Judgement Day

Yesterday I experienced Judgement Day ... or at least the Everex equivalent of it. My XT5300T laptop finally died, victim of the convergence of poor heat dissipation and faulty motherboard. Suffice it to say, while finding a laptop with it's specs for $700 seemed like a deal at the time, only getting 10 months use out of it makes it a really poor buy. Oh well, live and learn.

Perhaps the biggest downside to this is that while some of my personal files are locked up, ALL my saved games from Fallout 3 and Colonization are as well. And then there is that thing about no longer having a gaming rig. That can really put a damper on a good-old-fashioned Wasteland killing spree.

And here I thought I would be writing a post about how I bought the Mines of Moria expansion and played a Rune Keeper up to level six (they are awsome, btw). Or I thought I might pen some funny missives about the multitudinous, shambling horde that is made up of newb Wardens. It makes me feel bad even rolling one to level six to try out the class. Seriously, they might have to change the name of the game to Lord of the Wardens.

Ah well, at least my old standby (P4 3.0E, 2GB DDR400, x1950 pro 512mb) computer has LOTRO already loaded. Now to just wait for the Moria patch to install itself while I look for a new computer.

What's that? A new computer? Yes and I have detailed all the parts below even.

I wanted to wait longer to upgrade my computer but fate has conspired against my will, and I found myself spending the entirety of last night browsing Newegg for my new budget masterpiece. And when I say budget, I mean it. Because this is an unexpected expense, the goal for building this new rig is to  maximize the dollar-for-power ratio as much as possible.

So first things first - time to lay a few ground rules:

1. I will only buy parts that have free shipping. Making no exceptions really helps keep this interesting.
2. I will not adhere to any brand loyalty as much as I can. My guiding motivation is PRICE.
3. I'm only buying core parts - no monitor, OS, mouse or other peripherals.

The list:

• The body - I decided to shop for the case and power supply first, which is different for me (I usually start with a CPU or GPU). I can't really complain about what I found
  • hec Raptor500 While I am not entirely confident about the 500 watts it supplies, it is a solid unit with dual +12V rails each carrying 19A. And it was -$10 plus an additional -20% from the price. Making it only $39.
  • Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case There is a good chance I would have bought this anyway, as I am looking for a case like the Antec 900, but without all the ridiculous disco lighting.
• The CPU - This was the first big decision. Should I go AMD or Intel? Obviously, at this point in time, Intel makes the better chips. But the real question on my mind is do they make the better dollar/performance chip? As far as I can tell AMD and Intel are nearly tied on this front, with Intel chips outperforming AMD by a bit. So I decided to go with
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3.1GHz 89W - Unlike the original version of this chip, this is a 65nm chip running at 89W. The original was, I believe a 95nm/125 watt. This makes it better for overclocking and slightly more competitive with Intel.
• The motherboard - I didn't spend a lot of time on this, some might say to my own peril. The choices, however, were not numerous and I happened upon the GIGABYTE 780G HDMI ATX Motherboard fairly quick. It meets my basic needs and was relatively cheap. It can't SLI, but I don't need that. What it does have is support for a Phenom quad-core and DDR2 1066 RAM if I decide to go that route in the future.
• The video card and RAM - As you can imagine, I spent a considerable amount of time going back and forth on which card to buy. I considered an ATI HD4850, but in the end brand loyalty played a small part in my decision to get an Nvdia card. Originally I was going to purchase a GTX260, but unfortunately my skinflint nature won out. I figured I could settle for 128 stream processors instead of 192 if it meant saving me $70. I chose the
  • BFG Tech GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB - While it may not be the top dog, I'm not sure if anyone can argue that this is not a solid card. At least I'm hoping. The predominant reason I chose this card, rather than talking myself into the more expensive GTX260 was because of a combo deal being offered with RAM:
  • CORSAIR 4GB DDR2 800 - Normally I only get G.Skill RAM, but in this case I could not pass up the deal being offered. What makes this RAM fancy is the fact that it will ultimately only cost me $10. YES THAT'S RIGHT. Ten American dollars.
  • The 9800GTX cost $149 and when you get them as a combo, the RAM costs $39. But the RAM also has a $30 rebate, making it cheaper than dinner. I couldn't pass that up.
• Storage Drives - this is the one area I didn't really skimp but that is because I didn't need to. Aside from paying the exhorbitant prices for the Western Digital Raptor drives, most hard drives are reasonably priced and don't have a lot of variance. And DVD burners are just basically cheap. So I chose the best for the money.
  • Western Digital Caviar  500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
  • LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner

So that is my new rig, and all it cost me was ... drumroll ... $535! And that is before the $30 rebate on the RAM - I will also remind you once again I paid exactly $ZERO for shipping. Ah, good times with NewEgg.

Now I just have to wait until the parts get here. The real decision for me is whether I should install Vista64 and carry on like normal or install Ubuntu64 and install Creative Suite 3 into an XP VirtualBox, leaving many of the newer games I want to play in limbo. I will probably be opting for Vista, all things considered. But my heart lies with Debian (and Ubuntu). We'll see when we get there, I suppose.