How I spent yesterday evening.

My roommate has been using the same p.o.s. compaq since 2003, with minor additions since then. Last week he made the decision that it was time to upgrade, from the ground up. So I put it upon myself to find some beefy parts, and personally build it for him, because I'm a nice guy.

Here's the parts list I came up with.

ABIT IP35 Pro ATX Intel Motherboard

EVGA GeForce 8800GTX 768-P2-N831-AR Video Card

A-DATA 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Memory

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor

ZALMAN 9500A 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler

Acer P223Wwd Glossy White 22" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor

All in all the computer is a tank. A very quiet one. It cuts through Team Fortress 2 and COD4 like a warm knife through butter.

I began assembling the computer promptly when I got home from class, 5:30P. It took 9 hours to assemble the damn thing and troubleshoot a handful of problems we were having with the MB and the optical drive.

Problem 1: the MB wasn't getting enough juice. Reason, I forgot to plug one power cable in (supplementary PCIex). Total time to deduce: 3 hours.

Problem 2: You can't clean install from SATA drives. At least this motherboard didn't let us. We had to scrounge up an old IDE cd drive to install the OS, windows, which leads to our third problem. Total time to deduce: 1.5 hours.

Problem 3: Windows doesnt have built in USB drivers during the installation process. This is a problem when your keyboard and mouse are manufactured after the year 1932. Solution, use old keyboard (luckily we had one).

I finally crashed around 3 AM. Mission accomplished. One last note, I have to thank Alex T for helping. Two heads are definitely better than one semi drunk head (me).