Foster’s Blog

A Reincarnation (of sorts)

My custom built Pentium4 system from 2003 has finally pushed me over the edge. The MSI mainboard has always been finicky at best, however it’s killed 3 hard drives now (of which I can remember specifically, could be more) and so the time for an overhall has come.

NewEgg was my vendor of choice (of course). I decided to go with a more standardized brand, choosing a safe-bet with an Intel board. LGA 775 socket and P35 Northbridge. All reviews seem to be shiny, sans that the memory will only operate at 800Mhz. Not a deal breaker at all, considering it’ll be sporting 4GB of RAM with a 2.66Ghz Core 2 Duo (Dual Core @ 1066Mhz FSB).

After ordering all my components I had realized I made a small snafu - forgetting that most board manufacturers have gone away with AGP so I’d need a new video card. That task seemed more difficult, as I didn’t want to pay top dollar. I ended up going with a brand called PowerColor. For $50 I got a Radeon HD 2600XT chipset with 256MB of DDR4. Not bad, and it comes with two DVI-I interfaces. I figure down the road I can use my DVI-HDMI cable and see how it looks on my plasma.

I also took the opportunity to finally RMA my defective WD 250GB SATA drive that’s been collecting dust since the MSI board fried it 2 years ago. Since I ordered another WD 250GB from NewEgg with the new board, I think I’m going to do a RAID1 configuration when the replacement drive arrives this week. I don’t need more space than that, and it’ll be comforting to know I’ll have the redundancy built in.

All-in-all it’s pretty exciting to get an upgrade. I’ve been tossing back getting a laptop or upgrading the desktop… the dead drive just forced my hand in one direction.  I figure I’ll go with a 64-bit install of XP Pro this time around so it can make full use of the memory. The thought had crossed my mind to throw ESXi on the machine, but I don’t want to purchase more memory, and I can’t imagine I’d need to run any VMs at home.

Pictures and more to come later!