An avid follower of my blog (the only follower of my blog ?) reminded me the other day that I never completed my series on putting my PC together. I think the fact is that I’ve been too busy playing with it to write up my experience in assembling it!
Putting the PC together was a lot simpler than I expected. Granted, the last PC I put together was back in ’99 (or was it 2000?) when I put together a P3-500 for my parents so that they could browse the Internet, send me email and so that I could play Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 whenever I visited them. That was also my first time, so it took me a while to figure out how to screw the motherboard to the case, plug in the CPU etc.
This time, it was all a lot easier, partly because I had the Internet to look up anything I couldn’t figure out and because all the parts actually came with manuals! The only thing that stumped me was the fact that the video card only had a DVI out while my LCD monitor had only VGA input. In the excitement of wanting to see it all boot, I didn’t want to wait an extra day to get a DVI-to-VGA adapter, so I tried using my LCD TV as a monitor (via S-video). That didn’t work as expected and my motherboard didn’t have an on-board speaker, so I finally had to wait till I could find an adapter and used that to connect the rig up to the LCD and make sure it booted correctly. I also had a scary incident when the CPU made a crunch sound as I bolted it into the motherboard. My heart stopped for a second, but I was glad I didn’t damage anything in the process.
Soon enough, I had it up and booting:
and in an hour or so, had Vista installed and running with Aero enabled. Check out the Processor, Hard Disk and Memory ratings in the Perf Rating tool:
CPU: 5.9 (the maximum – W00t!!)
Memory: 5.8 and Hard disk 5.4.
Sadly, the PC only get’s a 3.4 in the graphics department because of the sucky video card, but that’s another upgrade for another time.
Next time, I’ll talk about how I tried to install Ubuntu on this PC. I think that post will be called “How Ubuntu ruined my weekend (and why Linux is still not ready for the Desktop)”.
>> the only follower of my blog ?
Not really 😉
>>How Ubuntu ruined my weekend (and why Linux is still not ready for the Desktop)
So you work for a large technology company? right? ;). Anyway I do agree with the fact that linux is not at all ready for the desktops. Linux on desktop is good only in colleges, where you have plenty of time to maintain it. Using computers should ease the hassles and increase the productivity, linux fails to do that. You end up spending more time searching for drivers and resolving library conflicts.
Linux? Don’t you work at Microsoft? lol Well, I guess as long as Linux can run SharePoint in its browser then you’re good. 🙂
How’s everything going?
Justin
Congrats.
So you finally got it together. What’s Boggled my mindm since Vista came out is, “What’s it take to get a full 10/10 Rating on the Visa Compatibility Appl.
I read this Article in a CAR MAGAZINE about a Super Rig. Let me tell you, it was SUPER.
It had TWO nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX, 8 GB RAM and the list of shiny details is endless.
I still dream about it. Let me see if I can find an online copy of that article and share the joy.
Binu – the Vista perf rating currently runs from 1.0-5.9, so 5.9 is the highest rating possible with current hardware. As you can guess, this means there’s plenty of room left for higher ratings when new hardware comes out.
I looked at getting a higher video card earlier on, but was bound by a couple of factors – cost (I didn’t want to get a $200 video card), need (I am not into PC gaming as much these days – more into Xbox gaming on my 1080p TV) and power consumption (a 400W power supply doesn’t leave much room for dual video cards ).