Vista/Gaming Box, Parts 2 & 3

A couple more parts arrived this week for the myDigitechnician Vista/Gaming box. The video card and processor, along with the hard drive, are eagerly awaiting the ordering and arrival of the remaining parts.

An AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Windsor 2 GHz HT 2 x 512 KB L2 cache Socket AM2 Dual Core processor is burning a hole in Luke's pocket, just itching to be pressed into service. Raw power. Not a top of the line processor, of course, but new technology for myDigitechnician and certainly more power than any existing systems within the company.

An XFX PV-T73G-UGD3 GF 7600 GT 256 MB DDR3 128 Bit video card is likewise being held in check whilst the final parts are selected and ordered. Luke's video games keep saying, "GIVE us the GPU!"

The cost of DDR2 RAM for this system continues to rise. The plan is to review all the options tomorrow and order the remaining parts, including the RAM. With two weeks left until BarCampMilwaukee, the time is over for waiting for prices to drop (ha!). I'm not sure the waiting resulted in any of the prices falling, and the RAM cost definitely shot up.

A decision hasn't been made yet whether to assemble the system before or during BarCampMilwaukee. It might make sense to put the parts together as soon as they finish arriving. Don't want to waste time at BarCampMilwaukee assembling the system, only to find out the motherboard or power supply was DOA.

Another week to ten days and the new system should be ready to go, go, GO!

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