I recently decided to piece together a brand new windows based PC. I ordered all of my parts through Newegg.com. My friend Josh helped me make some decisions on which parts to go for. (The above picture shows the dual channel RAM in the wrong slots for this motherboard, which I realized after a few boots and some googling.)
The breakdown:
Public List on Newegg.com
I hadn't put a machine together in quite some time (the last machine I built was about 6-7 years ago). That machine now serves as a media server in our living room for music and to watch streaming Netflix and various downloaded movies. We also use the old machine as a swap server between Lori's new laptop (see below) and my new machine.
It took me only a couple hours to get things put together, but several days to get all my software up and running again (more on this later).
What a mess...
I bought Windows XP Professional 64-bit as my main OS, but ran into several issues with drivers. By the way Zune software does not work on XP x64 without a workaround. So I decided to go with a dual boot system. I love the speed of x64, but XP x86 gives me more compatibility when it comes to my recording setup.
And to top it all off I bought the best monitor I've ever owned. The ASUS VH226H 21.5" 1080 HD LCD.
Overall, the performance jump over my old PC is utterly astounding. I'm sure this PC will make my life easier for years to come. I haven't touched any overclocking, but most of the equipment is geared for it. Maybe a year down the road I'll start to see what else this thing can do.
