This is about a week late, as I got really busy, but better late than never…

So, my first experience with building a computer went well, although I did hit a snag with the first CPU cooler I bought. It attached to the motherboard with plastic pegs that were to be pushed through their corresponding holes in the motherboard and then twisted to “lock”. But, the problem was that the holes in the first motherboard I bought were too small.

I took the motherboard and cooler back to swap them out, and instead of a microATX motherboard, I got a full sized ATX motherboard, and instead of a cooler with push-pin connections, I got one that attached to the motherboard via screwing into a back plate. After I figured out how to properly attach the back plate to the motherboard (the directions were lousy), it was much easier to get the cooler installed.

The Parts

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3L

Hard Drive: 500GB Seagate Barracuda

Memory: 4GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800MHz

CPU Cooler: CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus

Power Supply Unit: Antec EarthWatts EA 500

Graphics Card: Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS

Case: Thermaltake V3 Black Edition

The Build

It took longer than I anticipated to get finished, but I’m very happy with my final product. The computer booted up properly the first time I turned it on. I installed Windows XP Pro without a hitch, and then installed all the drivers without a hitch. The pain in the butt was the 12 quadrillion Microsoft updates that were required. But, in the end, it was worth it. I added to my repertoire of skills, and got a kick from seeing something I put together work the way it’s supposed to the FIRST time.

Here are a couple of pics of the build process…

Empty Case (aka chassis)

Motherboard, power supply, and DVD burner installed

The End Result

And, here’s the end result…

Front View

Side View

Sometimes you have to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves. I was recently faced with a situation like this with my computer. I came up on a decent price for a quad core processor and even though my dual core processor worked just fine, sometimes when an opportunity presents itself you have to take it. And with video encoding and post-processing 10.2 megapixel size photos from my DSLR  being processor intensive activities, I figured it might be time to look into upgrading, with Intel just releasing a new line of processors, causing some of the older processors prices to drop. So, with all my monthly obligations paid, and not knowing when I’d again have an extra few bucks, I took it. And, threw in a RAM upgrade while I was at it.

So now, I’m rocking a quad core computer with 4 GB of premium memory from Crucial (Crucial Ballistix). I upgraded to an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 CPU. That’s four processors each running at 2.5GHz. Actually, as of a few minutes before I started writing this post, each core began running at 2.7GHz. Yep, I overclocked this bad boy as far as I could get it on the stock heatsink/fan without the CPU temperature getting too high. When I get an “aftermarket” heatsink/fan, I will be able to get over 3GHz per core without running into temperature issues. Overclocking for the first time was kind of nerve-wracking, but it wasn’t hard, especially since I didn’t try to do anything fancy.

When I went into my motherboard’s BIOS, I noticed that both my CPU and RAM were running at lower speeds than their supposedly “stock” settings. That’s called being underclocked, and what’s a trip is that at a whole half a GHz slower than what it was supposed to have been running, my computer was still FAST as lightening, compared to my dual core. At the higher 2.7GHz it’s virtually flying, so I definitely can’t wait to get a new heatsink/fan and max the speed out. That’s going to be freaking insane!