IT’S ALIVE!

Finally got my new setup up and running. I finished about 4am! Current Specications (as of 11.08.2005) are (upgraded items in bold)

• AMD Athlon(tm) 64 3000+ (Venice core)
• Epox 9NPA+ (nForce4) Motherboard
• 2GB (2x1GB) Geil DDR400 DIMMs w/ ramsinks
• Palit GeForce 6600GT 256MB
• Terratec DMX 6Fire soundcard with audio bay
• HEC WIN550AB 550W PSU
• Thermalright XP120 Heatsink w/ Delta WFB1212ME (120x120x38mm 96CFM)
• Seagate 80GB / 120GB Barracudas (other HDDs are now external)
• Modded (painted) ECS 6-in-1 card reader
• LG CD-R/DVD-Rom combo drive
• Lian-li C-01 and F-01 aluminum drive bezels
• Modded Lian-li PC-75 (handles, wheels, cathode)

All other stuff (extras) can be found here

Cris and I spent most of the night cleaning the case hahaha. She’s probably the only woman I know who actually enjoyed doing it as much as I did (not that others did it, but you know what I mean). To think she’s a technophobe – you should’ve seen her clean the devices… mas OC pa sa akin!

(sigh) I love her.

Anyways, despite not being able to borrow Nono’s air compressor (grrr), we were able to “restore” everything to mint condition – and I don’t use that term lightly. The devices that could accumulate dust and be a pain in the arse to clean were replaced with brand new parts. I guess that could’ve been a factor as to why the machine looks brand new, because as far as the critical components are concerned, it practically is.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve basically given this a lot of thought, so while it isn’t bleeding edge, it still is pretty impressive.

Surprisingly, the most impressive part was the Power Supply Unit! I always believed that you should never skimp on the PSU when purchasing a PC – especially if you change PCs often. People take PSUs for granted until the time when a bunch of their components suddenly become defective because they were underpowered over time. But let’s not go there.

Suffice to say, that I don’t ever consider buying generic Power Supplies. There are a bunch of enthusiast-grade Power Supply Units out there, but I always found the sweet spot in the HEC brand in terms of price/performance. Honestly, as long as it delivered the power I needed reliably, then I’m a happy camper. Which is why I like to look for the cheapest, but reliable brand. The Power Supply I got was as expensive as my older one, so I was set. I wasn’t expecting anything fancy, but boy, was I in for a surprise!

The model I got was the WinPower 550AB, and while it still was the ever reliable PSU I come to like, it had a lot of bonuses! All of which are geared to the modding community (as you can see in the product page).

• Black Electro-plated ¹ The treatment that give’s it a “shiny metal” finish casing
• Big-assed honeycomb rear ventilation
• Big-assed bottom fan with LED!
• Meshed cabling ² Those groups of different colored wires are now grouped together neatly with mesh-tubing.
• cool molexes

And so on, and so forth… someone already reviewed (tons of pictures) it, so there’s no point in saying what’s already said.

Hmmmmm. I guess that’s all I wanna say. As for the system as a whole, it’s really fast hahaha. And with 2GB RAM, I guess I’m going to enjoy my audio recording should I find the time.

To wrap up, I’ll leave you with a nice image… at least I liked it hehehe.