PC BUILDING, part One

The wonderful archive of a computer upgrading experience.

Hey there. Ever wonder about upgrading your own PC? I do all the time. Ive hacked and cannibalized my HP (running a 800 Celeron) to the highest possible point and still cry out for more power.

I bought my HP with a 600 Celeron back in 2000 to replace my aging AMD 233.

It was a mid-ranged PC at the time and I was as pleased as punch. I gave the 233 to my Mom so she could do some emailing, web browsing and whatnot and we went on our merry way.

I swapped out the 600 for an 800, added a 30Gig HD (a 15 gig came with it), and bumped the Memory to 128. I also added a cheap PCI (This board has no AGP slot) Gforce 420MX to play QUAKE 3 on something better than the onboard video (The Voodoo3 is still in the 233, and not officially supported for XP).

I also added a standard 10/100 network card when I got DSL. I have a Zip 250 USB to transfer files to my Laptop (a totally different nightmare).

I added more memory to boost it to 384 MB. I’ve added a CDR and then replaced the CD with a DVD and finally the CD-R with a DVD-R.

At this point I said enough.. I have a bunch of nice hardware and capabilities, but its just a bad nightmare gone wrong.. A picture of this monster is HERE.

The case obviously isnt big enough and pullties arent the standard HD mounting choice. The case remains open to ensure nothing overheats in the tiny space provided.

Its been a workhorse for a long time but I can no longer do everything I want with any efficiency.

So I started off with a list of what I wanted to do..

1. Play more games. Let’s face it, I don’t really want to play Doom3 of Half life 2 on the Xbox. I like user-made mods and add-ons. You cant get that in a console. I love my Xbox but Lord forbid I want to play more PC-only games coming in the future. The last game I got for PC was Warlords Battlecry 3. I was lucky that ran on the 800.
2. Art/job stuff. All graphics and web-related goodness. Yes, I got Adobe CS stuff to run, but it takes forever to load. As a struggling artist, I love to play in Photoshop and Dreamweaver. I also want to learn Flash and maybe some CSS. Top of the line programs demand top-of the line hardware. Efficiency is key here.
3. DVD ripping. It currently takes 3-24 hours to rip a DVD on the 800 (burning is under an hour), plus the constant wear on the system. I have lots of Video tapes slowly decaying. I’d like to rip and burn them one day.
4. MUSIC. My friend wants to get back into the band thing and is trying to pull me into the semi-professional musician status again. I also have old tapes that fall in the same threat as my VHS collection, and they will need to be put on to a more stable format. I have some neat multitracking software lying around, it works great on the 800, but I might need some oomph later on.

I know that any upgrade at this point will be a great boost to my overall PC experiences. But as Im still looking for work, I need to be as cost effective as I can.

So begins my search for cheap bits to build my Next Computer…