Wll, it was down, even out, but it has been raised from the dead. My computer is back amongst the living. While I am happy about this event, my son is just ecstatic. I no longer have to hoard use his computer. I described my epic diagnosis of my old PC in a previous post. I will not repeat that.
I order all new parts from Newegg.com. They have never really let me down, and their prices are among the lowest, if not the lowest. My old motherboard was over four years old. I had the ability to transfer nothing across to the new platform. I bought a new motherboard, CPU, CPU fan, yet another tube of thermal grease, RAM, and a new video card. Here are the specs, because I know that my seven readers are dying to know this information.
- motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 2.6Ghz
- CPU Fan: Rosewill RCX-Z775-SL
- RAM: G.Skill 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800
- Video Card: nvidia 8500GT
- Thermal Grease: Arctic Silver
The old system lasted me for over four years. I should hope that this one does as well. There were only two minor glitches with the specs that I laid out. The first is lack of Firewire connectivity on the new motherboard. I did not check for it because so many of them now have it. My bad. I will have to get a Firewire PCI card instead. I don’t use it much, so that is not a huge deal. Mainly annoying. The other is the amount of RAM I spec’ed. 32 bit Windows does not recognize all 4GB of RAM that I installed, only 3.5GB. I did confirm through the BIOS that the computer does see all 4GB. The motherboard can support up to 8GB, so I have room to grow for that 128 bit OS that I will upgrade too.
My last concern was what would Windows do with all these upgrades. MS Big Brother does not take kindly to it. Well it is very simple. I just spoke with someone in the future and they gave me the new product key. While is was only March 6th here, she was talking to me from March 7th. Simply amazing. She was in India of course, 5 o’clock in the morning no less.
Total cost of frying a motherboard? $431 including shipping.
Having the enjoyment of building another computer? priceless
Time to watch AI and then LOST. All is right on the home front for at least the next 3 minutes.
