It has begun
April 6, 2006 – 7:24 pmFYI: I have been using the same AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8GHz) processor since early 2002.
For some, hell even MOST people, this would be perfectly sufficient. In fact, this PC has never really given me any grief. From a non-gaming standpoint, it will do anything I ask it to. From a gaming standpoint, it will do anything I ask it to, and bitch about it the whole time. However, given the amount of time that I spend on my computer — doing homework, piddling with web design/programming, playing games and generally just wasting time — coupled with the fact that it’s now 2006, I have decided that it’s high time to upgrade.
I dumped this idea on Michele and she couldn’t help but join me on the wonderful journey that is “maxing out a credit card.”
Right away I began to diligently research the relevant hardware. First up is the CPU.
This is arguably the most important element in any normal home-use PC. But seeing as how I won’t be building any normal home-use PC, it’s even more important. After visiting numerous websites and reading scads of reviews, along with pricing the various options, I settled on the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+. It has two processors on one chip, both of which run at 1.1GHz. That gives you a 2.2GHz processor in the end. 2.2GHz may seem like a low number for what is supposed to be an extremely high end CPU. Hell, Michele’s current P4 runs at 3GHz. Upon realizing this strange feature of our chosen CPU, my curiosity was instantly piqued. I’ve read scores of technical documents on this topic and I am still unable to explain it. All I know is that it keeps up with, and generally whoops the ass of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 955 (3.46GHz) which runs over double the price of the AMD. Wow. That’s settled.
There’s no use owning a badass CPU if you don’t have a badass motherboard to cradle it. Immediately after deciding on the Athlon 64 X2, I began searching for the perfect bosom to nestle it into. On top of all my searches and lathered in praising reviews was the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe. One of the prettiest motherboards I’ve seen to date. This thing sports a 1GHz front side bus, two PCI-E 16x slots for SLI (that’s where you strap together two identical video cards to have each one render half of your screen, theoretically doubling the speed at which you can blow up n00bs in Unreal Tournament), dual Gigabit LAN, an external SATA port for hot swap hard drives, and passive cooling on the chipset. Ok. That was easy.
Now, from a gamer’s standpoint, the center of the computer world is the almighty video card. Not that I fancy myself a badass gamer or even a REAL gamer for that matter, but I still want my games to look good. So it was a no-brainer that I simply run a search for video cards and pick the most expensive one that shows up. Today, that just happens to be the PCI Express NVIDIA 7900GTX. Tomorrow though, it will most certainly be something just a little bit better. [Actually, there already is something more expensive, they’re just not meant for gaming.] This single component almost shot down my hopes and dreams of completing this build anytime within the next month. You see, these video cards were only very recently unleashed on the retail market, and happen to be extremely difficult to find in stock. My best online computer component shopping buddy, Newegg.com had one model in stock from BFG Tech. This piece of hardware is just impressive to behold. It’s a beast. The fan on it is bigger than the one on my CPU right now, and at 512 megabytes, it has more RAM that many PCs. And no, even though my motherboard supports two video cards, I didn’t go that far.
Actually, that’s a lie. I did buy two of them. But one is for me and one is for Michele. See, we’re building identical machines so that neither of us has any advantage over the other. Expensive I know, but it’s worth it in the long run. This way we get more work/gaming done and less arguing about who has the better machine. So everything that I mention here, multiply it by two.
Speaking of Michele, she doesn’t know it yet but I have also ordered some new RAM for us. I was going to surprise her with it when I was in the final build process, but I couldn’t wait to post this. I ordered us each a set of OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Platinum System Memory. See, if you’re using the latest top of the line processor, but old hand-me-down RAM from your previous system, you might as well have stayed where you were. RAM has a limit to how fast it can handle information, and it can create incredible bottlenecks, such as those found in most Dell systems as well as every last eMachine ever built.
Also, the day after I placed the order for all of that stuff, I did a system inventory of our current machines and realized that our power supplies would be terribly inadequate for the high powered monsters that I’m about to build. This is sort of irrelevant here, but I have to share it. My initial power supply searches turned up this bad boy, which churns out one kilowatt of electricity for your computer. ONE KILOWATT! Fuck! Anyway, all references to fully functioning power transfer stations aside, I settled on a model from my favorite PC case builder, Antec, the SmartPower 2.0 SP-500. At 500W, it matches the motherboard’s minimum recommended power output, which I think will be plenty of wattage. It also has neat interchangeable cabling so that you can remove what you don’t need instead of having to tuck away the extras in some dark cranny of your case’s innards.
Most of the equipment has arrived already. I’m hoping with all my hope that the rest of it shows up tomorrow. I really don’t want to wait until Monday to begin building these things. I’m like an impatient child on December 24th when it comes to this stuff.
Pictures coming soon. Expect a money shot.
