A pictorial of my new PC being built.

1. Saturday 2nd July, 16.05: Parts still in their boxes lined up on the kitchen table

   

2. Saturday 2nd July, 17.05: Progress - the parts have come out of their boxes and are ready for assembly!

   

3. Saturday 2nd July, 17.09: OK, I know where each bit goes now, let's get this party started.

   

4. Saturday 2nd July, 17.22: The processor and RAM are installed.

   

5. Saturday 2nd July, 17.57: Seating the motherboard inside the case.

   

6. Saturday 2nd July, 19.53: It's starting to look like a PC now.

   

7. Saturday 2nd July, 19.53: A view from the other side.

   

8. Saturday 2nd July, 20.26: The computer's running now and I'm configuring the BIOS

   

9. Saturday 2nd July, 20.27: Rosie inspects my handiwork.

   

10. Saturday 2nd July, 20.45: Installing Windows.
    After this I went to watch the end of Live 8.

    

11. Sunday 3rd July, 10.17: Windows Log-In.

    

12. Sunday 3rd July, 14.19: Plugging her in. The new PC has been moved to my room.

First impressions:

• Sound quality is noticably better
• Lots of real estate on screen (but I think DVD quality was slightly better on the old monitor)
• System speed is a little disappointing, no awesome improvement
• Much quieter than the old system, despite having 6 fans
• The case was a bargain and looks fantastic at night. The fans are lit, and the motherboard and graphics card look very pretty through the side window. Shame about my messy wiring though!

The specification:
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Winchester)
MSI K8n Platinum/SLI NForce 4 motherboard (MS-7100) with Creative SoundBlaster Live! 24-bit audio
2 x Corsair 512MB PC3200 DDR RAM (dual channel)
Gainward nVidia GeForce 6600 "Gold Standard" 256MB PCI-Express graphics card
2 x Maxtor DiamondMax Plus10 SATA 200Gb HDDs (RAID-1 array)
2 x Samsung SP1614N 160GB IDE HDDs (RAID-1 array)
Sony Black DW-Q28A Dual Layer 16X DVD+ & DVD-R and RW DVD Burner
Compro DVB-T200 Digital TV Tuner Card
Smart Link voice modem
Realtek RTL8139 PCI NIC card
DABS Gaming Case with 480W PSU
Acer AL1914S 19" TFT monitor
Microsoft optical mouse
Mitsumi keyboard
Netgear WG111v2 USB wireless LAN adaptor
Logitech QuickCam

I've named the computer Godzilla, but I don't like the name. It'll do until I think of a better name.

My previous machines have been kalika, avalon (1 and 2), goliath and the unimaginatively-named laptop (1 and 2).

30 Sept 05 Update:
Now named Jeedzilla, but still crashes occasionally
Mitsumi keyboard got damaged by coffee; so did the replacement the very next day
I've abandoned software RAID so have a straight 400GB of SATA storage
The Samsung drives went into the Linux box
I failed to get the DTV card to pick up a decent signal

28 Dec 06 Update:
Added 2*Crucial PC3200 DDR 1GB RAM (CT2KIT12864Z40B) for a total of 3GB RAM.