Time To Rebuild

My desktop computer has been giving me problems. It all started when my UPS (uninterruptible power supply) died. Uninterruptible, by the way, doesn't seem to be a real word, the spell checker doesn't like it and it's not in the dictionary - dictionary.com anyway, but that's the word they use. Apparently, it suffered a power surge that took it out. It's not a dead battery, it smells burnt and it's completely dead. I just plugged the computer into the wall and it worked, sort of. It kept crashing and I had to slow down the CPU to keep it going. Eventually it just stopped working altogether. That's the second UPS I lost this way and the first time it took out the computer, too. The first was an APS and the last a Belkin.

I've been looking into surge protectors - what a confusing mess. I settled on a Panamax, I hope it works out. Everyone claims to be the best and they trash the rest. I might get another UPS but I will plug it into the surge protector. I wouldn't mind a sacrificial UPS if it saved the computer but they don't offer very good surge protection.

I built this computer not too long after Windows XP came out. It was long before the SP2 update. It has an AMD Athlon 1400 processor, Asus A7V-133 motherboard and 1500 megs of PC133 ram. The only thing I'm keeping is the case (Lian-Li aluminum), probably the power supply and the DVD burner - maybe.

I'm going with an Intel processor this time - E6600 Core 2 Duo. There are so many choices in the PC world it makes choosing the components a chore. I wanted a firewire and an eSata port on the motherboard - I decided on the MSI P35 Platinum. I chose a SAPPHIRE 100166L Radeon X1650XT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - that's a mouth full. I'm not looking for bleeding edge performance, I just want a good system. 2 Gigs Kingston DDR 667 ram - could've went with 800 but it costs twice as much and I don't think it's that much faster. I went with 2 Sata hard drives, 80 gigs for the operating system and programs and 320 gigs for storage - both Western Digital. I have a 320 gig eSata drive for back ups. I'll be sticking with Windows XP for now, can't really afford to upgrade to Vista now anyway and I don't want to waste the money if it doesn't work out.

I enjoy putting these together, I wish I could do it more often. I'll have my fun next week and hopefully everything goes well and I'll have a good, reliable system for years to come.