My new PC
Posted by John on October 25th, 2009
It’s only been 3 years since I bought my first custom built PC, but it’s time for me to upgrade. This time my friend Andrew helped me choose the parts and assemble it, so I’m very happy about it. Here are the parts and cost.
CPU: Athlon II 240 (Dual-core) RMB 449
Motherboard: AsRock 785G RMB 489
RAM: 2GB DDR3 RMB 309
Case: Antec NSK 3480 RMB 799
MSI Nvidia 8400GS RMB 199
HD: Hitachi 1TB HDT721010SLA360 RMB 559
TOTAL COST: RMB 2804
I bought all components online at 360buy.com, they deliver in 1 working day and can accept cash or cards. Perfect, so I don’t have to worry about online payment.
The motherboard has an integrated graphics card, with HDMI/VGA/DVI out, but I needed a S-Video out for my CRT TV, so I had to get another card. The case is a mini-tower, compact but big enough for 3 HDs and an optical drive. For the moment I put my old DVD drive and the 1TB Hitachi HD.
After transferring all data from the old desktop (and various external HDs), I have 250GB free. I’ll get another HD soon.
The CPU is obviously faster than the previous one, and it’s fast enough to play HD files (mkv, mp4 etc…). But the main “feature” my wife and I are happiest about: it’s very quiet. The previous PC was way too loud, it had 3 fans running (due to having 3 HDs and 2 DVD drives). Right now we can barely hear the new PC, which is good because it’s turned on 24/7.
I put it next to the old PC, which I’m going to reconfigure as a linux box. I’ll just use it as a backup storage. Linux is easier to control remotely. Then I will have a Mac Mini, a Windows PC, and a Linux PC. Perfect!!