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The new rig:

In the dark

"normal view"

This, folks, is the new-new Monolith

:-D

I recently upgraded to:

• LG Flatron L1710B 17" LCD monitor
• Abit AV8 with third Eye motherboard
• Athlon 64 FX-53 running at 2448 mHz
• CPU cooling by a Thermalright DP120 heatpipe heatsink with a 120mm fan on top for less noise
• 1GB OCZ EL DDR PC-3200 Dual Channel Platinum RAM
• Western Digital "special edition" 7200rpm 120gb 8mb cache hard drive
• Seagate 7200rpm 120gb 8mb cach hard drive
• Benq 16x Dual Layer DVD+/-RW drive
• ATI Radeon 9800 SE 128mb graphics card, with dual monitor support, 8x AGP and TV out
• all packed into a silver aluminum Antec LANBOY case with a side window and 400 watt quiet power supply with blue LED and 120mm fan
• the case has two temperature-sensitive 80mm fans for less noise
• round silver-color cables for all the drives
• 12V car cigarette lighter plug, so I can power my CD/MP3 player or charge a mobile phone
• Eluminx blue-backlit keyboard in black case
• cordless Logitech MX700 mouse (fast response, near-top-of-the-line cordless mouse, plus it's rechargeable)

I'm guessing the new box is about 4-6 times faster than my current machine.

Other peripherals I have (I barely use these though) include:

• Sidewinder Game Pad Pro
• Sidewinder Sensor game pad
• Logitech FF joystick
• Logitech FF wheel/pedal set

The power supply comes with a blue LED that is on all the time, but I don't get into the whole case modding thing. I got the round cables to help with the airflow, and I figured why not make them silver as well, so they'll match the case.

I ordered most of the new stuff from newegg.com, but I also ordered individual things from gameve.com (video card) and excaliburpc.com (keyboard)

Total cost in December 2003 for my XP2600, Asus motherboard, 9800SE video card, case and a few other things - about $760 for a basically brand new machine, with shipping and tax (plus about $130 for the DVD drive). Nice deal :)

I may as well list the other computer things I have:

• Generic USB 2.0 hub - $20 I think
• PNY pocket USB 128mb memory stick (for file transfers, very handy) - $50 (had to return the $30 PQI brand stick)
• PQI 6-way USB 2.0 memory card reader (my camera uses Compact Flash but who knows if I'll ever need to read a different memory card) - $30
• Creative Labs 5.1 speaker setup
• Creative Labs Soundblaster Live! 5.1 (don't have the need for the Audigy)
• HP 882C color Deskjet (thanks, EJ)
• 17" Sylvania monitor
• Lynksys broadband router
• 3M wireless 54g ADSL router/switch
• I had a Toshiba cable modem, but left it with my mom to sell

My old machine, at various stages:

950mHz Athlon, 768mb RAM, 45gb on 2 drives

It was a 450mHz Athlon for a time, I knew a guy that worked at AMD at the time and he hooked me up with the CPU, motherboard, some RAM and I think an unused CD burner. At some point I upgraded it to the 950mHz, I think in 2001 but who remembers stuff like that? haha

This was my computer setup at the end of 2003. Everything is the same at the moment except the insides of the case are different (new m/b, cpu, ram, etc.), the desk is smaller and the monitor is a 17" LCD now. And it's in England :)
The second monitor was given to me by my old flatmate Ian, but I gave it back to him before I left the US
Towards the end of this machine's life I had to keep the front bezel off for extra cooling, and sometimes the side of the case as well! It all had to do with a dying power supply fan I'm sure. I got this case from a local company in SoCal when I had upgraded from the Dell 166mHz Pentium to the 450mHz Athlon around 1998

Lately I've been playing a lot of Joint Operations online, it's a first-person shooter game that takes place on huge maps and lets you drive and fly anything in the game (Battlefield 1942 let you fly and drive anything but the maps are smaller. I joined the JGC (Joint Game Command) late in 2004, a team that plays on Joint Ops servers on the East Coast and International server areas of Novaworld, the official server area of Novalogic, the game's developer. We've just broken off into our own Europe-based squad, the EWG (European War Gamers) and continue to play Joint Ops and will probably switch to Battlefield 2 when it comes out.

I've been wanting to play more computer games lately, in an attempt to actually finish one finally (the last game I remember finishing was Doom) and also to play all these games that I download or borrow from my friends.

During the 2002 holiday I loaded Dungeon Siege on my computer and played quite a bit of that. It was really quite fun, considering I've never gotten farther than an hour or so into an RPG type game. So I've borrowed a few more RPG games and I'll see how I like those.

I started playing The Sims Online in the spring of 2003 and after a few months got burned out on it from playing it for literally hours every day. Eventually it just became a chat program and the game part of it was less fun.

So the games I want to concentrate on are games like SimCity 3000, Civilization 3, Alpha Centauri and similar games (long, open-ended, slow-paced games). For "release" I want to get more into games like Serious Sam, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament and other games like that. I'm not great at them but they are fun when you're not getting blown away constantly. I thought briefly about playing Planetside, another massively multiplayer game, but this time a first-person shooter, but later decided I didn't want to spend $13 a month and feel obligated to play the game every day or couple of days.

living in England :: my blog :: photo galleries :: Yahoo! Photos page :: current stuff and updates :: random bits :: links

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