My "new-to-me" PC

Tek7@Work

Tek7@Work

CGA President, Tribe of Judah Founder & President
First, I want to thank turn_key and blsimpson again for their very kind gifts. I'm very pleased to report that I was able to build a "new-to-me" PC using parts I already owned as well as:

Without these gifts, it would have taken considerably longer for me to build a new PC, perhaps even prompting me to skip games I was very much looking forward to (like Natural Selection 2, which I purchased back when it was in alpha, Skyrim, which I received as a gift, and Guild Wars 2). My laptop is a bit of a dinosaur now (Dell Studio 1737 with a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650, Intel Core2 Duo T6400, and 4GB RAM), so I would have had to sit out some of the major upcoming releases if not for these generous gifts.

I also purchased an OCZ 600W ModXStream Pro power supply and a Rosewill RCX-ZAIO-92 heatsink/fan.

I'm still using my old case (an Antec Performance II SX1040BII), my old hard drives (160GB and 200GB Western Digital IDE drives), and my old floppy drive (more because I can than because of any legitimate need).

I haven't purchased a monitor (or figured out a way to run an HDMI or DVI cable from my "office" to the living room) yet, so I currently have the PC hooked up to my HDTV (which actually works out quite nicely for Steam games with controller support).

I'm also using the PC as a HTPC, running MediaPortal. I was very excited to find that the new-to-me PC is fully capable of playing 1080p anime fansubs. :D

Thanks again to turn_key, blsimpson, and everyone who endured the ongoing saga of system building these last 2 months have been. I look forward to playing some newer games (while still playing TF2, L4D2, and other "older" games as well!) with you all soon. :)
 
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As I mentioned elsewhere, I was initially unable to get the Gigabyte mainboard to boot with one of the OCZ 2GB RAM sticks installed.

I fixed that problem tonight by:
  1. Removing all RAM modules
  2. Installing only the OCZ 2GB RAM module I could reliably get to work
  3. Increasing the DDR2 voltage from 1.8V to 2.1V in the BIOS
  4. Installing the second OCZ 2GB RAM module

Seriously.

I then entered BIOS, hit CTRL+F1 to enable expert mode, and changed the RAM timing to 5-4-4-15.

I thought about overclocking my E5200, but I thought I'd better not press my luck.

At least, not yet. :D
 
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