Today as I was building the machine, I took the opportunity to take a number of photos of each individual piece of hardware. Most the photos involved me playing with the MACRO settings on my Kodak EasyShare and are not of the best quality but, they should suffice none the less.
All of the pictures I took today can be found within the Blogging Master 3000 Flickr Photoset.
Ok, the blogging master 3000 is not me per se, instead, its the name of my new computer system I’m building. Inside this picture is the following hardware (all purchased through NewEgg.com):
Total cost for this new machine came out to be $947.94. This is without shipping and handling added in. It’s been a long time since I’ve built a PC from scratch and I must admit, I’m pretty stoked about putting this thing together. Not that there was anything wrong with my current system. It’s just that, my current system has hit it’s upgradeability lifespan. For instance, my current computer only has support for 8x AGP for graphics cards. I am only using DDR memory clocked at 400 MHz. And last but not least, I’m using an old Pentium 4 2.4c at 800MHz FSB. Sure, I could overclock this thing to get more out of it, but I decided to plunk down some cash and join in on the PCI-Express revolution.Before I go, I wanted to let you in on a bonehead moment. Last Friday, I ended up getting all of the parts in that I ordered with the exception of the case and hard drive. Those didn’t arrive until Monday. When I began to build my new blogging monster, I realized that the motherboard didn’t ship with a small baggy of screws. These screws include the risers that are needed to seperate the motherboard from the case so that it doesn’t short out. Well, I spent some time online to see if these screws were left out of the packaging (this motherboard was cheap) which didn’t turn out to be the case.
So, I checked all of the screws I had left over from previous PC builds and only four of the riser screws has the proper threads on them to work in this case. That wasn’t enough. So I put the case away thinking I was screwed. (do you see all the intended puns here?) Today, after trying to find more riser screws, I told my dad about what had happened and he told me that usually the case comes packaged with all of the screws. He asked if I had checked the case to make sure that the screws weren’t tucked away in a drive bay or something. As it turns out, in the top portion of the case, there is a cardboard box which I thought was nothing more than a space filler, so I never bothered to check it until now.When I took out the box and opened it up, there were all of the screws I needed, including the casting wheels for the bottom of the case. This was one of those total bonehead moments. Now, I have to get ready for work and I have no time to build the machine.I thought I’d share that story because it was pretty funny. Tomorrow though, this baby is going to be put together, no questions asked!
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 