Nearly one full month from my last blog posting about building a new PC I can finally say the project is complete! It's not nearly the messy drooling mound of cuteness my son is but I still consider this a new "baby" to the family. For those who havn't trekked through the PC Project album here's some select pictures of the final result:

While the PC itself is complete there are a few additional items I plan to pick up soon. A new 19" widescreen LCD monitor is the first and foremost on my list. As soon as a great deal comes along and it arrives at the house I'll be sure to post it in the album as well. Finding a suitable black gaming mouse, preferably with a nice blue glowy LED, is a close second on the list but not a high priority. Some new speakers that sport optical S/PDIF connections for HD sound and match the black ensemble of the recently built parts will round out the external parts well but are not a high priority either. Long term planning has me doing research for a decent heatsink/fan to replace the stock Intel one. The stock fan is working fine with the stock CPU settings, but when overclocking desires start to surface it's just not going to cut it. Check out the picture of the heatsink/fan dilemma and feel free to leave me some suggestions if you have them. I might pick up a sound card well into the life of this PC if the onboard sound capabilities just don't seem to cut it anymore. Fortunately, I am very impressed with the onboard sound at this point as it even supports HD sound via an add-on S/PDIF bracket so no expensive sound card is needed right now. That's enough about what I don't have yet. For all you PC building lovers out there here's the current list of all hardware that went into this thing. Enjoy!

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz; it might not be quad core but combined with the motherboard I have it can overclock to some amazing speeds.

Motherboard: BIOSTAR TPower I45 LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX; Havn't heard of Biostar? Not many have until this board came out. Check out the following link to see proof of how this board can overclock an E8400 to a FSB of +600MHz! http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2295

RAM: OCZ Platinum 4GB DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500); What can I say? I'm a sucker for shiny stuff. Posts at listed speed and has every last byte functional in Vista 64-bit.

Powersupply: Thermaltake 700W; Plenty of overall power, great 12v rail specs, black mirror finish. No complaints from me so far.

Graphics Card: SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 3870 512MB 256-bit GDDR4; it might be considered "old" to some hardcore gamers, but it's a considerable upgrade to me and for under $150 it's hard to beat.

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive; I heard Barracuda drives were fast and it certainly is. The size may seem small to some but keep in mind I don't keep hundreds of gigs worth of music, pictures or movies on mine.

Media Drive: SAMSUNG SATA 22X DVD Burner; Nicely priced and fast too. Installed Vista in under half an hour!

Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic 64-bit; say what you want about Vista and I'll probably agree with you on it. But seeing 4GB of RAM post in the 64-bit environment is well worth all of the headaches.

Case: Antec Nine Hundred; The picture speaks loudly enough for this case: beautiful and moves air like nothing I've ever seen before.

Fans: 3 stock Antec Blue LED 120mm, 1 stock Antec 200mm, 2 Coolermaster Blue LED 120mm, 1 stock Biostar 80mm for a total of 7 fans.

Fan Controller: Sunbeam Rheobus-Extreme; it looks like something out of the original Star Trek series; anyone want to ask Scottie for some more power?

Printer: Canon PIXMA MX310 all-in-one; my wife likes it so I like it.

Keyboard: Saitek Eclipse Blue backlit; gotta love that blue glowy stuff and is the first keyboard to not wobble on the "impossible to level" L- desk.

I'd love to say that with this building phase complete I am now enjoying hours of gaming. The truth is I still have loads of files to transfer, the old computer to clean up and prepare for the in-laws and barely an hour and a half each night to do all this. At least when I do get the free time to sit down and enjoy some dungeon delving in ES4: Oblivion or some satellite dropping in Sims 2 I know this new PC will be offering up some of the best performance I have ever seen. I better keep the babies' drool rags close by so as not to short out anything from uncontrollable slobbering.

Update 9/13/08: I added a comment about this but here it is in the blog too. Not more than 1 hour after I finished transferring all necessary files from the old HP did I encounter my very first PSU burn out. The 200w replacement PSU HP put into the old Pavilion, two years ago, went up in smoke. I'm having a professional check it out for any hidden damage as well; hopefully the motherboard and harddrive survived so my in-laws can still enjoy using this old PC for a few years. I swear my fingers are still tingling from that initial shock of being mere feet from a sparking smoking PSU!

I promised some more info on my Satellite Feed videos and finally here it is! As with any project of mine I had to plow through numerous distractions, family affairs and even another project and I still havn't even managed to shoot the pilot episode yet. So exactly when these videos crop up will be a mystery even to myself. Whenever a script is written, time is found and everything comes together I'll be sure to post them. So what is the Satellite Feed exactly? It serves as my most recent attempt to produce low quality Sims 2 videos with low quality humor all aimed to provide low quality entertainment to everyone bored enough to watch. I figure why bother with high quality when no one can ever agree to what it really is. The show aims to combine video blogging, game reviews and my odd sense of humor into one venue. Shows will likely run for a few minutes until I can find a way to compress data well enough for longer shows without sacrificing too much audio and video quality. The future of this show is somewhat questionable I will admit. Thanks to family life my video gaming time is being cut back and Sims 2 video production sadly cuts into that as well. Also with Sims 3 looming ever closer I can't say if the show could transition well, if at all, to the new release. Rest assured if the means are there the show will go on. And it's not like Sims 2 will ever leave my PC anyways; not with all it's satellite dropping goodness still intact.

One last factor in determining if the show can last into the next year is how my new project will assist with the production. Thanks to tclvis I have become obsessed with a project that normally does take hold of me every 4 to 5 years: upgrading to a new PC. And instead of buying into yet another questionably made PC with some big brand name attached to it, I'm taking the plunge into the world of custom PC building. It's definitely new territory for me as I have a limited hardware knowledge base as it is. But I've kept my current PC running in top shape for 4 years now so I'm hoping my years of PC meddling will combine well with the tips tclvis gives me, help from online tools and of course any professional advice I can dig up. I'll put together an album with pictures to update the process which will likely be slow going. As any family man usually is, I'm on a tight budget and have to carefully pick and choose all parts at the right times. I fully realize the difficulty of this project and how potentially nightmarish it could become. The tales of DOA parts, fried parts and other technical blunders that render dream machines inoperable will assuredly haunt me through the whole process and likely even past completion. Despite all this I feel it is well worth it as two store bought and one online custom built PCs have to let me down in the end. That and for once I can actually avoid all the bloatware manufacturers insist they cram onto our precious little harddrives. So long as I end up with a fully functioning, upgraded and budget built PC I figure it will have been well worth the experience. I hope...

So what exactly am I upgrading from? All PC enthusiasts crave this kind of info and I'm not one to deprive them the pleasure. I do place a severe warning to all PC fans who are drinking hot beverages now: put your cups down now before reading on! My current PC is laughable in comparison to modern days machines and I've had to neglect serious upgrades to it in favor of raising a child, paying for my house and buying a PS3. That latter point will earn me much smack talk from PC fans and by all means please do. Just know that I skipped the PS2 and the PS3 allows me to play videogames while exercising on the stationary bike. I stand by the purchase of the console. On to the stats of the PC I lovingly call "The old Dino"!

Built March 2004 by HP, HP Pavilion a450y, ASUS P4SD-LA MOBOS, Intel P4 3.0Ghz FSB 800Mhz, x2 512MB 400 RAM, 160GB IDE HDD, 16x DVD drive, Windows XP Service Pack 3, ATI Radeon 9600. I sure hope everyone put down their hot beverages after that GPU listing. Fun facts on this PC: still plays Sims 2 extremely well and can actually play ES4: Oblivion on low settings (no AA, no HDR, no grass, no shadows, pretty much nothing fancy). It still manages web surfing and streaming video extremely well. And it normally takes less than 2 minutes to fully boot up. Not bad for a 4 year old PC that only had a RAM upgrade and a few USB peripherals added to it over the years. And I plan to give it a good home too when the new one is complete. My in-laws are in dire need of a new PC themselves so hopefully a good deal can be made between us to fill their need and alleviate some of my money problems.

Now what am I going to? Well, needless to say something more up to date with today's standards but I'm not going to list anything specific here. My list changes daily and when better deals come along I plan to take them so long as the product performs well in reviews. Check my PC Project Album to see what I've collected if interested. Feel free to leave comments too on good products to look into. Just remember that price is a factor for me on many items. On others I'm willing to spend more heavily but in the end this will be a mid-level budget gaming PC. I just can't afford to throw too much money into this and when you only game 2 hours a week like I do now it's probably best not to go top of the line on everything.

Edit: 8/14/08 I managed to get some pictures up in the previously mentioned album with the link, but it seems to be having some trouble and is proving hard to put comments into. I am hosting the same picture over on my Facebook page and it's been tagged as open for all to see. Feel free to browse through it until I get some comments working here at GS that will have more detail into the project. At Facebook all my old friends already know what I nerd I am so I'm just letting know how I'm continuing the habit. It's best I not drown them out in over detailed matters. Fellow Facebook fans feel free to add me as a friend, though please send a message along with the request giving me your GS handle otherwise I may ingore the request completely. I've got parts on the way and I'll put pictures of them up when I get them and hopefully one of a ten year old MOBOS being powered by a 700w PSU. Hmm, better get the heavy industrial gloves for that experiment just in case...

A lot can be said about this video, but it's best to let it do all the talking. More info to come in the days ahead I promise! As always, feel free to leave your comments with the video or on this blog. To those leaving negative comments, refer to the film "Camelot" as to where you can stick your head.