| software etc (meeeerkoooo)

I built my first PC from scratch last night! What a weird thing to do. I did a little research and tried to put together a new machine that would allow me a couple of years of freshness at a decent price with room for upgrades. My current PC was on it's last leg so here's what I got, all from New Egg:

CASE: CoolerMaster|RC-310-BWN1-GP BK RT
MoBo: GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD2 P55 RT
GPU: HD5750 1G
PSU: CORSAIR|CMPSU-550VX 550W RT
CPU: INTEL|CORE I5 750 2.66G R
MEM: 4gb DDR3
HDD: 500G|SAMSUNG Spinpoint
OS: WIN HOME PREM 7 64-BIT
CPU COOLER CM
DVD BURNER LITE-ON

I did most of the building outside of the case and attaching the cooling stuff to the CPU was probably the hardest/scariest part (thermal grease, ugh). Other than that, some of the tiny connections for the front panel of the case were weird, but luckily the mobo had a good manual and it wasn't too complicated. A little freaked out about the first boot thinking I'd have to mess with the BIOS but I didn't change anything and I loaded Win 7 fine. I'm going to still poke around to make sure I'm not gimping myself on anything, but supposedly the Intel i5 will overclock itself as needed, but I'll run some programs tonight to get up to speed. Also need to swing by Frys and grab some USB card/hub because everything uses them now and I'm in desperate need of more.

It was fun! Having to buy and research each piece of equipment really made me appreciate how these things are put together and work. Really demystifies things. I took way too long because I was being overly cautious but Win 7 looks like it will be fun to mess with. I hear it's much better and efficient than Vista.

Shepard...
Rental copy of Mass Effect 2 arrived last night but didn't crack it open because I was busy with PC. One bummer I'll need to rectify is, if you had transfered Mass Effect 1 saves to a new HDD (which I did when I upgraded my 360's drive) it doesnt transfer whatever is needed to carry over your save to ME2. BUT, I guess you can load an later save and play till the end and it will then show up in the new game. Or something!