Outline for the new machine
I first started to consider the components
for a new machine around February time of 2005. Half
Life 2 had been released and I had promised myself
a new build once the game had arrived! My Intel P3
1GHz was starting to look a little dated compared
to the machines of the time using faster processors,
memory and insane graphics card. Whilst I was well
aware of the changes, it is of course not possible
to update a machine constantly to keep up with the
current trend. This is due mainly to financial reasons
and also because the changes throughout small spaces
of time, whilst significant, are not worth the massive
hardware changes for surrounding components as well.
To begin then, I set out with a budget
of about six-hundred pounds and hoped to build a machine
with at least a gig of RAM, plenty of hard-disk space
and decent enough performance to play Half Life 2
(after all the wait had been a long one)!
These are the components I settled on:
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+
socket 939 (Winchester Core)
Cost:
£97.00 |
|
Motherboard: ASUS A8V Deluxe 939
board with on board sound, SATA+RAID, 800MHz
HT, on board gigabit LAN. AGP 8x.
Cost: £75.00
|
|
Memory: Crucial PC3200 DDR400 - 2 lots
of 512MB
Cost: £65.00 |
|
PSU: eBuyer extra value 500Watt PSU
(Bad Move)
Cost: £12.00 (!)
|
|
Case: CoolerMaster Cavalier 3 Full
ATX no PSU
Cost: £60.00 |
|
These were the main components of the system, I
had planned to use an existing graphics card to
hold the place of a new one for the time being.
In addition, I already had a spare Hard Disk and
DVD-RW drive. Cutting cost was the name of the game.
Unfortunately, thinking on a budget isn't always
the wisest of decisions and I later found that the
AGP card I planned on using was of a different voltage.
Off to the shops to grab a card that would work
and do the job for the time being.
The other components added were as follows:
In retrospect, I would not have bought the shoddy power
supply if I had realised how bad these cheap units are
under load. Likewise, had I thought to do the research
into the graphics department, I would have balanced
out the cost of a powerful card against having to find
a placeholder. (Two small tips if you plan on building
your own machine).
