ArtisticallyChill

Fry’s will always be my #1 stop for PC parts and LEDs. CompUSA was closer but I only shopped there in extreme situations i.e. CD drive failure, ethernet card fried, and needing a backup power supply til my next Fry’s run. The closest TigerDirect was in Naperville and I never really wanted to drive the extra miles no matter how often Jason tempted me. But in the future, Fry’s might be too much a drive for me especially when I can just drive 10 minutes and hit up TigerDirect. And I’m not talking about the one in Naperville.

Today, Jason IMs me the above image of the TigerDirect catalog he got in the mail. Upon viewing the image, I IM’d Jason, “Dangerous.” He knew exactly what I meant as he tends to hit up the Naperville store and not just window shop. A TigerDirect is coming soon, in my neck of the woods. So much for saving money. Looks like the family will be getting computer-related gifts for X-mas. Yey! 2GB USB drives for everyone! New computer case, power supply, or laptop for me! LOL

~ LoneWolf

It’s been a little over a week since my PC Upgrade 2006 event, and so far my PC is running great! Windows XP Pro actually loaded on my first try! Yeah, no odd blue screens with weird, undecypherable messages, no system beeps, no files failed to copy. After XP Pro, came updates and Service Pack 2. Drivers installed without a hitch. Since I have no SATA drives yet, I re-installed my PCI Raid card and after the drivers installed, my original RAID array was found and Windows accepted the volume. WOOT! Photoshop CS2 installed fine. Guild Wars installed and looks freakin’ sweet with my new video card. Finally installed F.E.A.R. and the game looks and plays awesome! A few more ‘appz’ to install and that will finish off this round of upgrades.

2006 PC Upgrade:

DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 SLI-DR Expert Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester 1GHz FSB 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Dual Core Processor
CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit System Memory
BFG Tech BFGR6600GTOCX Geforce 6600GT 128MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card
Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 ATX12V 550W Power Supply
THERMALRIGHT XP-90 Multiple Heatpipes Cpu Heatsink
ZALMAN FB123 92mm Sleeve Cooling Fan (0nly used the fan, though)

What’s up for the next round? Another video card and a new LCD monitor, WHAT?!

~ LoneWolf

I spent a few days this past week visiting Jason and Gary. This was however, more than a social call as I was called in to provide some tech support on some dead computers. I say computers as in more than one because stepping into Jason’s office is like stepping into Watto’s junkyard from Episode One, parts littered the floor and nearly every shelf space and cardboard box. I setup the O.R. in his office using his current dining room table (which incidentally is a card playing table) and got to work.

Jason had bought a new motherboard for his main computer but after install it would not POST. We tried everything from swapping power supplies to swapping memory but it was clear that the motherboard that Jason got was DOA. Hoping that this was the beginning of a nightmare, I moved on to another computer and was able to get one up and running Windows XP. As Jason, proceeded to install the drivers and updates, I moved on to the next PC case. With tons of spare parts, I managed to boot up another working computer. By this time it was getting pretty late, I opted to take home another computer to work on back at the apartment.

By the beginning of this week, I managed to get the other PC working, replacing the power supply and hard drive. I get a call, Monday night, from Jason. Apparently, he and Gary tried to install a new DVD-R drive into a computer and is somehow didn’t work anymore. I informed them that I managed to get another PC working and Gary insisted on picking it up and dropping off another dead PC.

On Wednesday, the exchange took place, one working PC for a dead one. I troubleshooted that PC when I got off of work and found out that the board wouldn’t POST because of a corrupt BIOS. I called Jason with the news, and he informed me that the PC I gave them was messed up again. They tried installing additional hardware and apparently it stopped working. I told them that I’d stop by on this weekend to help out.

In the meantime, Jason’s gonna be returning that dead board and probably shop for more parts.

~ LoneWolf