Brad's PC

After my last two machines died, and very suddenly, I thought it was time to build a new, decent PC.

Here are the specs:

Case: Thermaltake Armor Series VA8000 with clear side panel, dual 120mm blue LED fans and dual 90mm fans
CPU: AMD Athlon64 3500+ 939pin Venice
Motherboard: ASUS A8N-E
Power Supply: OCZ ModStream 520W
Video: ATI Radeon X600 Pro 256MB PCI-Express 16x
Memory: Geil PC3200 1GB dual-channel pair
Hard Drives: 1 IDE Western Digital Caviar 7200RPM 160GB 8MB buffer, 2 SATA Western Digital 7200RPM 250GB 8MB buffer--RAID 1
CD/DVD Burner: Samsung DVD-RW 16X/CD-RW 48X dual-layer, dual format
Misc: PCI 802.11G wireless network card
Mods: Dual UV cold-cathodes, UV sensitive cables and sleeves

It wasn't too bad to assemble, with the exception getting the power supply in, due to the fan at the top of the case. I also had trouble finding the power supply in the first place, since the motherboard took both a 24pin extended ATX/BTX connector and a 4pin connector--I ended up spending more on the OCZ than I wanted to, but it turned out to add a pretty cool look to the case, plus all the cables came pre-wrapped and UV sensitive, so it saved me a ton of sleeving work.

The case was much larger than I expected, thus the term "Super Tower" I suppose. I also spent more on that than I wanted to, but with the added heat from the faster processor and video card, plus the heat from all of the drives, I thought I had better buy a case designed for good airflow rather than try to hack it together myself. It's very quiet for having 4 large fans. The case was easily large enough for a nice layout, plus everything is screwless, with the exception of the power supply.

I almost bought the ASUS board with SLI support, but then reality set in and I realized I could never justify running two video cards just so my acquarium screen-saver can top out the current 75 frames per second and so Krislyn can play the original Civilization--those are some high end graphics there :).

I'll be adding more memory soon, and since I fried the power supply on my last case somehow (without blowing the power strip--go figure), I'll be picking up a decent UPS soon too.

Here are some pics of the completed machine. The lighting and UV effects look great at night!

	A view from the front of the case. It collects dust pretty quickly around the front case fan--fortunately there's a filter that cleans pretty easily. The "wings" on the front of the case look cool, but are kind of annoying if you want to get at the DVD/CD burner quickly. The floppy and DVD/CD burner are really black--the flash made then look sort of grayish.
	The front of the case lit up. This picture isn't very good, but the case has a pretty cool glow from the front.
	A view with the side panel removed. As you can see I still need to get some more cable ties and rearrange a few things.
	A well lit up view with the side panel removed. The cold-cathode tubes really aren't visible unless you're looking at a stange angle.
	A side view with the side panel attached. It looks quite a bit cleaner since the side panel covers up a lot of the cabling.
	A side view with the side panel attached. This baby makes a pretty good night light!
	A close-up of the UV sensitive cabling. This stuff is great!! The cold-cathode tubes even came with switches so I can turn them off and on if I want to.

Here are some links to the manufacturer specs for some of the components:

Case:

http://www.thermaltake.com/xaserCase/armor/va8000bws/va8000bws.htm

Motherboard:

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=15&l3=171&model=455&modelmenu=1

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