New PC
As I am going off to study computing at Portsmouth university, I thought I build myself a new computer. I looked into the different types of processors and I was deeply confused. The new format from AMD, the AM2 looked nice. It had a built in controller that supported the new super fast DDR2 RAM. Reading up on the internet on DDR2 I was really put off.
An example
The DDR2 DRAM that has been on the market for most of this year didn’t offer a significant performance boost over the current mainstream chip, DDR-400.
Looking at the AM2 boards, most if not all only had one built in IDE. I still use old style IDE hard drives much of the time. I have had these hard drives for years and see little reason to upgrade all my hard drives at a go. Also I like having two opitial drives, also I can copy CDs/DVDs easily. Deciding that there was very little point of buying a new AM2 board so I decided to o another direct.
I have not talked about any Intel processors, this may be because I dislike the brand. Also if look at any brenchmark testing, AMD wins hands down. So I decided to look AMD Athlon 64 939pin. In the end I got a A8N-SLI Premium motherboard which has all I needed. 2 x IDE, 4 x sata300, PCI-E x16, Raid, SLI support and lot of USB 2.0. I also got lots of other goods the specs of my currents machine is as follows
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2.0ghz
- A8N-SLI Premium
- 2x Kingston 1GB 400MHz DDR PC3200
- 2x Seagate 250GB 7200RPM SATA300
- Benq DW1620 16x Dvd R/RW
- Acer AL1722HS 17″ TFT 8ms DVI
- Sapphire Radeon X1600 PRO 256M
- Creative Soundblaster Audigy 4
- Belkin 802.11g Wireless PCI Adapter
- Logitech Internet Navigator
- Microsoft Wired Laser Mouse 6000
- Microsoft Media Center Remote Control
- Xbox 360 wired controller
- USB 2.0 16 in 1 interal card reader
- 500 watt PSU
- Sandisk 2GB flash drive
I could have done many things and there are lots of different options but to me, this is my dream machine.
I took some pictures of the installation of the new computer. I have uploaded them into a new set on my flickr account. Here are a few examples of the images.