This weekend I was able to order all of the parts for my new computer. Thanks to my parents for floating me some money for now plus giving me a very generous donation for my birthday. I have to say, I can’t remember the last time I refreshed my order status so many times a day, waiting for any indication that the parts have shipped.
In the end, I decided to go with an AMD processor. Not just any AMD processor, but a dual core processor - the AMD 64 Athlon X2 series. It will be interesting to have a 64-bit processor and run Windows XP Professional x64 edition. It will also make this computer very upgradeable to Windows Vista when it ships later this year. I got 2GB of memory to stick in it and an Asus Nforce4 SLI chipset motherboard. I’m not running an SLI setup out of the gate, but who knows, perhaps I’ll find some money in the couch cushions later this year to add another eVGA nVidia 7800GT 256mb graphics card like the one I have ordered now. An Antec mid tower case and Antec 550-watt SLI compatible power supply also bring room for expandability. As for drives, I got two hard drives, one WD 10,000RPM SATA150 74GB Raptor and one Maxtor 320GB SATAII drive for storage. Someday I would like to expand and get another of the WD raptors to setup in a RAID 0 array, greatly improve performance. As for optical drives, I got one Lite-On OEM DVD+/-RW drive that does Lightscribe, and a Plextor DVD+/-RW drive as well. For sound, I ended up going with the on board 8-channel audio for the time being and will eventually probably upgrade to a sound blast xfi. I also have some Logitech Z-5500 speakers coming - which I’m extremely excited for.
I’ve helped others build their own computers in the past and even completed A+ certification training while in high school (I never took the certification test, however) but never have I built my own computer. I must say, I’m a bit nervous and excited. The equipment that I worked with while in highschool was the Pentium I 133MHz vareity, much much older. Still, a little internet research has helped me get a grasp on how to install a socket 939 AMD processor and how to set up RAID.
Oh, and Samuel Alito was confirmed to be the 110th Supreme Court Justice of the United States.
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Yay for computers, and Yay for Alito.
You’ve been waiting for this computer for a long time; I can’t wait to watch you (in awe and wonder) build it.
Wow… I can tell it’s been a long time since I’ve built a machine by the very confused look on my face reading your post
Best of luck to ya buddy, let me know how it runs!