We were watching a movie on the new monitor a few weeks ago and it was skipping frames. Lauren asked why it was doing that and I said my computer was too slow for the fantastically amazing resolution of the new monitor. She said I should get a new computer.
I actually just changed the resolution on the monitor to something a mere mortal might use, and the movie was fine, but she did say I could get a new computer.
The next day I spent about, no kidding, six hours figuring out what parts to buy. I’m pretty computer geeky, so you might think that I would be up on all that stuff, but the tightwad in me knows that if I start looking at new computer things, I’ll realize how slow mine is and want to buy something new. So I don’t ever look at computer parts unless I’m ready to buy something.
Here’s what I came up with:
- Motherboard: ASUS M4A78T-E $114 (nice enough)
- Processor: AMD Phenom II X3 720 2.8GHz $104 (overclocked to 3.4GHz)
- Video Card: HIS Radeon HD 4850 1GB $114 (4 times faster than my old one)
- Case: Antec Three Hundred $28 ($54 discount on this & power supply)
- hec Raptor500 $17 (cables are almost too short)
- Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 250GB $53 (I don’t need this much space)
- Memory: Crucial 4GB $58 (about what I was using before)
- DVD Writer: SAMSUNG SH-S223L $28 (I needed a black one)
Total cost was $517 after shipping (which was only $10) and rebates. If you’re interested in this sort of thing you can read all of the details on the various parts. Most of the parts arrived in a few days, but I had to wait on the stupid DVD burner. I didn’t wait, I started putting it together right away.
The old computer would get incredibly dirty inside (this happens with all computers that sit on the floor unless your house looks like Annette’s house). We decided to raise it up a few inches to keep that from happening so quickly. Lauren thought a basket would look good. I was really pulling for turtles to support it. Since it was about 4 inches higher, the cooling system had to be re-engineered as well.
