New computer

Or more precisely, new computer parts. My current computer (5.5 years old at this time) is just about dead; it takes around eight hours to reboot and the video card croaked. Being that nobody makes AGP video cards anymore – and that I was very lucky a friend still had an old machine that I could scavenge working parts from – I felt that it was time to get a new machine. My new computer is going to have a 2.66 GHz Intel i5 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and 300 GB and 1 TB hard disks. I had hoped to include a Radeon 5850 card but they were sold out planetwide when I bought the parts, and as I mainly play console games, I don’t feel too badly about having to settle for a lesser video card.

In keeping with my indomitable spirit of laziness, I’m probably not going to get around to building it until the weekend. No doubt I’ll need the additional time to fix the inevitable problems that are going to occur; something always goes wrong when I build computers.

I got asked to provide a size comparison picture of Kenshin and Meiya, so I also thought this was a good opportunity to provide the goods.

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16 Responses to New computer

  1. lord_jagganath says:

    oh please say that your power supply is going to be a huge honking 1000W monster? that 300GB scsi hdd is a power sucker… ( and i learnt it the hardway = burnt Mobo and PSU…)

  2. Tier says:

    It’s actually a SATA IDE disk; it’s one of those speedy WD Velociraptor drives. A solid state drive wouldn’t quite fit in my budget. I got a 650W power supply which I think will be way more than I need, since I didn’t get a high-powered video card like I had originally hoped to.

    Sorry to hear about your components; I have this bad feeling that something screwy is going to happen when I put this thing together.

  3. Lylibellule says:

    It’s always important to have a work tool as stable and powerful you can get and you didn’t take half measure.
    It can be quickly discouraging to have your own computer crash just before saving a file or who slow down! (I know what i’m talking about, my computer’s getting old and that’s a pain XD )
    Very sweet buy anyway. Congrats!

  4. Foehamr72 says:

    My desktop never really died, but it was so old and slow it might as well be dead.  I booted it up the other day and about an hour and one smoking HD later……..  So, I gave up PC gaming years ago b/c I didn’t want to upgrade my PC each time i bought a new game.  Now I buy a game and its going to work every time!  Console only gaming for me!  Xbox360, PS3, Wii. I have all of them!
    Many thanx for the size comparison between the two figures.  When u wrote up your review for Kenshin u mentioned that she was your holy grail.  Well, after a little thought I decided that meiya was mine.  Now I’m slowly getting started towards getting her. Plus, I’ve started a small collection of my own.  7 and growing! We should all hookup and play some modern combat or borderlands. None of my friends are into anime, videogames, and figures like I am.

  5. Tier says:

    >> Lylibellule
    Indeed! I just hope everything works smoothly; I think the last two computers I’ve built, I’ve had hard drives fail within a few months of putting the system together.

    >> Foehamr72
    I still need a PS3. I don’t really play a lot of games right now though so it’s hard for me to justify, even though I really want to play Valkyria Chronicles, and I think I’d rather play Final Fantasy XIII on one disc rather than having to swap DVDs.

    That’s cool to hear that you’re starting up a collection of your own! I think this is a really fun hobby, and I probably wouldn’t have taken up photography if I didn’t collect figures. Good luck with tracking down Meiya too! Part of the fun is hunting down something that you really, really want.

    Borderlands is another thing I’ve got to get sometime … I heard it’s like a cross between an FPS and Diablo, and I loved Diablo.

  6. Foehamr72 says:

    I don’t know if I would compare borderlands to diablo….  More like gears of war lite.  It’s mission based, so u run around like a chicken with your head cut off collecting this and that, kill everything in sight, and then recieve your reward in the form of cash, xp, and various weapons.  Running around for quest items is kinda blah but I’ve really enjoyed it so far.  Sacred 2 is very similar to diablo.  For what its worth, borderlands has my approval.

  7. reminds me when I rebuilt my PC several months back. Except that I did everything from scratch…

    Ended up with a 4870 graphics card as they were going cheap cos the 4890 was being released just a few days later. Coupled it with 4GB RAM and a core 2 Quad processor. Not that different in terms of processing muscle to yours.

    As for borderlands, I have the 360 version. All I can say is “Do NOT play it alone!” without a group, it gets really tedious.
    The Diablo reference probably comes from the fact that you will end up hording everything you come across!

  8. innosin says:

    well… I have borderland, pc version,
    but due to its connectivity issue, I have been mostly playing alone…. and starting to get bore.

    I in fact, built my computer some where around a year ago, with
    i7 920, Asus P6T, 6 GB corsair dominator, Corsair 750W PSU, and some Scythe Fan. kept the old hard drive DVD, and graphic card(HD3870). and they still sets me back for about 700 dollar orz. I even used the 25% cash back on Ebay from the microsoft live cash back too….
    the whole PC set up ended up sitting on a card board box for two month since I didn’t even have enough money to get my self a new case. Orz

    but anyway, I would recommend getting an after market fan for the CPU, and just slightly overclock the CPU, heck, you might not even need an aftermarket fan to do so.

    If you want to play borderlands, be careful with what graphic card you buy.
    from the gearbox forum, there are many reports of Borderlands breaking/burn their graphic card, and most of those issue happened on HD470 due to some design flaw of the graphic card.
    I suggest go to gearbox forum and check out the technical problem section and find out exactly what models are having trouble with the game… or … you can just avoid the game all together.

    I am also looking forward to a PS3
    since I want to play FFXIII and already own three other PS3 games.
    the problem always lies with money, since I will be needing a new monitor if I decided to go with a new PS3 orz

    does anyone know the possibility of having English interface and sub yet retain Japanese sound tracks for the international version of FFXIII?

    Because even though they are good at times, there are certain moments that I simply hated the dubbing they does.
    or, I guess I can just have a translator in front of me, punching in hiragona as i go through the game.

  9. innosin says:

    bleh… stupid me, just realized that there is a 5770 on the top…..

  10. Tier says:

    >> Foehamr72
    That reminds me, I need to beat Sacred 2 sometime. Too many games, not enough time …

    >> gundamjehutykai
    This computer’s going to be a huge step up from what I have now (which is a Pentium 4 processor, 2GB of RAM, 324 GB of internal hard disk space, and a GeForce 4400 [!]). I think the only thing I’m going to re-use is my sound card.

    Hmm, well, that’s unfortunate about Borderlands, I don’t have a Live Gold account so I can’t play it multiplayer.

    >> innosin
    I’m probably going to run at the default clock speed for a while since I’m kinda paranoid about computers (ever since this machine started messing up). I’ve got this weirdo Antec case, I think the front fans have blue LEDs on them or something. I dunno if I really like flashy cases so I hope they’re not too bright.

    I have no idea about FF13, but I’d guess they wouldn’t provide English text other than for the US and European releases … I think the international version usually comes out well after the initial release? At least, I think that’s what they did on region-locked consoles.

  11. innosin says:

    hehe, mine as a upgrade from 2.8 ghz p4….
    yeah…
    Any chance its an antec 900?
    if so, the light really isn’t too bad.
    I for one.. liked the flashy case… for the first year when I built it, then decided that the light was annoying, and swap out all the fans.
    Now, I am using a case that has no window, no led light at all =__=

    sigh… I just hope that they can fit the multi audio in there, since the storage volume of Blue Ray was so large, and the new gen console are regional free anyway…. but again… there is the 360 release… which i assume it will be hard to fit dual sound track in there

    Time to brush up on my Japanese i guess

  12. Foehamr72 says:

    I finished my 1st playthough solo. None of my gaming buds were intrested in borderlands =(  For my 2nd, I talked my brother into picking it up and we are currently powerleveling him.  We have the new DLC and are currently on zombie island fryin up some zombie brains!!      

  13. Tier says:

    >> innosin
    It’s an Antec 300; I’m guessing it’s just a smaller version of the 900? I’ve used huge cases for my last couple machines (I loved the Antec SX1030) but I figure I’ll try something a bit smaller for my next machine. It’s the Illusion model or something; Newegg had this deal where they had free shipping on the model with extra 120mm fans whereas the regular model didn’t have that. I figure free fans, free shipping, you can’t beat that.

    Yeah, I think it’d make sense, but off the top of my head, I can’t think of any Square Enix games that had multiple voice language options. Then again, I haven’t really played too many Square Enix games; I never got to FF!2, it’s still in plastic shrinkwrap on my shelf.

    >> Foehamr72
    Powerlevelling! That makes me think of Warcraft, of running my alts through SM and Uldaman and Stratholme.

    I wonder if Borderlands will be one of those games that gets knocked down in price, I saw that Dragon Ages and Forza 3 already got price drops at some stores.

  14. Guy says:

    Sometimes I eye the Graphics card market, and I realize that instead of plonking down serious cash, one can easily get a new card for $100 during the Christmas season every couple of years, and come out ahead.

    BTW, why the two different HDs? 300 GB for the programs, and the TB for the data?

  15. Tier says:

    As long as I can play Starcraft 2 at 1920×1200 with all settings maxed, I’ll be happy.

    Yeah, the 300 GB drive is supposed to be faster than standard IDE drives. I don’t really know how much faster it is in practice, though.

  16. Foehamr72 says:

    Oh yeah!  I start my second play thru and invite him. He gets TONs of xp for every kill I make. On the 360 version, which we are playing, it’s all about level. If your not high enough level u can’t damage an enemy. So i’m level 40 and I take on a level 45 critter. It’s hard for me, but I’m possible for my level 5 brother. However, I get 5000xp and he makes 3 levels with one kill!  Now that’s what I call powerleveling!

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