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New computer.
Due to May being a three paycheck month, and $850 free cash from work incentive contests, I decided to upgrade the old computer. Well, just based on the extra pay check I planned on upgrading. The extra $850 just upgraded to more of a 'replace' than 'upgrade'. After everything was setup, only the floppy drive, DVD burner, and my 2 250 GB serial ATA2 drives were kept.
In researching motherboards, I found that virtually no current boards have VGA ports. This was a problem as I had 2 21" Trinitrons at the time. And the old one, that I'd relegated to rarely used second, looked like crap with a VGA to DVI adaptor. I HOPED getting a better adaptor and using the newer Trinitron wouldn't have the same problems, but I bought a nice 22" X2gen panel just to be safe. Only $250 or so with a one year replace for any reason warranty. And it looks way nice. A bit TOO bright though. Even tweaked. To get what I consider a good brightness screws up colors. I'm getting used to it. The good new is the Trinitron doesn't look bad with one of the other adaptors I bought. But definitely not as good as with a straight VGA connection. Good enough for a second monitor though.
The new Antec P180B case is very nice. Power supply in the bottom of the case which made cable routing interesting. Came with 3 120mm 3 speed fans and space for 2 more, which I also bought. So with a total of 6 120mm fans(One on the heatsink/fan combo, Tuniq Tower.), it's virtually silent. I have to actively listen for it when the AC is not running, and that's with all 6 on the high setting. It's totally silent on medium or low. I don't like the new panel compared to my trusty old Antec 1040b, but everything else is very nice. The power supply was a bit of a gamble. 575 watt but only cost $25. 90+% of the Newegg reviews said good things and most of the bad were of the 'It was dead in the box' variety so I figured I'd take a change. No problems so far after two weeks, so looks likke the gamble paid off.
I hadn't decided on whether to go with a Core2Duo or an X2 processor, but when looking at pricing there was a combo deal on the X2 3600+ Brisbane core chip and 2GB of nice Corsair memory, so that decided things. This one with modest air cooling, and I have much better than just modest, should do at least 3 ghz from it's stock 1.9. I haven't tried yet, stock the dual core chip is significantly faster than my old Athlon XP at 2ghz. Twice the RAM and it being much faster RAM doesn't hurt either. I went with an Asus Nforce 570 ultra board. I don't see myself ever buying two video cards at once, so I didn't want to waste any cash on an SLI board. I went with an XFX Geforce 7950GT 512MB card. Since I don't plan on buying Vista any time in the forseeable future, getting one of the 8xxx series Geforce cards would have been a waste. This card is plenty. I have Dawn of War Dark Crusade running at the new panel's native 1680x1050 will everything set on max and 4x antialiasing and I've not seen any slowdowns, even when I've filled a map with Waugh! banners and had a full cap of Orkies attack a base. Additionally, the card only warms up about 2 degrees over idle temp. So I am plenty pleased with the performance. No game I've tried so far has had any problems running at the panel's native resolution. I may dig out Fear and see how it does. Finally I grabbed a new Western Digital 320 GB serial ATA2 hard drive. I really didn't need more space. The idea was behind it was two fold: A. It was cheap. B. I wanted to have a complete system without taking the old one down. Makes researching install problems easier and I wanted to have the new system totally functional with all my normal apps before I did something permanent. Problems. I forgot I don't have an extra keyboard. But the install went without a hitch and I did have just about everything running before taking the old system apart. Turns out the only thing I lost this time was a text file on my desktop that I had my movie want list on. Not a major problem.
So, to sum up new system:
AMD A64 X2 3600+ 1.9ghz soon to be 3+ghz
2 x 1GB CORSAIR TWIN2X2048-6400 RAM
ASUS M2N-E NForce 570 ULTRA AM2 motherboard
XFX GF7950GT 512MB video card
Western Digital 320GB ATA2 hard drive.
2x Western Digital 250GB ATA2 hard drives from old system
Pioneer DVR111D Dual layer burner from old system.
Sony 3 1/2" floppy drive(Just because some driver companies are stupid about their utilities.) from old system.
Tuniq Tower HSF
X2gen 22" LCD.
Price for parts not counting LCD was just a bit under $900. And the LCD was around $250. The free $850 from work pretty much covered the system. And I bought the LCD out of the extra paycheck. I like the LCD enough I may get a second some time this year. While I have a ton of deskspace, you can always use more. The downside is, you can't stand toys on an LCD. Currently I have a Tachikoma, 'Alphonse' from Patlabor, a Microsoft Sidewinder joystick, and a Viking Kitten plushy on top of mine.
In researching motherboards, I found that virtually no current boards have VGA ports. This was a problem as I had 2 21" Trinitrons at the time. And the old one, that I'd relegated to rarely used second, looked like crap with a VGA to DVI adaptor. I HOPED getting a better adaptor and using the newer Trinitron wouldn't have the same problems, but I bought a nice 22" X2gen panel just to be safe. Only $250 or so with a one year replace for any reason warranty. And it looks way nice. A bit TOO bright though. Even tweaked. To get what I consider a good brightness screws up colors. I'm getting used to it. The good new is the Trinitron doesn't look bad with one of the other adaptors I bought. But definitely not as good as with a straight VGA connection. Good enough for a second monitor though.
The new Antec P180B case is very nice. Power supply in the bottom of the case which made cable routing interesting. Came with 3 120mm 3 speed fans and space for 2 more, which I also bought. So with a total of 6 120mm fans(One on the heatsink/fan combo, Tuniq Tower.), it's virtually silent. I have to actively listen for it when the AC is not running, and that's with all 6 on the high setting. It's totally silent on medium or low. I don't like the new panel compared to my trusty old Antec 1040b, but everything else is very nice. The power supply was a bit of a gamble. 575 watt but only cost $25. 90+% of the Newegg reviews said good things and most of the bad were of the 'It was dead in the box' variety so I figured I'd take a change. No problems so far after two weeks, so looks likke the gamble paid off.
I hadn't decided on whether to go with a Core2Duo or an X2 processor, but when looking at pricing there was a combo deal on the X2 3600+ Brisbane core chip and 2GB of nice Corsair memory, so that decided things. This one with modest air cooling, and I have much better than just modest, should do at least 3 ghz from it's stock 1.9. I haven't tried yet, stock the dual core chip is significantly faster than my old Athlon XP at 2ghz. Twice the RAM and it being much faster RAM doesn't hurt either. I went with an Asus Nforce 570 ultra board. I don't see myself ever buying two video cards at once, so I didn't want to waste any cash on an SLI board. I went with an XFX Geforce 7950GT 512MB card. Since I don't plan on buying Vista any time in the forseeable future, getting one of the 8xxx series Geforce cards would have been a waste. This card is plenty. I have Dawn of War Dark Crusade running at the new panel's native 1680x1050 will everything set on max and 4x antialiasing and I've not seen any slowdowns, even when I've filled a map with Waugh! banners and had a full cap of Orkies attack a base. Additionally, the card only warms up about 2 degrees over idle temp. So I am plenty pleased with the performance. No game I've tried so far has had any problems running at the panel's native resolution. I may dig out Fear and see how it does. Finally I grabbed a new Western Digital 320 GB serial ATA2 hard drive. I really didn't need more space. The idea was behind it was two fold: A. It was cheap. B. I wanted to have a complete system without taking the old one down. Makes researching install problems easier and I wanted to have the new system totally functional with all my normal apps before I did something permanent. Problems. I forgot I don't have an extra keyboard. But the install went without a hitch and I did have just about everything running before taking the old system apart. Turns out the only thing I lost this time was a text file on my desktop that I had my movie want list on. Not a major problem.
So, to sum up new system:
AMD A64 X2 3600+ 1.9ghz soon to be 3+ghz
2 x 1GB CORSAIR TWIN2X2048-6400 RAM
ASUS M2N-E NForce 570 ULTRA AM2 motherboard
XFX GF7950GT 512MB video card
Western Digital 320GB ATA2 hard drive.
2x Western Digital 250GB ATA2 hard drives from old system
Pioneer DVR111D Dual layer burner from old system.
Sony 3 1/2" floppy drive(Just because some driver companies are stupid about their utilities.) from old system.
Tuniq Tower HSF
X2gen 22" LCD.
Price for parts not counting LCD was just a bit under $900. And the LCD was around $250. The free $850 from work pretty much covered the system. And I bought the LCD out of the extra paycheck. I like the LCD enough I may get a second some time this year. While I have a ton of deskspace, you can always use more. The downside is, you can't stand toys on an LCD. Currently I have a Tachikoma, 'Alphonse' from Patlabor, a Microsoft Sidewinder joystick, and a Viking Kitten plushy on top of mine.