New computer hardware

The fan on my power supply is going bad, so that got me thinking about new computer equipment. I'd like a whole new system (this one is about four years old -- ick). EverQuest is choppy at times (especially on raids when you have 50-70 people standing close to each other) and a new system would be a lot of fun.

But the one I priced out is a little too expensive:
from Monarch.com
Asus PCI-E motherboard
Athlon 64 3700+
2 GB RAM
nVidia 7600 GT w/256 MB RAM
Western Digital 74 GB 10,000 RPM hard drive
Creative Labs X-FI XtremeMusic
Windows XP Media
450 watt power supply
17" flat panel monitor
Keyboard & Mouse
Maybe a TV tuner for a PVR
Network card
Media reader / floppy drive

That comes to around $1900. And I just noticed that's without and CD or DVD drives.

Instead, I came to decision I should just get some more memory and a new video card. That should make a big improvement at about a tenth of the cost.

I didn't know what kind of memory or video card I have. Someone suggested going to Crucial.com for memory. They have a nice scanner utility that will tell you what make and model of motherboard you have, then tell you what memory will fit in it. They are also doing video cards, but only ATI ones. I wanted nVidia.

I ordered 512 MB for $55, which will bring my system up to 1 GB, and I ordered an ASUS video card (6600 w/256 MB RAM) for $113 from Newegg.com.

I'll let you know how installation goes, and how the system runs afterward.


-- C.