My new computer and a snooker break of 26
6 January 2008For my birthday and new year gift, I decide to upgrade my old computer. My current one is already 3 years old and I also got it as my brithday present in Dec 2004. At that time it seems to be a good one with XP300+, 6800GT, 1gb DDR but how fast technology has changed. It can do most of the task fine but when it come to game, it is not really good anymore. Now, it oly score 1400 3DMark 2006 points and can only play Unreal Tournament 3 in resolution of 1152×864 with low settings 
and still quite slow. I could have replaced a newer GFX card but the problem is my old one only has AGP and all the newer GFX cards are now PCI-Express. Thus, I will need to change the motherboard, the CPU and the RAM all together.
For such reason, I decide to get a reasonable good configuration and finally settle at Intel Core Due 2 E6750, Asus P5KC motherboard that natively support both DDR2 and DDR3, 8800GTS 512mb GFX and 2GB DDR2. I can reuse my old case, HDD and my old Audigy 2 soundcard but that really is. I even need to replace the old Antec 380W PSU since it might not be enough and I got myself OCZ StealthXStream 600W one. It costs me an arm and a leg but hopefully will deliver much better performance.
I orderred all the components on the 24th Dec but it only come on the 3rd Jan, exactly 10 days. I bought them all from Dabs since I have exclusive discounts with BT and they offered free delivery for the festive period. In total, it has saved me around £25 compared with what I would have to pay if I go with other retailer such as eBuyer or Overclockers.
I connect all the components together and turn the computer on. It was the most important moment since if you did it right it will work straight away. If it did not, you will have problem. The last time I did that, I have to wait for a week for a replacement PSU to come through and it was a very frustrating time. However, this time it went well, the computer starts and I was greeting with the welcome BIOS screen. However, when I finished install Windows XP and all Norton 360, it started to have lots of BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death), which is not a good sign at all. It was crazy all over and I tried reinstalling everything again but the problem still remained. Luckily, after a lots of googling and reading on the support forum of Asus, it turned out that other people have experienced similar problems like mine and they have found a solution. How on earth should I know that I have to put my two sticks of DDR2 in the black RAM slots and then have to manually set all the DRAM timing in BIOS rather than let Asus do it automatically. Really really bad design Asus! Nonetheless, it was the right solution and no problem so far, still my fingers are crossed 
After a day, I finally finish installing all the softwares and games with the up to date updates and check ups. It was much faster and more streamlined. I could burn a DVD in 16x mode which only take 5 minutes to complete. And while doing so I can safely watch a movie, quite neat. But the biggest improvement is that my 3DMark 2006 score is now 10800, which is more than 8 times than my old PC and I can finally play Unreal Tournament 3 in my native resolution of 1900×1200 with all the settings in highest mode and that is a sweet experience 
To top it up in a completely non relevant matter last night I went to play snooker with my friend Hung and I made a break of 26 with 9 straight balls in the sequence of red green red black red pink red blue red. It is my personal record that I can remember to date and I was quite happy
January 6th, 2008 at 9:57 am