I love building and tinkering with computers, and to that effect, I have just received some more goodies. I had some credit at ncix.com from my last purchase, which I decided to spend on a new 40GB Western Digital Caviar SE hard drive with 8MB cache and 7200rpm for my mum's machine. Her 8.4GB Quantum Fireball is nearly full, and besides that, I want it for my Legacy Box. Also on the order was a shiny new Enermax 350W power supply. I don't trust the one that was in my main system when it blew its capacitors, since the power supply is a likely suspect. That's what I get for buying a 'topower' PSU.
Add to that, I ordered an MSI KM4M-L mainboard from my workplace for less than $80. Tack on a 512MB stick of 333MHz DDR memory and we're all set.
Why do this you ask? Well, my last order from ncix.com had several AMD 2000+ CPUs on it, one for Meghan, one for my cousin's system, and one for my mum's computer. I hit a little snag when attempting to install it in my mum's computer: despite the fact that she has an MSI MS-6330 v5.0, the board seems to have been mistakenly equipped with a VIA KT133 northbridge rather than the KT133A necessary for operating the CPU at 266MHz FSB. Bizarre.
So instead, I am using that board, along with a slew of spare parts to do some more charity work and build a hand-me-down system for my other cousin, who could probably use it for school (and Diablo 2). Equipped with either a Spitfire Duron 700MHz or Thunderbird Athlon C underclocked at 750MHz, plus 256 or 512MB of SDR memory, a 32 meg Aopen TNT2 video card, and two 4.3GB hard drives, it should be sufficient for his computing needs.
Posted by Ron at November 10, 2003 05:37 PM