Being quite against throwing away perfectly good computers and upgrading them for no good reason (other than to play a game with slightly more polygons) I finally felt it was time to retire my ~1GHz main PC and build a new one.
Why did I decide to build a PC rather than buy one ready made?
- First I wanted an Intel Mac, but it was taking too long to save up for.
- Macs only have specific hardware components, PCs in theory allow mix and match.
- Maybe I could save a little money.
- I had helped build systems before, but not that recently, so it would be a learning experience.
I checked the website of a very local dealer, and that lead me to a company in Manchester that sold bare-bones PCs, that is partly assembled units consisting of a case and motherboard. I bought a Shuttle XPC.
My first build was unsuccesful, even after changing the processor, memory and graphics card for ones on the manufacturers compatibility list. I sent the unit back, and the replacement worked a treat, until something went wrong while installing a parallel port. The retailer tested the system and said it was fine, which lead me to the conclusion that the graphics card had gone wrong, so I replaced it, with a better one, and lo and behold the system worked again.
The whole process took a month or more, and was a bit stressful at times, given that I did not have a lot of resources for problem solving faults and finding out which components worked or not. I am not sure I would buy a fully ready built system, but I might in future have the supplier build a system to my own specifications.
The final system has 2Gb of dual-channel memory, a Pentium 4 - 3.0GHz processor, a Sapphire 512Mb graphics card and 250Mb SATA hard drive and a standard DVD writer and I am happy now that it is all working.
