{"id":640,"date":"2009-05-17T12:57:08","date_gmt":"2009-05-17T17:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/?p=640"},"modified":"2009-07-26T13:16:10","modified_gmt":"2009-07-26T18:16:10","slug":"technology-byakkos-story-my-new-project-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/?p=640","title":{"rendered":"[Technology] Byakko’s Story – My New Project PC"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am not going to lie… Suzaku, my laptop, nearly died a few weeks ago. I was in a panic. To think that I had just about my entire academic life in Suzaku and the damn thing almost killed all of my work with it’s possible death. I won’t lie… I was in pure fear. The Beast v7 had died a great while ago due to a bad power supply, so I really was SoL (not to be confused with my cousin Sol) without a spare WORKING<\/strong> machine.<\/p>\n

It was one of those moments that I had to almost pause time and evaluate everything… The thoughts started rolling in my mind:<\/p>\n

“What the Hell am I going to do?! I can’t afford a laptop…<\/em>”<\/p>\n

“Will Suzaku hold out until I can hole up at minimal $1,000 for a great laptop?<\/em>”<\/p>\n

“What will happen if my laptop dies?! I am not going to have a machine for college next semester!<\/em>“<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But then… A thought had hit me like a bolt of lightning from a brain storm…<\/p>\n

“I have some birthday cash… Maybe I can make a budget build machine as a back up and slowly make it stronger.<\/em>“<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So I settled and decided to do the unthinkable… I drove out to CompUSA out in Plano and said “Let’s see what $200ish can get me nowadays…<\/em>” What I found shocked me, as if Heaven smiled on me… The game plan was to take the shell of the Shuttle xPC SK41G and just throw in new parts.<\/p>\n

So… Here were the parts I had gathered from my run (4\/25\/2009):<\/p>\n

$50 – Biostar MCP6P M2+ microATX Mainboard (nVidia nForce 430)
\n$90 – AMD x64 Phenom 9500 Quad-Core 2.2Ghz processor
\n$30 – Ultra 450w power source
\n$40 -OCZ High Performance Dual Channel Kit: 866mhz 2GB DDR2 RAM
\nTotal cost: $210 + tax (8.25% in Plano)<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To most hardcore gamers… I know this was not “uber” but my point was to make a machine comfortable to use. The reused parts were to be the 40GB hard drive and DVD-ROM from The Beast.<\/p>\n

So on arriving home… I feverishly tore open The Beast, cleaned what seemed to be 3 years worth of dust and dried out thermal paste and I ran into a problem. Shuttle’s xPC series uses a propretary flex board for their mainboards. I remember the words from my mouth that were uttered were “Oh… For crying out… ARGH!!! %#@&!!!<\/em>” Naturally, this flex board was longer and thinner than the new motherboard I just bought.<\/div>\n
Family had picked a bit of a scuffle with me… but resolute that buying another poor laptop would only result in me being unsatiated, I would say “I will see my project out, no excuses.<\/em>” Thus… I began to plot on CompUSA’s website for a cheap case that would be adequate too cool the machine, but also not break my college student wallet. That would be were I found my new case… The Thermaltake Wings RS-100. My quest would be to buy a new shell and this would effectively mean a brand new machine.<\/div>\n
Sunday morning… I would run at what seemed like the first light of dawn to find that computer case and bolt up my parts. The reps had trouble finding a shell and eventually a brand new Thermaltake Wings RS 100 was found! The best part was it was on sale to boot!<\/div>\n
\n
$40 – Thermaltake Wings RS 100 Piano Black case
\nTotal build cost – $250 + tax<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
After purchasing the case… I would assemble it in haste while family picked their battles with me. I remember one point getting so caught up with family that I didn’t finish the build and was even late to work from debating with them! So I was resolute to finish it in my dorm…<\/div>\n
Post work, I made haste to throw Byakko into my car with an old 15″ Sony Vaio CRT monitor, a Chinese-English PS\/2 keyboard, and a whole lot of faith. After making the boring drive home to my dorm… I ran into an issue with the build up: My DVD drive was not being recognized. The next problem was getting Windows installed but without a CD\/DVD drive.<\/div>\n
Luckily, the web had a bunch of people making tutorials on how to fit Windows 7 onto a USB drive… so I just transposed the information to my copy of Windows. With a lot of faith… I prayed and watched my machine process everything and then… I saw the confirmation that the install had completed successfully. I was elated…<\/div>\n
That was almost 4 weeks ago…<\/div>\n
Since then, Byakko has had a few budget upgrades to help it breath a little easier…<\/div>\n
\n
$15 – Second hand 15″ standard definition LCD monitor<\/div>\n
$50 – 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7,200 RPM hard drive<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
On top of that, I have dedicated it as my gaming machine… so naturally, I moved over my Saitek Eclipse back-lit blue keyboard, my Logitech G13 Advance Gamer Pad, and G9 Laser mouse. So far for $315, it’s been a grand example of a machine. I know the next upgrades will have to be the Geforce GTS 250 and widescreen LCD monitor to make my gaming & productivity a lot more tolerable.<\/div>\n
The later upgrades from there will probably be the 4GB RAM upgrade, a Corsair 80-plus 750w power source, an additional 1TB hard drive, a few more USB ports, possibly a Blu-Ray drive and just call it complete.<\/div>\n
I will say that for a machine on a budget… it runs like a champ! This is proof that if you want something that’s a killer value and you don’t mind doing some part recycling… you can build a nice system on the cheap.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am not going to lie… Suzaku, my laptop, nearly died a few weeks ago. I was in a panic. To think that I had just about my entire academic life in Suzaku and the damn thing almost killed all of my work with it’s possible death. I won’t lie… I was in pure fear. … Continue reading [Technology] Byakko’s Story – My New Project PC<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,4],"tags":[270,416,96,414,586,415,585],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-technology","tag-by-zero","tag-byakko","tag-computers","tag-diy","tag-personal","tag-project","tag-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdVBT-ak","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":642,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions\/642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}