Time to Upgrade

It's finally reached that point. I've decided it's time to upgrade our PC. With some new software coming out (Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008) our PC has finally reached a point where it can't handle the new stuff. My wife is going up to visit her parents for a week this Saturday so I figured the week with her gone would be the best time to put together the new rig and get it all up and running.

We've had our PC for almost four years now and it's starting to feel the strain. My wife would probably disagree with me on that and argue we could keep using it for the next decade or so. That's the biggest problem with being a geek. You want to always have the latest and greatest, but you have to balance it with your budget. Sure, I wanted an Xbox 360 when it came out, but I ended up waiting almost a year until getting one. I wanted to upgrade this machine a little over a year ago, but I held off and waited until the 3-4 year mark I told her I'd wait when I built our current PC.

Here's the layout of the new PC setup and what it's replacing...

• Intel Core 2 Quad Core Q6600 Processor (AMD Athlon 64 3700+)
• Gigabyte DQ6 X38 Chipset Motherboard (ASUS A8N32-SLI Premium)
• 4 GB DDR2 1066 RAM (2 GB DDR 400 RAM)
• NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT Video Card (NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX)
• 3x 640 GB WD Hard Drives in RAID 5 (74 GB WD Raptor + 2x 160 GB Seagate SATA)
• Hauppauge HVR-1800 HDTV capture card (Hauppauge PVR-500 Analog capture card)
• Samsung 22" Widescreen LCD (Dell 17" LCD)

Overall this machine looks to be able to handle anything I'll throw at it in the next few years. Windows Vista shouldn't be a problem when and if I eventually decide to upgrade to it.