Death of a Friend
You know how it happens. My trusty 4-year old computer (my main home PC) had been shutting down randomly for the past year, but it wasn't often enough to force me to replace it. Then it started happening every time, and when I finally got it to boot, Windows reported a series of disk errors. That was apparently the last dying interaction between me and this system, as an attempt to reboot resulted only in the click of death from the aged hard drive.

It was bittersweet since it is always sad to see a trusted PC end its useful days, but I was secretly hoping that this day would come so that I could seize the opportunity to upgrade to a completely new system. Luckily I am paranoid about data loss (rightfully so, considering the circumstances) and had everything backed up so that there was no real data loss. My final diagnosis after several attempts at resuscitation is that the motherboard failed (probably a capacitor finally let the smoke out).

Replacement
The old system cost me about $700 at the time it was built (December 2003), and the new system I spec'd out and ordered came out to about $900 provided all of the rebates actually come back. Let's take a look at the before and after comparison:



The Build
The build process was uneventful, taking about 3 hours including a few beers and setting up everything to be photographed. The Lian Li LI PC-A05B Case was really awesome to work with, as it has the perfect blend of compactness and internal layout. The ASUS V-60 92mm Vapo Bearing CPU Cooler used in this build is a true beast as you'll see in the below pictures comparing it with the OEM heat sink from Intel.



If heat pipes are your cup of tea, the GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS4 Rev. 2.0 certainly does not disappoint. The entire board is passively cooled by a copper heat sink and heat pipe circuit that has a real geeky look to it. It has no less than eight USB ports + additional headers for front panel ports, etc. The layout presented no difficulties in installing the massive CPU cooler, as all of the capacitors are low-profile solid capacitors (they call this their Ultra Durable 2 design), which should help to prevent or stave off the fate that befell my old system.

First Boot
One of the seminal moments of any new build is when you first turn it on. Will the power supply leak smoke? Will the hard drive click? Will the system speaker beep continuously? Will nothing happen? Luckily for me, everything worked the first time and I was in the BIOS configuring the boot options, memory timing, and checking the CPU idle temperature (which was way cool at 27 degrees C).

Results
I decided that the current limitations of Vista still outweigh the benefits of upgrading, so I installed Windows XP Pro (32-Bit). Although 32-Bit Windows is limited to addressing 3.5GB of memory, it is a license that I already have and I figure that I'll upgrade to a 64-bit OS within the lifetime of this PC to take advantage of the full 4GB currently installed. Everything is blazing fast and the system itself is whisper quiet. It seems to generate less heat too (the room is noticeably cooler than before). I'm not a big benchmark guy so I'll leave that to the hardcore tech review sites, but suffice it to say that I'll be working and playing much more efficiently with this great new PC.

Image Gallery





Parts List:

Intel E6750 Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz Processor

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS4 Rev. 2.0 Motherboard

Patriot 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400 4-4-412 Dual Channel Memory

XFX GeForce 8600GT 256MB 680MHz Video Card

ThermalTake PurePower 2 600W Power Supply

Lian Li PC-A05B Mini Tower Aluminum Case

Seagate 7200.11 500GB 32MB Cache SATA Hard Drive

ASUS V-60 92mm Vapo Bearing CPU Cooler

Samsung SH-S203N 20X DVD+-RW Drive