I just realized the other day that I’ve never posted about the new system I put together. Towards the latter part of summer, lightning stuck near our home blowing out our garage door opener, A/C, TV, and my desktop PC’s motherboard. The strike itself was strong enough to leave a scorch mark on my A/C unit, and a hole in the integrated networking IC on my motherboard.
Either way, the system itself was definitely behind the times with it’s Epox 8KHA+, Athlon XP 1800, 1GB 400 DDR2 and an AGP ATI All-In-Wonder 9600. Since there isn’t any respectable brands producing Socket-A motherboards anymore, without going used, I decided that it was probably better to just do my massive upgrade. Then, I decided that I had about a $1000 limit, and that I would aim for the “knee-of-the-curve” when purchasing the parts.
First, I spent an exhaustive amount of time researching which processor I wanted to get. While I’ve always been an AMD fan, I decided to switch to Intel this time around because of the motherboard chipsets. In the past, and at the time, the chipsets for AMD always seemed to be one step behind and of lesser quality than those available for Intel (minus the NForce chipsets from NVidia). So, once the processor line was decided, I was then onto the most important decision in building a new system: The Motherboard.
The motherboard is the one thing that will limit your ability to upgrade in the future, so why not purchase one that gives you the most flexibility to upgrade? For example, at the time I purchased the system, the P35 chipsets guaranteed support for the 45nm Intel processors. So even though I purchased a 60nm processor, when 45nm’s reach a descent price in the future, I can easily upgrade to at least one more generation of processors past where I’m starting.
That all being said, I grabbed a Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz processor. Then I slapped in a couple sticks of Corsair XMS2 1GB DDR2 1066mhz memory, a EVGA GForce 8600GTS 512mb video card, a 700w Thermaltake super-quiet power supply, and a SATA DVD+RW.
Once I had the system together, I couldn’t bring myself to stop there. After reading the performance improvements provided by the Western Digital Raptor series, I added a 150GB model for running my OS, Apps, and Games. Then, as icing on the cake, I replaced my old KDS RAD-5 15″ LCD screen with a 22″ Acer Widescreen LCD.
Parts List:
- GIGABYTE GA-P35-DQ6 LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard
- EVGA 512-P2-N773-AR GeForce 8600GTS 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz BX80557E6750
- Thermaltake W0106RU 700w Power Supply
- LITE-ON 20X SATA DVD±R DVD LH-20A1L-05
- CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) TWIN2X2048-8500C5
- Western Digital 150 GB, 1.5 Gb/s, 16 MB Cache, 10,000 RPM SATA HDD WD1500AHFD
- Acer 22″ Widescreen LCD X221W
So far I’m pretty happy with what I’ve put together. I don’t think, for the amount of money spent, I could ask for anything better.
Note: All parts pictures are from their respective manufactures web site.
u have ic made in japan