was a “Thank U Next” face mask. It seemed a really odd thing to buy at the time, and I distinctly remember complaining that she would never wear it. Prior to this, the only group I had even seen wearing face masks in public were random Asians, and I ridiculed them for that. After all, I felt that face masks and doctor’s scrubs belonged in the operating room, and I generally looked down upon individuals parading around in them. Yet before 2020, I don’t think any of us ever envisioned a future where we’d be required to wear face masks for any reason.

Ready to rob a bank to support our Theme Park addiction!

Our hotel was the Surfside Inn and Suites, chosen specifically because it was one of the least expensive accommodations on Universal property. This was important because not only did it give us free transportation to and from the parks every day, it also allowed us early entrance before the general public. And unlike Disney which is built on a sprawling swamp, our hotel was conveniently located across from a Walgreens.  As such, my daughter and I were able to scramble over a fence and pick up a case of spring water for $4, the same price charged for a single bottle in our hotel’s tourist-trap gift shop. We also nabbed some granola, cereal, and milk for quick and inexpensive breakfasts. This allowed us to get out of the room and onto the bus with minimal downtime every morning.

Key to the Kingdom.

Compared to the long lines and chaos of our last visit during Spring Break 2018, Universal looked downright deserted when we arrived, with just a few people casually strolling in. Some of this was because many of the CityWalk restaurants like Cowfish had been closed since early March, while other restaurants didn’t open until 4:00 for dinner. We had to keep pinching ourselves that it was real, because the lack of tourists made it theme park heaven!

Our first attraction was one I missed the opening of by two weeks last time, so we made a beeline for it. Surprisingly, we were the first (and amazingly) only riders for Fast & Furious: Supercharged.  We entered a pseudo-garage and were met with a live actor who clued us in on the plot. Behind him were two big screens that featured pre-recorded videos of both Jordana Brewster and Ludacris, designed specifically to heighten the immersion. Apparently, The Rock and Vin Diesel were too busy (or important) for this, although their voices were heard later during phone calls directing us what to do.

The ride faithfully recreated the movies: All style and no substance.

The three of us boarded a track-coaster engineered to look like a bus and the fun began. Honestly, with a digitized Keanu Reeves, it could have doubled perfectly for a ride based on the movie SPEED. Instead, we witnessed cinematics of Vin Diesel and The Rock helping us escape a cadre of machine gun-wielding criminals. Unfortunately, the screens appeared a little stretched, resulting in an anamorphic distortion that didn’t look quite right. In the end, we all enjoyed the ride but agreed that it wasn’t something we’d want to experience again.  And predictably, the bus emptied us out in front of the gift shop, so we had to endure an awkward slog through a veritable maze of shameless marketing tie-ins like Fast & Furious beach towels and a life-size Vin Diesel poster (steroids sold separately).       

The next ride we hopped on was The Amazing Spider-Man which we also hadn’t tried before. Like Fast & Furious, it too was a track-coaster, but the initial entrance winds through a facsimile of The Daily Bugle newspaper office. I was mildly amused to see the old telephones, typewriters and newspapers of which I grew up with, but my daughter had no clue about. It was a sobering reminder of how rapidly technology has changed the world we live in. Despite that, the unanimous verdict was that Spider-Man was a much more fun experience than Fast & Furious and one we’d definitely ride again.

I’ve, perhaps somewhat uncharitably, referred to Universal Orlando as the “Graveyard of Brendan Fraser’s Career” but with rides based on both The Mummy and Dudley Do-Right I contend it’s an apt description. After all, Fraser had a meteoric rise with the first Mummy movie, but a string of increasingly ill-received sequels (The Mummy Returns, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor) and other bizarre career choices (2010’s Furry Vengeance & 2014’s aptly named The Nut Job) effectively ruined his bankability. Now, Universal’s Revenge of the Mummy and Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls are painful reminders of Brendan Fraser’s better days.  

And illustrating the topsy-turvy nature of Hollywood, my daughter knows who The Rock is but not Brendan Fraser. To her generation, Dwayne Johnson has always been a larger-than-life fixture in movies like The Fast & Furious. She doesn’t understand that it was Brendan Fraser’s Mummy movie that kickstarted The Rock’s theatrical career. 

So due to the empty lines, Victoria and I were able to ride Revenge of the Mummy three times in succession, although by the final time I was feeling pretty beaten up because it’s a really violent coaster. Aside from that, I think it’s one of the better ones thanks to the fire and other practical effects they include in it.

I imagined Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls as Universal’s version of Splash Mountain. Unfortunately, the set design for it was sorely lacking and seemed almost unfinished in places. As one of Islands of Adventure’s original rides from 1999, it was definitely showing its age. Despite that, I still found the 50-degree, 75-foot drop to be more thrilling than the newer Jurassic Park ride which was updated last year.

For lunch, I decided to try the real-life version of a cartoon sandwich I’ve aspired to sample nearly my whole life, the Dagwood, based on the Blondie comic strip.  Sadly, newspaper comic strips are another childhood pleasure that my daughter will never know or understand. Nevertheless, I can certainly recall Blondie being the most attractive female character of all the comic strips. She was certainly the O.G. MILF. What teenage boy in the 1970s and 1980s wouldn’t have enjoyed a story arc where she posed for Playboy?

But while it’s nearly impossible to live up to over 40 years of anticipatory gastronomy, the actual Dagwood sandwich wasn’t half-bad. I’m not a big fan of cold cuts on white bread—and while it was definitely smaller than in the comic strip—it was still pretty tasty. It featured onion and poppy seed bread stacked with baked ham, roast beef, turkey, American and Swiss cheese, and topped with lettuce, tomatoes, mayonnaise and mustard. Spotting the smattering of poppy seeds, I semi-joked with my wife that I hoped I didn’t get drug-tested upon my return from vacation. Like sunflower seeds, flax seeds and chia seeds, I’m a big fan of poppy seeds which unfortunately can produce a false positive for both codeine and heroin in a drug screen. After a pre-employment drug test and a “random” drug test six months later, I wasn’t taking any chances. However, I told Amanda that if I did get tested again, I’d certainly be the healthiest heroin addict they’d ever seen!  

No Reservations Required: 12,000 Coronavirus cases per day meant we had VIP seating everywhere.

    

All joking aside, my real drug of choice is Universal’s 1-pound Lard Lad Doughnut. At 1,617 calories and 86 grams of artery-clogging fat, it’s probably only slightly better for me than actual heroin. The first time I had one in 2018 it was so good that I greedily lamented sharing it with Amanda and Victoria. So, this time I bought a whole one just for myself and was thoroughly enjoying every decadent, sugary bite until a mother duck with several tiny ducklings approached me. Initially, I was able to ignore them, but the web-footed mendicant’s determination began to erode my iron resolve. Well, that and the fact that she bit Amanda’s bare leg which I thought was pretty funny. Of course, it didn’t break the skin but it certainly startled her. Following that, I hand-feed the mother duck several small pieces while pondering if ducks can get diabetes?

New Marketing Pitch: "It's Better For You Than Heroin!"

Arguably the hottest holiday to attend any Florida theme park is Fourth of July, but after surviving last year’s Independence Day at Disney, we felt confident that we could do the same this year at Universal. Fortunately, there were scattered showers around that not only provided ample cloud cover, but also much cooler temperatures after the brief rain had passed over.   

However, Mother Nature worked against us on our last day there as we attempted to ride the most popular attraction at Universal, Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure.  I’m living proof that you don’t have to watch the Harry Potter movies or know all the lore to enjoy Universal. So, while I was only vaguely aware of who Hagrid is, I definitely knew that I wanted to try his new roller coaster ride. But because the crowds and wait times had been so minimal the four days we were there, an unusual complacency had set in and we naively believed it wouldn’t be an issue to snag three seats on it. 

There's always room for a Butterbeer, or two, or three, or....

That final morning, we diligently reserved our spots in Hagrid’s virtual queue, which is Universal’s equivalent of the boarding pass for Disney’s Rise of the Resistance. In retrospect, I suppose that should have clued me that it was no ordinary walk-on ride, but as I stated above, I’m blissfully ignorant when it comes to most Harry Potter mythology. Only later did I learn that after it opened last summer, the wait times sometimes stretched as long as 10 hours!

The problems started when we arrived at our designated time only to discover that the ride had been shut down for repairs. Apparently, the more complex and newer the attraction is, the more mechanical malfunctions can be expected of it. I call that the “Ferrari Effect” as cost is not commensurate with reliability. You’d think a $100,000 sports car would be built like a vault, but in reality a new $16,000 Kia is more durable and dependable, albeit just not nearly as exciting. And with Hagrid’s coaster costing $300,000,000 (or roughly the same as a Boeing 777 jumbo jet) that’s a whole lot of expensive parts and pieces to break. It also makes it the world’s costliest coaster, surpassing the previous record set by Disney’s $100 million Expedition Everest.

However, it was still early in the morning and we were issued Express Passes to use later in the day when it was operational again. So, we left to ride some other attractions, eat at the Hard Rock Cafe, ride some more things and return only to worryingly discover that it still was closed. At this point, it was nearing 4:00 in the afternoon and Universal’s truncated Pandemic schedule had the parks closing at 6:00. Suddenly, the realization hit us that we could be leaving without getting to experience the most exciting ride in all of Florida.

So, we decided to simply wait in line near the front entrance hoping that it would be up and running before our time expired. A lot of other people were also doing the same thing and I’ve often remarked that few things in life are more miserable than standing in an endless Theme Park line during the dog days of Summer. Even a brief fist fight between two small boys provided only a tiny break in the boredom. And every few minutes, a random park goer would approach an employee asking about the ride, as if that might somehow miraculously revive it and we could all board it cheerfully singing and laughing. But the cruel reality is that never happened.  

With the clock slowly counting down, the possibility of us getting to ride Hagrid seemed less and less likely. In the intervening time, I watched the employees who were stationed behind the entrance, hoping any second that one might step forward and open the gate, or even make an announcement about the ride, rather than allowing us to suffer like Tantalus, with Hagrid’s shiny steed just beyond our mortal grasp.

However, Amanda had been coolly studying every small detail and suddenly commanded us to quickly move from our long-held spot to a more obscure entrance on the side. Without saying a word that might tip off the assembled mob and create a mini-riot, we quietly did as we were told. Once there, she whispered in my ear that she glimpsed Hagrid’s ride making test passes behind the wall.

Sure enough, five minutes later an employee ordered everyone to line up and people began furiously scrambling for spots like they were giving away flat-screen TVs on Black Friday. Thanks to Amanda’s prophetic directive to switch areas, we were just a few people away from the entrance. But it was the grim faces of anguish, desperation and complete defeat from the folks who were still trapped in our old location that really hit home. As we walked briskly into Hagrid’s attraction, I tried not to make eye contact with the glares from the forlorn lost souls, lest looks really could kill.

We quickly made our way down multiple hallways and veritable mazes of railing designed to daily contain thousands of sweaty, exhausted, sunburned tourists that were now eerily vacant. And unlike Amanda, who had already read about and watched all the videos of Hagrid’s ride, I deliberately wanted it to be a surprise. And a surprise it would certainly be!

Due to social distancing and as a single rider, I got my own motorcycle while Victoria took the driver’s seat in theirs and Amanda got stuck in the sidecar. 

They were a couple cars ahead of me, and as I was still stuck in the tunnel waiting for my turn to go, I could see them literally blast off. Unlike the old-generation roller coasters that primarily required gravity and momentum for speed, these new electric coasters have linear synchronous motors that provide immense amounts of torque for instantaneous acceleration. Although it can go much faster, Hagrid’s motorcycle is governed for safety to 50 mph which it hits from a standstill in four-seconds flat. That ranks right up there with some of the world’s best sports cars, and in an open-wheeled motorcycle, it is equally frightening and thrilling.

Supposedly, there’s a tremendous backstory to the attraction meant to satisfy even the most ardent Harry Potter fan.  To that end, the designers planted 1,200 trees to fully replicate the Forbidden Forest setting. And at nearly a mile in length (5,053 feet) it’s also the longest roller coaster in Florida. But while those figures are certainly impressive, the truth is I was too busy holding on for dear life during the 3-minute thrill ride to really appreciate or notice all the attention to detail.  

Hagrid’s even holds a world record for being the first roller coaster to employ a total of seven jaw-dropping launches. Of course, the first comes when the ride begins, and you feel like you’re literally shot out of a cannon. While traditional coasters have a cart to sit in that offers some semblance of protection and security, Hagrid’s motorcycle leaves the rider almost completely exposed and vulnerable. With only a restraint bar across my legs, trust me when I say that I really felt like I was going to fly off the motorcycle in some of the crazy curves.

As the coaster ripped around the track with multiple eye-watering, neck-snapping launches, I held on with white knuckles, not knowing what lay around the next blind section. Suddenly, the track ahead appeared to go straight up, a Steampunk Stairway to Heaven. At this point, I was essentially a helpless passenger and—quite honestly— didn’t know what to expect. I just knew that it was either gonna be a helluva drop on the other side, or that it was going to flip completely upside down.  

As it turns out, I was wrong on both guesses as the track extended nearly straight up 65-feet in the air and then abruptly ended. This was no optical illusion, and as I reached the end of the track, the coaster slowed and I suddenly began rolling backwards at 50 mph.

“Oh Shhhiiiiiiiiiittt!” was all I could muster as my motorcycle furiously flew backwards down the track. My worst fear is not being able to see where I’m going, and I absolutely hate going backwards. Bravo, Hagrid, you’ve successfully exploited my worst anxiety!    

But it wasn’t over yet: Did I mention how much I hate drops? Lucky me, Hagrid’s is only the second coaster in the nation to offer a body-jolting, 17-foot drop.

And before I could even gain my orientation, we had blasted off again and were flying through yet more curves and dips. Then we entered a huge straight away and, given the distance we'd covered, I surmissed it was near the end of the ride. I distinctly recall Hagrid’s voice admonishing me to use the “Dragon Fire” and I saw a purple flashing button on the motorcycle’s instrument panel. I’d like to say that I punched that button at the perfect time, but in reality, I was too frozen with fear to loosen my death-grip on the handlebars. Nevertheless, it switched on automatically, and the speed poured on again with the final—and longest—burst of the entire ride. I was hunkered down on the motorcycle and it felt like I was going so fast that the wind would start ripping the skin fresh off my face. How 50 mph on a motorcycle can feel more terrifying than 160 mph in a car I’ll never understand, but it was by far the most exciting thing I’ve ever ridden.

As we pulled back into the castle, I could see Victoria up ahead and she was grinning like a maniac. My ears were literally ringing from the adrenaline rush, and without even asking her, I knew this would be her (and my) new favorite ride. It’s the closest I’ve ever felt being scared to death, without actually dying, so I suppose that’s a good thing.  

But the story doesn’t end there: Just as we disembarked, we heard the announcement that lightning had been spotted in the area and that Hagrid’s ride was going to be closed for the rest of the day. Apparently, between Florida’s frequent bad weather and Hagrid’s temperamental nature, it has earned a reputation as one of the most unreliable attractions in the entire theme park industry. Over the past year, some months it’s been down nearly half the time the park was open. In October 2019, Hagrid’s uptime was only 41% of the typical operating day. In comparison, that’s even worse than the 46% that it posted during June 2019, its opening month when initial teething problems are typically at their worst. Even the new Smuggler’s Run attraction has never fallen below 90% availability during park hours at either Disneyland or Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

And it also seems Universal may have had just plain ole back luck. When thunderstorms and mechanical malfunctions weren’t sidelining the attraction, a bizarre bee infestation shut the ride down for several days last fall. And most recently, a backstage fire has closed it indefinitely.

Despite all that bad juju, it’s certainly worth the effort and waiting in line if you happen to find yourself at Universal. The motorcycle aspect makes Hagrid unique in the world of roller coasters, and when you experience one of the launches, you get the added sensation of what nitrous feels like on two wheels without having to explain yourself to a judge.

As for the pandemic, we got used to wearing our masks, and all the safety precautions were a small inconvenience compared to the freedom we experienced from the typical summer crowds. Looking back, it’s crazy to think that when we went in early July, the state’s daily Coronavirus cases were at an all-time high of 12,000 compared to just 4,500 now. Even so, reports are that Disney attendance is down 80% from this time last year, which means it’s still a great time to visit either park!   

COVID-19 was the best Express Pass we've ever gotten!

The "Theme Park Diet" burns a ton of calories, but is crazy expensive!

WAZE ensured we made the 550-mile trip back in record time so we can start planning our next one!