Several months ago, my aunt's computer (which was formerly my grandfather's) suffered from a hard drive crash. Having a laptop, she decided to just be done with the desktop. My father & I being the computer nerds we are got dibs.
Subsequently, my computer wouldn't run Star Trek Online, a game Andy purchased and was excited to play. It might have overcome the subpar dual core, since the clock speed was more than necessary, but my video card just wouldn't cut the mustard. He went online and bought the recommended card for the game. He should have consulted me, as the motherboard has an AGP video slot and he bought a PCI-E, so we couldn't use it.
This set in motion the plan for Frankenputer. We got the case from my aunt, and I had my desktop as well as Andy's virus-ridden one at the house. We'd been planning to combine our 2 to make the best machine we could out of what we had, but now there was another one in the mix.
Dad came over Saturday and we spent nearly the entire weekend assembling it, but for the most part it is paying off. Thankfully, even though it isn't dual core, it runs Star Trek Online pretty damn smoothly.
We ended up wiping Andy's hard drive and using it, using the RAM from his computer, and his wireless card. My wireless card was acting flaky. I left my system mostly intact and sent it up to my parents' house to live on the farm.
The computer my grandpa originally had, which is the bulk of what our 'new' system is, has some kickass features. It comes with built-in FM and TV tuners, has a remote control, records video, has S-video and composite outputs, etc. I'm actually pretty excited about it. Something was wrong with the DVD burner tray, so I took it out and had to take it apart to get a disc out of it, so we'll need to replace that. Also, I'm waiting on the hard drive cage to make its way back from the data recovery service, where it's still attached to my aunt/grandpa's hard drive. That's why the cover is off and top slot is empty in the picture.
Anyway, what we ended up with:
Pentium 4 3.0 GHz
2.5 GB RAM
160 GB HD, w 80 GB master in the works....and striped SATA drives to follow shortly
GeForce 9500 GT graphics card
...and all for the $30 that it cost Andy to get the video card, and as a result light a proverbial fire under my ass.
I'm pretty happy.
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