My New PC Build
My PC broke. All of a sudden it started randomly giving me blue screens, either before I managed to login, or shortly afterwards. To determine whether it was a problem with Windows or the hardware itself I decided that installing Linux wouldn’t be a bad idea. That didn’t work either. It doesn’t even get 80% of the way through the installation before it just gives up, freezing completely. I’ve installed Linux just fine before, so it definitely seems like something is amiss.
I’m at the stage now where actually debugging something like this is not what I want to do, I just want the thing to work. So since the machine is a few years old anyway, time to order something new.
I didn’t want to spend a fortune, and I’m no big PC gamer these days, so top of the line specs aren’t really that big a deal for me. I want it to be quiet. I want it to be reasonably good looking. I want a big screen. So here’s what I ended up with…
* Antec Sonata III Case
* Asustek P5K-E/WIFI-AP
* Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33Ghz
* 4GB RAM
* 500GB Hard Disk
* GeForce 8600GT
* Samsung 20x DVD Writer
* Microsoft Vista Home Premium
* 24″ Dabs Value LCD
* Logitech X-230 Speakers
Total cost is about £800, which I think is pretty awesome considering the spec.
The worst part is that I now have to build the thing, which is something I didn’t want to have to deal with anymore. But from a price point of view, it still seems like the way to go, if you’re up to the challenge of picking the parts. There are so many model numbers, so much choice, and Intel and Nvidia are innovating so fast that it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer size of their respective product lists. It took lots of Googling and lots of looking at other peoples complete systems to come up with this one.
My original idea was that I would install OS X, and the parts I’ve bought are specifically chosen to allow that. But then I read that 10.5.2 turned machines that weren’t real Macs into bricks. Now there’s a workaround to that, if you follow a specific set of instructions, but is that something I really want to worry about? Do I want to put a whole bunch of data in there and then find it breaks one day because Apple make a change? No. I don’t. That’s why I bought Vista.
So there we go, my new home PC. Not top of the line, but easily a step up from what I’ve got at the moment. And not just because that’s broken.
