The machine I'm typing this on is a 'whitebox' build I put together in 2010. I build computers to last - the specs were high-end at the time, and have been upg

The machine I'm typing this on is a 'whitebox' build I put together in 2010. I build computers to last - the specs were high-end at the time, and have been upgraded over the years (video card, RAID controller, SSD's, etc). Even though it's getting long in the tooth, the box is still reasonably performant today. It's highly customized; the case sports thoughtful additions like sound-dampening foam, bespoke brackets for additional cooling fans (all Noctua of course), hardware thermostats & monitoring LCD, interior lighting that activates when you open a panel even if the machine is off (makes it a pleasure to work with when under a desk), etc. Choices that really panned out well include: Infiniband (this was back when 10G NIC's were stupid-expensive, but eBay was flooded with great, second-hand Mellanox cards off universities), Areca (their RAID controllers and arrays were so easily upgradeable across generations), ECC RAM everywhere, and an external PCI-E expander (six x16 slots just weren't enough). It has in the range of 1000 software titles installed, countless ones used regularly (guess I'm somewhat a jack of all trades). Specialized diagnostics and tooling track and isolate changes made by software, which has helped manage things and prevent bloat accretion. I periodically run benchmarks to ensure metrics like bootup time, disk transfers, etc. still match out-of-the-box numbers). When you have to install and configure that many apps, migration is a real pain, which motivates longevity (and a collateral reduction of e-waste).