New new computer

Last year, while I was at my brother's place, his PC spontaneously restarted (that's the term we developers use instead of crash! in front of customers). It happened a couple more times which resulted in my brother swiftly declaring the need for a new computer.

I convinced him to try out a new power supply first. He bought a very expensive 600W one, no help there. He is an impatient person; fearful for a long road of diagnostics, he went off an bought a new PC.

That could not have been a better thing, cause that meant, new computer for me.

From experience, I know that other than the mother board, PC parts hardly ever fail. I had an extra chassis laying around, and my brother wanted to retain his hard disk (and the data within it), so I took the mother board (with CPU and memory on it) and the power supply back home with me.

I transferred the new parts to my existing PC, reinstalled the OS, and ran it for hours, no crash. I celebrated for my new PC.

Unfortunately, sure enough, a few weeks later, it started hanging, and crashing, sometimes, same symptoms my brother experienced. The mother board was actually bad, I knew it, but I wasn't sure exactly in what way.

I installed the Intel (it was an Intel board) utility that monitors chassis condition (such as voltage, fan speed, etc) and noticed the CPU temperature was going exceedingly high: not surprising cause my case was from my Pentium II PC, it had no ventilation at all.

A new case ran anywhere between $35 to $150, I didn't want to spend that kind of money for an old new computer... so I applied new thermal grease to the CPU fan and installed an extra fan at the back.

No help there either.

I had no choice. My mother was starting to complain about not being able to check her portfolio online, God forbid. So I set out to buy a new motherboard.

I got a Biostar board from Fry's for $60, a fairly economical choice but the down side was, my brother's 1GB of DDR won't fit on the new board, the new board takes DDR2. Luckily, Fry's had the DDR2 on sale, $5 after rebate for 4GB. I don't really need that much, but it's only $5, what the heck.

I got home, screwed on the new mother board, connected all the peripherals, hard disks, CD-ROMs and what not, spent hours making sure I do a good job, and behold, when it was time to connect the power, schmuck! the new board requires the 24-pin power supply, my brother's was a 20-pin.

I had already spent $65, how much more do I need to spend to have an old new computer? After all, I gave up my previous computer (which worked very well) in lieu of my brother's slightly faster system, but for all I got from him (mother board, CPU, memory and power supply), it turned out I could only reuse the CPU.

But I had no choice, again. Fry's I went. Though blessed I was, the Raidmax Sirius, (a gamer-ish kind of case) was on sale. It was cool because it came with a 500W power supply, for $30 only! That's even cheaper than most 350W power supplies with the 24-pin connector that I needed.

I went home happy. I screwed the new mother board onto the new case, slided in my hard disks, CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs and floppy drives, dropped in my brother's CPU, connected the power supply. Cool, it booted up fine though the BIOS didn't like one of my older CD-ROM; I could live with that.

It took a couple of days cause several devices had compatibility issues. But in the end, virtually everything worked out. I am not the superficial type but this case appeals to me. It's made of brushed aluminium that gives it a hard industrial look.



It has fan speed, CPU temperature, and hard disk activity -o- meters in the front that glow.



The side fan lits up in some mystic purple when power on, and shines through wicked cut out decor patterns on the side and on the top of the chassis, which makes it look even cooler under the desk in the dark.

At the end of the day, it costed me $100, 1/3 of what I would have paid for a brand new PC. And finally, I have my new new computer.