I ended up building a new gaming PC over the holiday break, as I built my old PC back in 2002, and it was showing its age.
I upgraded it after getting back on with Boeing, but still it was slow by today's standards and only AGP, not PCIe for the video end.
I built the new one also to be able to handle any game and future games that come along.
Here are the specs on it.
Antec 900 gaming case with 2x120 mm fans up front, 1x120 mm fan back aft, and one HUGE 200 mm fan on top of the case to expel the hot air.
The 120 mm fans all have blue LEDS in them, and look cool.
The case is virtually silent with these big fans, as I have them set to low (3 speeds) but on low they move a lot of air.
http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15900
Power supply is a 650 watt Thremaltake Toughpower unit made for SLI as it has 2 dedicated plugs for powering the NVIDIA graphics cards.
CPU is the
Intel Conroe 3.0 GHz duo core, 2 GB of Corsair Dominator RAM, Pioneer DVD/CD burner, Creative X Gamer soundcard, eVGA 8800 GT video card superclocked from eVGA and with 512 MB of RAM.
Motherboard is the
Asus P5N 32-E.
Seagate SATA II (faster than the older SATA 1s I guess) 320 GB.
Will be adding another one just like it for the D drive down the road.
I have an older Seagate USB 200 GB external one I use for backup purposes.
I have a new
Leadtek TV tuner card on the way from Newegg, as I pilfered one of my TV cards from the old PC, but it is not behaving well with the soundcard in the new PC.
It uses a cable from the TV card to the soundcard, and it is just not working right.
The new card that is coming uses no cable, all the info is on the PCI bus, and will work out much better.
I use my PC to record television like you would use a VCR, then I play back the shows through cable to my TV out in the living room.
Got a new keyboard, it is the Deck Legend, a good one for gaming.
All the keys have green LEDs underneath of them, and you can adjust the brightness of them.
The company that Deck is under makes keyboards for police cars, so these are very heavy duty, and the keys have a nice loud clack/click to them, not mushy like cheaper boards.
Asus MW221u 22" widescreen LCD monitor, retired the Dell 20.1" widescreen to the guest room for the old computer.
Still using the Logitech Z680 5.1 speakers, as they are hard to beat.
They are loud, clear, and pump out good tight bass.
I have an identical set hooked up to the TV, and also run an optical cable from the TVs DVD player so playing back movies sounds great, real surround sound in 5.1.
The laptop is the Dell Inspiron 1720 running Windows Vista Home Edition..
17" widescreen, and a 2.0 GHz duo core Centrino CPU.
Totally wireless, and it can sniff out a Wi-Fi spot if you are near one.
It can also hook up to the 'Net with the standard CAT5 cable.
I had an old laptop, but it is nothing like this one.
The old one is slow, has Windows 98 on it, and is not wireless.
Running a Motorola 5100 Surfboard cable modem, presumably this is what works best with Comcast.
Linksys/Vonage router for the PCs and also for my telephone which is with Vonage, and a Linksys WAP 54G wireless access point to provide wireless in my home.
I finally set up a wireless network over the Christmas break too.
Half the fun of getting a new computer is to build it yourself too.
I had the shop mount the motherboard and CPU, and I did the rest of the work to it.
Their prices were actually less than Newegg this time, so I spent the money locally for a change on putting this together.
This little shop was also cheaper for the Linksys WAP 54G than Newegg and also local Best Buy, but I bought it from Best Buy not knowing this shop had it for about $15 less.
Great little family owned business.
A few of the pictures are blurry, as I had the flash off and the room light off to try and show the keyboard and the PCs fans lit up.
