Building my new PC: Component Review
Inspired by a recent article on Coding Horror (by Jeff Atwood whom I enjoy reading almost daily) and the need to upgrade my current rig anyway, I’m going to describe my now beginning journey to a new, more
moden PC here.
This, the first article, will give a brief overview of what I’m at and where I want to go. The next parts will then describe the other steps in preparation of the assembly plus the assembly itself, hopefully with some nice pictures.
So, first things first, this part will deal with the components my new PC will include. That is, first, I’ll start listing the things I already have and continue from there by replacing parts I do not like anymore. My current PC is quite old by now. Seeing this blog post from June ’06 and this one with the hardware specs I guess one can say it is time for an update. So here’s the current configuratuon:
- Pentium D Processor 930, 3000MHz
- Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
- OCZ DIMM 2 GB DDR2-667 Kit
- MSI NX7600GT-T2D256EZ
- Asus P5WD2 Premium
- Seasonic S12-500HT PSU
- Thermaltake Tsunami Dream Midi Tower Casing
- 2x 500GB Samsung Spinpoint and 2x 250GB Samsung Spinpoint SATA Drives
- Some Lite-On CD-RW PATA Drive
- Some Lite-On DVD-RW PATA Drive
- Hauppauge HVR-1100
- Thermaltake HardCano 13 (mainly as card reader)
So, that’s that. The next question obviously is: What has to go and what can be kept?
For this question to be answered, I obviously have to know where I want to go with this upgrade. I’ve never been for all that high-end gaming rig stuff, so again I’ll go for an above average, low noise version.
This means that all components should be effectively (or better yet pasively cooled) and be energy efficient, too, if possible.
On don’t know if I have to mention this, but only my first PC was bought of the shelve. All others I have built myself since the age of twelve or something. This one will be no exception, not least because there might be some components that I can keep and save some money that way.
Obviously, the Prentium D will have to go as it is highly ineffecient compared to more modern Pentium CPUs (95W against ~65W).
Secondly, both optical drives need to be exchanged because their kind of old plus kind of “not-working-so-well-anymore”. Plus this way I will finally get rid of the rubbish PATA cables. I hope.
So, what’s next? Graphics Card? Still good enough, i.e. not subject to an immediate update. The CPU heat sink will ahve to go too, though, as it is quite noisy at times.
The mainboard has to go as well as it does not support any CPU more ‘modern’ than a Pentium D. So the RAM will need to be replaced for with something a little faster while I’m at it, too. And the case will make it’s way to the junkyard eventually as it has been bugging me since day one that the door is a little jiggly and, in combination with the vibration caused by other parts of the PC, causes a steady, humming noise if closed or rested in the wrong angle.
Additonally, I’ll remove three of the four HDD drives and put them into an external housing. I already got two IcyBox IB-351U-B standing on my desk, though, so this might get a little tricky. I’ll probably have to find a better solution for placing all that storage space at some point.
Last but not least, the PSU might need an update, too. But that I’m not sure of, so I’ll keep it for now and investigate that later, as soon as I’m clear with my choice of mainboard and CPU.
So, now, for the updated list of things that will be put to work in my new rig:
- GFX Card: MSI NX7600GT-T2D256EZ
- PSU: Seasonic S12-500HT
- HDD: Samsung Spinpoint 500GB SATA
- TV Tuner: Hauppauge HVR-1100
This leaves the following components to be assembled:
- Case
- Optical Drives
- Mainboard
- CPU + Heatsink
- RAM
- External HDD Storage Solution
- A new card reader
The selection of those components will be covered in the follow-up article. Stay tuned.
