From Old to New

Well it was time to upgrade. I have had my computer for over 3 years and things just weren't moving like they should, even after numerous reformats, so I took the plunge and decided to build a new one.


Old System:
Processor: 2Ghz AMD Athlon 64 3200
Operating System: Win XP Pro
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Video Card: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
Sound Card: Turtle Beach Santa Cruz 5.1
Hard Drives: 5 totaling 1090 GB
Monitor: 19 inch LCD 4:3 aspect ratio
Optical Drive: 1 DVD Rom & 1 16x DVD+-R/RW/R DL writer
Case: Antec Grey aluminum Midsize Tower
External Bays: 4 5.25"/2 3.5"
Internal Bays: 4 3.5"
Power supply: Antec 430watt
Fans: Seven (1-3" internal and 1-3" external power supply fans, 2-3" external front, 1-3" external side, & 2-3" external rear fans)




New System:
Processor: 1.86 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo 6300
Operating System: Win XP Pro Media Center edition
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Video Card: Nvidia Geforce 7600 LE & Conexant Falcon Video Capture Card w/remote
Sound Card: Realtek High Definition 7.1 on board audio
Hard Drives: 5 totaling 1290 GB
Monitor: 22 inch LCD 16:9 aspect ratio
Optical Drive: 1 DVD Rom & 1 Litescribe (makes a label on top) 18x DVD+-R/RW/R DL writer
Case: Antec silver composite Midsize Tower
External Bays: 4 5.25"/1 3.5"
Internal Bays: 6 3.5"
Power supply: Antec 500 watt
Fans: Five (1-3" internal and 1-3" temp sensing external power supply fans, 1-3" external front, 1-5" rear external, & 1-5" external top fan)

The new case is beautiful, it is a silvery color, that kind of changes colors slightly at different angles. The case is lighter than the old one but about the same size, This one has a spoiler on top that covers the very quiet top case fan which compared to the old computer that sounded like a jet taking off, is extremely quite, almost shockingly quiet. I also can't believe how much cooler it is even with fewer fans and twice the processor, no more heating the office with it. I put XP Media Center on it, which is pretty neat with the remote. It is very similar to what Colin had with his old gateway, only I can also run it wirelessly through my xbox 360 to my TV and do pretty much anything (surf, stream dvds on my pc hard drive or any other video files, pictures, music etc) or I can watch it on the monitor as well as watch TV through the capture card on the PC. The monitor is freakin huge, wide screen which is infinitely better than the regular 4:3. I upgraded my keyboard to a wireless which is nice and kept the wireless logitech mouse I already had. I brought over all but one of the 5 HDDs but added a new 320gb to replace a 120gb.

I am thinking about going raid 0 with the hard drives, but don't know enough about it so I will have to read up first. The dvd burner makes labels on the discs which is kind of cool. And so far the system is much faster to process stuff, especially in photoshop and other intensive programs. I was reading you can over clock the Core 2 Duo that I have to the same speed as the top end processor at 3.0 Ghz for about $700 cheaper and it is still pretty stable so I will probably be doing that. All in all I am pretty pleased, and it was pretty reasonable, $1400 not counting the 4 hard drives and the mouse I already had.

I set up Rachelle with my old pc to replace the old 1Ghz Pentium III Dell that I have had for like 8 or nine years which I then set up for Peyton. Peyton absolutely loves having her own "puter" that she uses to play her Barbie and her pet shop game, as well as surf her sites (Noggin, Playhouse Disney, & Nick Jr.) And now she doesn't have to compete for time on Rachelle's computer. She is getting scary good with it. Doesn't need our help really much at all anymore. The way she is going she will be building me my next computer!