I’ve been wanting to upgrade my pc for quite a while but the need to pay of my debts and the reluctance to shell out a large sum of cash has prevented me from doing so. I finally took the plunge and all the bits for my new PC are either on their way or in the process of being organised.

So far I’ve received my CPU and my PSU. The CPU is only an A64 3200+ since AM2 is right around the corner and I didn’t want to spend much money on a CPU and motherboard that has been superceded by newer tech in such a short time. AM2 is quite a step up for AMD, not in terms of performance but in terms of technology; in fact there’s hardly any performance gain on the outgoing socket 939 platform. So with AM2 coming (June; with motherboards being preshipped) I plan on doing a second upgrade in the not-too-distant future. As for the PSU, it’s a Zalman ZM460. It’s a pretty high quality and high efficiency power supply, not to mention quiet, so 460w should be more than enough to power my machine, even with an SLI setup.

Otherwise I’ve ordered a fairly cheap SLI motherboard (MSI SLI-FI) and a new DVD Writer (these things are dirt cheap and my current one is hosed). Lastly I’ve put my name down for a 7900gt from the states. All in all this will give me a pretty good gaming setup. The main reason for all the other bits is to be able to use the 7900gt. Since it is a PCIe card, and my current machine only has AGP, upgrading the graphics card now would have been a waste of money.

 As always I never do a complete upgrade, so I’m still carrying over a lot of bits from my old machine (case, ram, hdd’s, soundcard, etc.).

So I’ve got a decent enough CPU and PSU sitting on my desk now which I can’t really use without the rest of the stuff. I’ll get the mobo and dvdrw next week; which basically means I’ll have everything except for the 7900gt. That only comes in another 2 weeks or so. Pity, seeing as I can’t build my machine without it, as I don’t have any PCI graphics cards. Oh well.

I’m usually pretty loathe to buy from retailers when I look at the markup some of them have. But I got my CPU and PSU from one such “etailer” (Sybaritic) in Joburg. Seeing as I’ve got the dealer pricelists from all the places that they get stock from I can see that their markup is pretty small. It only cost me R80 to get the stuff insured and overnight couriered from Jhb, so that wasn’t too bad. It saved me the trouble of going to the post office (which would have cost me R81 via speedservices anyways).

So… new PC. Not particularly exciting news. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be all: “What now?” sort of thing after I get the stuff, but hey, at least I’ll be able to play some of the current games. I haven’t played any games in years now, and some of the upcoming ones are really looking awesome: Enemy Territory: Quakewars, SiN: Episodes and Supreme Commander, to name but a few for those who haven’t been following.