One of the bigger components is now purchased: the motherboard. Originally, one my very first dream PC post, I had talked about going the EVGA route, but after a so-so comment by a friend on the concerned brand, I decided on a dime to ditch the whole EVGA thing and buy an XFX mobo, which despite being 30 dollars more expensive had a lesser 680i LT chipset, but was supposed to be of bulletproof quality. Later, after knowing that many homies from DIC used and greatly praised their EVGA components, I decided that their opinions, forged from usage and not rumor, was probably worth more. Under their encouragements, I purchased this 680i SE SLI motherboard. Bascially, it has everything that I need: the kickass 680i chipset, high definition audio, SLI compatibility, and a very reasonable price, at under 230 $CAD shipped.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been having what I call end of summer blues; you know, when you know that school is very close, and theres is still a part of the summer, but you don’t know what to do with it. The symptoms include oversleeping, lack of interest in topics that previously made me go gaga, and never knowing what to do, might it be on or off the computer. Hell, even a game which is supposed to be addictive like World of Warcraft now seems boring. I just had to create some work for myself, something to distract myself until the school year starts, where I would dive very deep into my CCNA course which promises to be very interesting. Of course, I do have on very exciting hardware project underway, Fr0stByte, but since I ordered everything on ebay, I have to wait at least 14 days for paypal and UPS to do it’s magic, and that’s 14 days of boredom. So what if I worked with what I already have… Stares at sister’s PC… excellent…

When one builds a PC, one first begins by listing the components: I want this RAM, this proc, this mobo, this, this, this and that. On initial planning, pretty much all the pieces are planned, ahead, and I said almost because on too many occasions, a crucial yet too often over-seen component is left out: the power supply.

As you know if you’ve been reading my blog for the last year or so (which you probably haven’t), I purchased my laptop almost exactly 11 months from now, as my very first computer. At the time, I was amazed by the fact that I had my very own computer, where I could install and download whatever the hell I want. Plus, having used a shared Compaq Presario sporting a huge Celeron 1.7 ghz, 386 Mb of RAM and a shittyass motherboard and very limited hard disk space, I thought that my laptop performed like a beast. So for about a year, I’ve been doing random stuff with my laptop and just generally having fun with my “kickass” hardware. This summer however, with the intense stir about the Core 2 Duos and the wide-spreading of the Nvidia 8 series, I decided that maybe I needed something slightly more powerful: a kickass desktop rig to rock at LAN parties and such.