New Computer

I'm typing this post on my new 64-bit self-built computer. I've been wanting to get a 64-bit machine for quite a while and finally took the jump.

When I started looking seriously at building rather than buying I had my eyes on one of the newer dual-core AMD processors. The only hitch is they are still pretty expensive. Then I picked up on a sale that Tiger Direct was having on a motherboard / CPU combo.

The motherboard was a Mach Speed Viper K8M8MS and bundled with an Athlon 64 3000+ processor cost $159.99 after rebate. For the price I gave up on-board firewire, PCI Express and GB ethernet. I also had to buy a CPU fan for $19.99 since the bundle didn't include one.

Tiger Direct also had a good price on memory so I picked up 2GB of Corsair DDR memory ($189.98) along with an XFX GeForce FX 5500 AGP video card with 256MB of DDR memory, VGA / DVI / TV Out ($59.99).

A few weeks before the Tiger Direct purchase I saw a good deal on a case on the dealnews website. I really wanted a case with a multi-card reader built into the front panel along with USB and audio. I found a nice compact one for $79.95 including a 300W power supply.

For storage I had a 160 GB Western Digital Drive sitting around that I bought a while back for $40. I was originally going to put it into a cheap external USB case but a number of incidents (pulled it off the desk and trashed it) and replacement drives later and it was sitting on the shelf.

The last item was a DVD burner and again I turned to dealnews. On their site I found a BenQ Dual Layer 16X +/- RW lightscribe drive for $79.99.

Total Cost for the AMD-64, 2GB memory, DVD + 160GB hard drive was $635.00.

I loaded Windows XP 64 and proceeded to start loading applications. First disappointment - Microsoft's Virtual PC doesn't run under Win XP 64. Office runs fine along with Firefox.

Overall I'm very pleased. At it's pretty peppy to boot!




posted by Paul at 4:43 PM