Desktop PC Death… again.
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008After 5 years of fighting, I think i’m ready for a new desktop PC. When I built this PC, I decided to dump a ton of money into it. Here are the original specs.
- ASUS A7M266-D Motherboard (Dual Socket AMD)
- 2 AMD Athlon MP 2100+ Processors
- 1 GB PC2100 ECC DDR Memory
- 64-bit PCI Compaq RAID controller (don’t remember the model # anymore)
- 64-bit PCI Intel PRO/1000 Dual Port Ethernet adapter
- 2 15K SCSI 36GB Seagate Cheetah drives
- Nvidia GeForce 3 Ti 500 (Top of the line in consumer graphics at the time)
This thing was amazing. Very fast machine at the time.
5 years down the road, the RAID controller has died and been replaced by an Adaptec with more cache. The video card died and was replaced by a GeForce 4 Ti 4600. Both of the original processors went super nova and had to be replaced. I’m running MP 2600+’s now. (Which the board doesn’t correctly recognize because of their stepping) Everything is now in a different case with better cooling and has a new power supply. So with the exception of the motherboard, RAM, HDs, and Ethernet cards, it’s all been replaced. 
Two days ago… it died again. Apparently the fan went out on the video card and took itself out in a matter of hours. No warning for me of course, I run Linux and it’d be too simple to send me a desktop alert and shut down gracefully. I’m sure there is some kind of super-techy alerting system that I neglected to wire up in Linux, but that’s another rant altogether. I was actually looking at the monitor when it died… no warnings, nothing.
So now i’m faced with the decision, repair it again or just replace it. I’m so sick and tired of fixing my PC. I can’t begin to explain my total disgust for this machine. When it runs, it’s still a great performer and does whatever I need it to do, it’s just that it doesn’t run that often.
Oh well, I guess i’ll join the masses and just buy a pre-built machine with a nice 3-year on site warranty! Just kidding, I’m sure i’ll build again. I’m just perturbed with the whole thing right now. The thought of some high school kid coming over to try and help me fix my PC just makes me want to gag, so yeah, i’ll most likely build.