It was time. The final straw that tipped the decision to upgrade was that my Dell XPS 8300 power supply died last night...and blew a circuit in my apartment when it did!
I was all in a frenzy thinking the rest of my hardware had been fried too but a check at a local computer reseller shop in nearby Longwood confirmed it was just the power supply unit. He replaced it with an off-the-shelf PSU (though I'd read and seen videos saying it couldn't be done for this Dell model) for $50. So she's up and running again.
Well, if she were hooked up that is. Right now she's just a dormant heavy object sitting on the floor near her successor.
I saw it on the reseller's website before I brought the Dell in and for the price, it was the best gaming rig in my budget I could find anywhere. Even if I bought the components from Newegg or Tiger Direct, I doubt I could have done better.* And with my ancient and obsolete PC building skills which were useful in the 486 days, I'd likely fuck it up and have to resign to having someone like this reseller build it for me.
Here's her specs. The CPU is an i5 which sounds like a downgrade from the Dell's i7, but it's a newer generation (Ivy Bridge) and should not impact anything adversely. In fact with her SSD drive, and fresh Windows 10 (without the baggage that the other two computers are dealing with) and much better video card, she's blazing fast!
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Video Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760
Display Memory: 6052 MB
Drive: C:
Free Space: 83.5 GB
Total Space: 121.6 GB
File System: NTFS
Model: SAMSUNG SSD PM800 2.5" 1 SCSI Disk Device
Drive: D:
Free Space: 476.8 GB
Total Space: 476.9 GB
File System: NTFS
Model: Hitachi HDS721050CLA662 SCSI Disk Device
Motherboard: ASUS P8B75-M LGA
600W power supply
Case: Thermaltake Versa H22 Mid-tower (Black with front dual case fan green LEDs)
Price: $749.99
I called out sick for tonight, of course. I want my new queen to be ready for next week's staycation where I intend to put her through the courses indeed.
Now if only I could reconfigure the XPS into a replacement laptop for the HP which is getting decidedly worthless as time marches forward.
*EDIT: I hunted down the Newegg and Amazon prices for each of these components and I came to $974. Not factoring tax or shipping, which would easily bump the total cost over the $1,000 mark if I'd tried to build this rig myself. Um, I think I got a good deal. With tax, I paid $802.49 for it.
I was all in a frenzy thinking the rest of my hardware had been fried too but a check at a local computer reseller shop in nearby Longwood confirmed it was just the power supply unit. He replaced it with an off-the-shelf PSU (though I'd read and seen videos saying it couldn't be done for this Dell model) for $50. So she's up and running again.
Well, if she were hooked up that is. Right now she's just a dormant heavy object sitting on the floor near her successor.
I saw it on the reseller's website before I brought the Dell in and for the price, it was the best gaming rig in my budget I could find anywhere. Even if I bought the components from Newegg or Tiger Direct, I doubt I could have done better.* And with my ancient and obsolete PC building skills which were useful in the 486 days, I'd likely fuck it up and have to resign to having someone like this reseller build it for me.
Here's her specs. The CPU is an i5 which sounds like a downgrade from the Dell's i7, but it's a newer generation (Ivy Bridge) and should not impact anything adversely. In fact with her SSD drive, and fresh Windows 10 (without the baggage that the other two computers are dealing with) and much better video card, she's blazing fast!
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Video Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760
Display Memory: 6052 MB
Drive: C:
Free Space: 83.5 GB
Total Space: 121.6 GB
File System: NTFS
Model: SAMSUNG SSD PM800 2.5" 1 SCSI Disk Device
Drive: D:
Free Space: 476.8 GB
Total Space: 476.9 GB
File System: NTFS
Model: Hitachi HDS721050CLA662 SCSI Disk Device
Motherboard: ASUS P8B75-M LGA
600W power supply
Case: Thermaltake Versa H22 Mid-tower (Black with front dual case fan green LEDs)
Price: $749.99
I called out sick for tonight, of course. I want my new queen to be ready for next week's staycation where I intend to put her through the courses indeed.
Now if only I could reconfigure the XPS into a replacement laptop for the HP which is getting decidedly worthless as time marches forward.
*EDIT: I hunted down the Newegg and Amazon prices for each of these components and I came to $974. Not factoring tax or shipping, which would easily bump the total cost over the $1,000 mark if I'd tried to build this rig myself. Um, I think I got a good deal. With tax, I paid $802.49 for it.