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...

Mmmmmm... Christmas

Well, seeing as it was me who wanted one, Scan ran out of 8800GT's, so I got the money to buy one when they come back in stock. Which happens to be now. So, With the money for that, and some extra money I got from family, I'm buying an XFX 8800GT Extreme, which has the pre-overclocked Memory, GPU core, and Shader Clock. Should run Crysis nicely. I'm also buying a new 700Watt Arctic Power PSU. It has Dual 22Amp rails, and another rail which I forget the ampage on, but it's the Dual rail which matters to me. The 8800 needs a combined ampage of 26A across all rails, so the 44 + whatever from the other will work nicely.

I'm also buying a new case. It's a really nice case, an Antec Nine Hundred. I was toying between a Cooler Master Stacker, an Antec P182 or 180, or the Nine Hundred. I decided on the Nine Hundred. I've got a P180 sitting in my room which belongs to my mum's boyfriend, which at some point, will come out of the box, and turn into an epic gaming rig. I like it, but I don't really want to open the front to access my drives. So I went against that. The Stacker has a £140 price tag, so that's out of the question, and according to alot of reviews, the Nine Hundred is a very nice case. I like it alot, and the deep blue L.E.D's on the 2 front 120mm fans look cool. Most coloured fans look cheap and nasty, but these are nice, they're a very deep blue, and aren't too bright or over the top. It also has a side window which looks pretty cool. It has a 200mm fan on the top too. and has a nice big inside volume, with separate cages for the PSU, HDD's and main component's. So cooling is very good.



I was also given Crysis, which I've been playing. I really like it. The game area's are huge compared to Farcry, and even on lowest detail, it still looks fantastic. My frame rate in huge gunfights in the middle of forests are questionable, but given the age of my current system, it's still pretty impressive, and mostly playable. I'm ooking forward to Unreal Tournament 3, World in Conflict and Quake War's, which I'll be purchasing tomorrow. Then, in the coming weeks, I'll upgrade my Mother Board, RAM, and Processor. I've got my eye on a Core 2 Duo E6850. It's a damn good piece of kit, and is the best money can buy without jumping into the small fortune range.