New PC, Finally

After I returned from my vacation from Australia, I found to my dismay that my PC choked. It was working fine and I was still using it hours before my flight to Australia, strangely, after I came back, it wouldn't work anymore.

When I switched on the PC, it seems to boot fine, without making any weird noises but I couldn't see anything on my monitor which still had the power light on. Thinking that maybe my monitor is failing, I grabbed another monitor from the other room and hooked it to my PC. Still, nothing on the screen and I even changed the monitor cable, and still nothing.

I don't know what's wrong with it. I ruled out a problem with the display card because the PC should be making weird noises if the card isn't working, but at this stage, I have no idea. Then, I asked my brother to pick up the antique system and asked him to try and fix it. No news about that, yet.

My PC is already 4 years old and counting. I bought it when I returned from my studies from Australia and had used it to play and mod games, update and work on my websites. Recently, I've been using it to watch anime.

I decided to get a new system, just in case the old one refuses to work. If my brother fixes it, I will give it to my dad who just want to surf the WWW. Well, he won't need a supercomputer to do that, so my old one should suffice nicely.

My new PC should arrive next week or by the week after, latest. Normally, I prefer to build my own config but it's been 4 years since I read up on hardware and nowadays, I'm too busy to do the research and assemble a system myself, so I took the easy way out and order in one from Dell, a Dell Dimension 9200 Desktop.

It has the following configuration:-

- Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad Processor Q6600 (2.4GHz, 8MB L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB)

- 2GB (2X1GB) NECC Dual Channel DDR2 800MHz SDRAM Memory

- 256MB PCIe(TM) x16 NVIDIA GeForce(TM) 8600 GTS w/TV-Out and Dual DVI

- 13-in-1 USB 2.0 Hi-Speed Media Card Reader

- 22" Entry Wide Screen Flat Panel LCD Monitor (Analog & DVI Only)

- 320GB SATA II Hard Drive

- Dell(TM) Remote Control for Media Center

- IEEE Firewire 1394 PCI Card

- Dual Drives 16X Max DVD-ROM + 16X DVD+/-RW with Dual Layer Write Capabilities

- Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer

- Dell(TM) A525 Stereo Speakers with Subwoofer

I have a feeling my graphics card isn't adequate but we'll see how it goes. The config looks like a standard machine and costs me around SGD$2800.