For the first time ever, we decided to not buy a prebuilt computer and instead try putting it together ourselves. After a couple of nights of setting things up (first night was all hardware, second night was all about the software) I can finally say it’s done. All in all, a great experience and a pretty decent machine now sits on my desk (and floor).

A quick run through of the specs:
- Silver Chieftec Dragon aluminum case
- ABIT IC7-G, Intel 875P, ATX
- Intel Pentium 4, 2.8GHz, HyperThreading, 800MHz FSB
- 1GB (2x512MB) Extreme Memory Speed Series, 466MHz
- ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 Radeon 128MB
- WD 200GB 7200RPM HD
- Plextor 52x32x52 PlexWriter CD-RW
- Pioneer DVR-106D, DVD+RW/DVD-RW
- 450W PSU
- Samsung SyncMaster 213T, 21.3″ Flat Panel Display

Every single part was ordered from NewEgg.com. I can’t say enough good things about them. Everything shipped out incredibly fast. Their order status was up to date at all times. Their prices were the best around. When I called them up to check on something, the phone rang twice and a human answered. Shocking, but true. I’ll definitely be ordering from them going forward.

Building it was very easy. The most difficult part of it all was figuring out the connectors on the motherboard for the firewire port in the front of the case (turns out they’re mislabeled, so you pretty much can’t get it right if you RTFM) and confusion that arose out of Windows only recognizing our drive as 137GB instead of 200GB (which we eventually found was fixed in XP SP1).

The part I’m most into is the display. You can read a couple of reviews (tweaknews.net review, neoseeker.com review) here. It’s pretty big and supports 1600×1200 natively. It’s so nice to be able to run VS.NET in that resolution again. Now that it’s all set up, and most of the software I need is installed, I can get back to coding soon.

Anyway, wanted to post about what’s kept me away for a few days. Now I need to get to sleep as I’ve been staying up pretty late with the new machine and it’s starting to get to me.

[Originally posted on my previous blog on 10/10/2003]