PC Upgrade

I’ve been without a desktop machine for about a week because I had the brilliant idea of upgrading my PC. It was a simple cheapish idea at first. I thought I’d get a new motherboard as the one in my PC is quite limited. My current desktop set-up was a free computer from University its been a good little machine I only added a beefy graphics card to suit my gaming needs but that clock has been ticking away in my mind saying “Upgrade time!”. I’ve not built myself a new computer for quite sometime now due to having this free machine. It was well spec’d out but now I’ve decided to upgrade.

I didn’t feel the new to buy top of the range parts so I thought I’d get a new motherboard which is more compatible with better RAM and CPU for when I found a second hand deal I just had to grab. Although I’d been thinking about this for a while a motherboard appeared on the OCUK forsale forums which seemed to fit the bill. A Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3p arrived in the post pretty soon after I handed over some funds. I thought Great! but I soon hit some unplanned fails.

First fail was just after I took apart my PC I realised that the new motherboard would not fit in the case which wasn’t so bad because I also wanted to add another harddrive and the case only accommodated for 2 hard drives so I got a new case. A pretty cheap one I don’t really see the need in expensive cases so I purchased, from OCUK, an Xigmatek Asgard for £25. Next fail was while I was waiting for the new case to arrive was that I found the CPU cooler would not fit on the new motherboard due to it having 2 large cooling pipes extend outwards and conflict with the 3 heatsinks on the motherboard surrounding the CPU socket.

At this point its not so bad a quick £65 upgrade has turned in to a not so quick £100 upgrade however..

The case came and I grabbed a new cooler from Maplins in the city. I built the new machine and as I was connecting the power supply I thought oh wait. My power supply wasn’t of ATX 2.2 specification and didn’t have the extra 8 pin motherboard connection. I thought it would work anyway so I connected the 4 pin connector to the 1st half of the 8pin socket and booted up..

Beep Beep beeeep!.. Is what I half expected and I was right, quick look at the trouble shooting page in the manual and it appears short beeps related to a power failure. I put two and two together and order a new power supply. To be fair it was probably for the best, its not wise to run a demanding graphics card of a cheap and nasty power supply.

Well it came today and I slot it in and ruin my nice cable job in the new case, boot up and I soon find I have the same problem a power error. Hmm as I start losing the will to live and wish I’d never got in to computers the techy in me started checking all connectors and I start to do minimal configuration.. I get to the RAM and take out one of the two sticks… Still no post, just beeps. I switch the sticks and hit the power button once more.. Success!! the monitor flashes with crazy BIOS image and I am greeted my the Windows 7 Setup Wizard..

Which brings me to now after a rather quick installation. As it appears one of my memory sticks is faulty I’m looking at a new set but I think I’ll hold off until a bargain comes around else this upgrade is going to hit the £200 mark..

The lesson learnt here is that nothing is simple and you’d ought to plan upgrades carefully or they’ll kick your bank balance in the nads.