I ordered a new motherboard, cpu and graphics card last week, (and a new wireless router), which arrived yesterday afternoon. After spending several long hours trying to configure my new router to do what I needed it to do, I gave up. As it happens, it can’t do what I want until I upgrade the firmware of my other router that I want to link it to, and I can’t do that until Draytek release a new Beta. :P

After that I spent another hour checking I had backed everything up, burnt my custom XP Pro install disk (which didn’t actually work, but now’s not the time…), and turned the PC off. After wrestling for about 10 minutes with all the various cables, screws and components I managed to get the old CPU, graphics card and motherboard out. Another 20 minutes later, the new stuff was in and I was nearly ready to boot. However, I did take the time to read the manual before all of this :P
Now, after the install, a little tweaking of windows and updating of motherborad firmware the system is running fine. I got a massive 6520 points in 3DMark05 – This doesn’t sound like much but don’t let it fool you

So I now have a kick-ass gaming PC that can do anything I want (and a lot more), and it actually looks good, plays good, and sounds good (in other words, it doesn’t sound like a hoover anymore! :D)

I’ve skinned Windows this time too, and made a new custom wallpaper:

And for those who are really interested, here are the specifications of what I bought:

• GigaByte Geforce 7800GT
• Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
• AMD Athlon 64 3000+

And what I already had:

• Hiper Type-R 580W
• Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 80GB SATA
• Maxtor DiamondMax Plus10 160GB SATA
• NEC DVD±RW Dual Layer
• GigaByte 3DCooler Ultra

Anyone interested in where I got all this from, or where they can buy PC components from should visit Scan Computers

- Fr3d