New Year!

Well, it's the 31st. I've kept my pc working for the LAN party. I've avoided all urges to overclock, my CPU and Ram, update my BIOS, or do anything which could potentially go horribly wrong. Except of course buy a new Case, PSU and Graphics Card. The Graphics card, which was dead on arrival, got collected today, and I should have a new one the day after this one arrives at their returns department. It should arrive there today, but I'm not sure if they work on new years day, so I'm hoping to have one on Wednesday, however, I wouldn't say no if they tried to give me one tomorrow. A £200 Graphics card is a £200 Graphics card. The sooner the better.

Yesterday I fitted 2 friends new hardware for them. My friend Owen got a new case and Graphics card for christmas, so I fitted them. The case was an Antec P190. It a behemoth of a case. It barely fitted under his desk. But despite it's size, and the 5 Case fans, plus the 8800GT fan, and the Cpu fan, it's almost silent. It's pretty damned heavy too. I like it overall, but I think I'll stick to my Nine Hundred case. It looks like it's got a lot of raw power in it, no matter what you've got in there. Although, by Wednesday, I will have alot of raw power in there.

Another friend, Kai, bought himself, some new Ram, a new Mother Board, and a new CPU. Although that didnt go as smoothly. I put it all together. Somehow got T.I.M in my hair. Plugged it in, and WHOOSH! Nothing happened. The fans came on, but nothing hit the screen. No BIOS beeps. Nothing. Tried the old graphics card, since this happened to my 8800GT, but that didn't work. So, I took it all apart again, put the old stuff back in, and it all worked. Except the HDD got a windows error, and refused to boot up. So, we're going to take his HDD, put it in my pc, back it up, then format the disk, and do a complete reinstall.

I'm hoping that everything goes smoothly tonight. I've checked the Ring main, and we can support the PC's power requirements. I've got a 24 Port LAN switch, even though there's only 2 other people Pc gaming. I've got a few other people hopefully coming along later on to indulge in some Guitar Hero. I'm sure everything will be fine...