Peace

Jasmine Green Tea



Originally uploaded by Qfamily.

It's good to get some time alone once in a while and discover peace again.

Teh Upgradez!

Ok, here is a run down of what I ordered and why. Keep in mind that when I do computer upgrades, I have to get two computers at the same time. That way, the wife and I have the same model system, and all the parts are the same. If my computer is faster, it's not the hardware. This way, everything is fair. So with that in mind, I also had a budget of ~$1000 to work with. I did go a little over, but not that much.

First, we decided to go for total new computer systems. Hardware has changed enough that doing a partial upgrade to our current systems wasn't going to work. For starters, we have old CD-ROM and Hard drives. The standard now is SATA drives, not IDE. So I'll be able to find motherboards that support SATA pretty easy, but not so much IDE. That limits my choices. Also, if you are still running an AGP graphics card, you'll have a hard time finding a motherboard that supports it now. Most that I found have a couple of PCI slots, PCIX and PCIX16. No AGP at all. Even the computer cases have changed. The standard computer case now has a vent on the side to draw in air to the processor. And finally, the power supplies of yesteryear just aren't going to run the new stuff. The advice I got was don't get anything below 400 watts.

I got my part through New Egg because I have gone through them before and haven't had issues. I didn't check a lot of the prices they had against Pricewatch and found that New Egg either met or beat even the cheap prices found there.

I had two problems with New Eggs, but not New Eggs fault. First, I found this really groovy computer case that I wanted.

I put it on my wish list. It's a nice deal really. It's a case with a side vent, and comes with a 400w power supply, all over ~$35. That and it looks like a car at night. When it came time to order, they were sold out. I got on a chat session with a rep, and asked when they'll get more. They said that the web site didn't list a date. Ok! Thanks for that.The other problem came when I checked again on Wednesday and the AMD 5600 processor I wanted for $189 was also out of stock. CRAP! Now this is getting serious. The next day I checked again, and the processor was in stock, but now it was listed for $329. WTF? Are they serious? That's the 5600 model, and they are listing that for $100 MORE than the 6000 series. After another chat session, and a phone call to New Egg, that's really REALLY the price set for that model. It's based on stuff that makes sense to vendors and channels. I did find out that if I do order an item from New Egg, and it drops in price within one month of my purchase, they'll make up the difference.

At this point, I decided to just dump my current list and start all over again. Finally, this is what I ended up with...

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM2 Processor

Ahhh, the heart of the whole system. Getting the 6000 was not my first choice as the price was just a tad out of budget. I was mostly looking for dual core, and I really was into getting 1MB of L2 cache for each core! That means that this is really like have two processors in your computer. So while I play WoW, I can bring up web pages and stuff without any slow down or having to wait for the computer to think about it. I think the price drops in AMD has been due to the release or soon to be released quad core processors. I figure no one really has taken advantage of the 64 bit architecture, and there are very few applications that take advantage of the dual core processors. I should be future proof for quite some time with this.

ASUS M2NPV-VM Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6150 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

This motherboard kept showing up in my searches. It got good reviews, and it just seems like a nice AM2 motherboard. The nice thing about it is the onboard video. I decided to just try the onboard video instead of getting a video card since the 6150 is supposed to be better than a GeForce4 which is what I was playing WoW with. If I need something better, I have an open PCIX16 slot and can use. It's also got the best RAM options for a Micro ATX motherboard, giving me up to 8 gig of RAM if I want. Finally, it's got a 1gig network port, onboard.

APIDA 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory

This was simply a cheap buy compared to all the others. I needed four of these giving each system 2gig of RAM. A big jump from my current 512Meg.

Rosewill R218-P-BK Black SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

I got this case because it was super cheap. But more than that, it has a 120mm fan with a side vent for the processor. Most cases have fans that are 80mm. With cooling, the deal is that the bigger the fan the more quiet the computer. Since I sit in the same room as the computer, the more quiet it is, the better. I picked up an extra 120mm fan to move more air.

Rosewill RV430-2-FRB-S ATX 12V Ver.2.01 430W Power Supply

Cheap, but not the cheapest. First, this is a 430w power supply. It's 20+4 pin so it fit my AM2 Motherboard. Good reviews, and has SATA connectors, and a PCIX connector. Not many power supplies have those. Dual 80mm fans is also very nice as keeping cool is that name of the game.

Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

I didn't want to get too much in a hard drive. I have a 60 gig drive right now and I'm only using at most 20 gig on that thing. 250g should be fine for what I do. Although, I am starting to do more with video and pictures so the added space is nice. The big deal is the 3gig transfer rate with SATA.

LITE-ON Black 20X DVD+R

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I just needed a cheap DVD drive that will burn DVD and CD-ROMs. This one in particular is SATA. Very nice. I could have purchased the lightscribe model, but I would feel like I would need to buy the more expensive media, and I probably wouldn't really use it anyway.

Star Wars Personality Test

Here is mine...

My Star Wars personality is Qui Gon. I wonder what you have to do to get Darth Vader? (site) http://www.liquidgeneration.com