|
|
|
| My PC is a labour of love constantly evolving. I try to upgrade parts of it regularly so that I'm never too far from the 'bleeding edge'. My first PC was the only one that I bought ready made, I paid around £600 in 1996 and for this I got - a Cyrix P150 CPU, 16 MB EDO RAM, 6X CD ROM, 4 MB VGA card, Floppy, Keyboard, Mouse and Case - I provided my own monitor and 210 MB HDD. As far as I can recall the memory consisted of 2 strips that cost £45 each and the HDD was bought second hand for my Amiga 1200 for £70. Since that time there have been many minor and several major upgrades. I consider a major upgrade one that involves the Mainboard and CPU. Minor upgrades are all the rest - HDD, RAM, CD/DVD ROMs, etc. Usually my upgrades are part paid for by selling off existing parts to friends and family, I can afford to upgrade and they get quality kit fitted cheap. Currently my PC is 'generic' (no brand!) with the following spec - AMD XP2500+ CPU, Asus A7N8X Deluxe MB, 1 GB DDR RAM, CRW-F1 Yamaha CD-RW, Optowrite DVD +/-RW, Radeon 9700 Ultra, 80 GB IDE HDD, 120 GB SATA HDD, Diamond Supra Express 56i Modem, Samsung SyncMaster 171N TFT, Panasonic KXP6100 Laser printer, Cambridge SoundWorks Speakers, Genius Keyboard, Trust Cordless Optical Mouse, most of which is housed in a second hand case that was donated!
Above - The freebie case fitted with the Asus A7N8X Deluxe mainboard, CPU, heatsink and fan. Below - All kitted out and ready to go. Notice the removal of the plastic speaker/cable holder in the bottom left (above photo) to be replaced with a used Panaflow (Panasonic) 92mm fan that sucks air into the case. Another fan of the same type is fitted at the upper left just behind the CPU/Heatsink/Fan but this time working as an extractor. Also fitted is a slot type extractor which can be seen just below the video card. I fitted this because of the amount of heat generated by Radeon video card alone.
I'll explain how I how and why I come by this selection of parts. Although from what follows you may think I'm tight, I spend more money on my PC than anything else, usual bills aside. |
