CSI Starbase Production Equipment Emergency

Hey everyone, my name is Zack Golden, host of CSI Starbase. I wanted to reach out to seek a little assistance with a pretty major issue that I have been dealing with this week.

Many of you who follow me on Twitter may know that shortly before releasing my most recent 65 minutes episode, I experienced a pretty severe hardware issue on the laptop I use for all of my production work. After sending it in for diagnostics I was told that the motherboard has completely failed.

Initially, we hoped it was a hard drive error but those are exceedingly rare with Solid State Drives. As you can imagine, this is having a huge effect on my ability to produce CSI Starbase episodes and host RGVAerial Starbase Weekly live streams.

The slow failure of my computer started about a month ago while I was in Texas for the Starship Launch. I realized that I needed to begin saving for a new computer after a major drop in performance and a sudden inability to connect to wifi. This is part of the reason I didn't release any content while I was down there for the launch. I had to wait until I got back to Chicago where I can hardwire directly to my modem via ethernet. Somehow my computer was able to remain functional until I was finished recording and editing the episode.

This is a truly unfortunate situation, considering I only just recently decided to go full-time with my Youtube channel back in March. Luckily, in that time I have been able to get my channel to a point where I am nearly able to fully support myself. But I admit, I am completely unprepared for unexpected events such as this one.

With that said, I plan to upgrade to a Mac which will be a lot more suitable for the type of work that I do. I considered replacing the motherboard on my other computer, but I think that would be a poor decision in the long run. Although they require a larger investment, from my experience, Macs are more tailored toward media and content creation

I set my starting goal at $4000 because that's what I will need just to get the computer. I will probably need a 4 to 8TB hard drive to store all of the media that I use in my episodes but I think for now I can get away with using an external drive and then upgrade in the future.

Here is a link to the model I have been considering.

I realize this is a rather large ask, but I hope some folks out there enjoy our content enough to be willing to contribute to help me continue to do what I do. I greatly appreciate any assistance that you may be able to offer.

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

-StageZeroZack