Behold my new PC!
January 12, 2006After several weeks I ran out of patience with both Tasmanian Principal Computers and DCA. They haven’t given a straight reply to my enquiries for two whole weeks, even after I called them. So I ordered the parts I needed from AusPC Market and performed the entire upgrade myself - Power Supply, Motherboard, CPU - everything. Much to my surprise the upgrade went perfectly - the CPU and CPU Cooling Fan was straightforward to install, and the motherboard was also easy too. The only real difficulty I had was figuring out which fan cables to plug-in, and installing the IDE cables into the motherboard (it was a very tight fit).
Overall, the experience was very satisfying. I know every nut and bolt inside the PC, and I daresay that I’ve done a much more professional job than the techies at TasPC or DCA would’ve done.
I was originally going to purchase a dual-core Athlon64 X2 4400+ CPU. I “downgraded” to an Athlon64 3800+ after seeing these benchmarks at Tom’s Hardware Guide. There just isn’t enough of a difference in performance to justify such an expensive purchase. In addition, AMD is releasing the new M2 platforms this year. So it looks like my next upgrade will be the new M2 motherboards - probably next year. And best of all, I can do it myself without begging the local techies to do it for me. Bliss.
