Introducing, Gaemstrom 2.0:
I did a good bit of research into gaming rigs... buying vs. building, boxed PC vs. spec'ing one from a boutique gaming PC company, online vs. brick-n-mortar stores... and that will probably result in an article or two, at least. However, for the moment, I chose to cannibalize a non-gaming PC that I had in the house already... the family Media Center.First off, it would be more accurate to say that I cannibalized my gaming rig to upgrade Media Center so it could play games, but, since there was more room in my gaming rig's PC case, everything was moved into the gaming rig case, so it looks like my old gaming rig, even though its insides are more Media Center than Gaemstrom 1.0.
Something Old...
I kept the old case, since it had more room and easily could accommodate the 850 watt power supply that my gaming rig had. The 850 watt may have fit in the Asus Media Center case, but I would have had to move the optical drive down a slot, at the very least. In the Asus Essentia case, this wasn't a small ordeal.Also coming along for the upgrade was the XFX ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics card. It's dated, now, of course, but I'm biding my time for an upgrade soon.
I also brought over my old hard drive, not merely as an extra drive, but as a dual boot drive. I can still summon my XP gaming rig from within this new Win7 Media Center PC, when needed. The trick, here, though, is that if I'm in XP when a TV show is supposed to start recording, the Win7 Media Center has no way to know - or do anything about it, since it's turned off. That means that I generally stay in Win7 and, when I need to venture back into XP, I check the recording schedule to make sure it's clear before going back into XP. Also, I have to make sure that I don't leave the machine in XP when I'm done.
Something New...
Since the motherboard had fried on my old machine, using the motherboard from the Media Center was essential. And, along with the motherboard came the CPU and memory.Something Borrowed...
Well, I would have borrowed a power supply tester, had I been able to find someone who had one (and knew where it was). Since I couldn't borrow one, I picked up a power supply tester from a local PC shop for about twenty dollars or so. However, now that I've used it, I can put it into my tool chest for the next time I use it, so it was still "borrowed" as far as the gaming PC is concerned; it's not like I installed the power supply tester in the machine....and Something Blue?
Um... I guess Media Center. The button is green, but the interface is OH-so-blue. Future upgrades include the addition of a Blu-ray player, but since this is intended to be a zero-dollar upgrade, that's something for later.So, the stats of my new-ish test rig are:
- Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 220 Processor 2.80 GHz
- RAM: 4 GB dual-channel DDR3
- Motherboard: ASUS
- Power Supply: CoolerMaster 850watt
- OS (dual boot):
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
- Windows XP Home Edition
- Graphics:
- ATI Radeon 3000 (on motherboard)
- XFX ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB graphics card
- Monitors (dual monitor setup):
- Gateway HD2201 21" HDMI Monitor
- Sony SDM-HS73 Monitor
- Hard Drives (dual hard drives - not RAIDed):
- 1.5 TB Western Digital Caviar Green SATA Hard Drive
- 750 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 SATA 3Gb/sHard Drive
- Gaming Mouse (swap back and forth):
- Logitech Wireless Gaming Mouse G700
- Logitech Gaming Mouse G300
- Speakers:
- Logitech Z313 2.1-CH PC multimedia speaker system
- A30 Gaming Headset
- Network Connectivity: Cable Modem
| Component | What is rated | Subscore |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Calculations per second | 6.3 |
| Memory (RAM) | Memory operations per second | 5.9 |
| Graphics | Desktop performance for Windows Aero | 7.3 |
| Gaming Graphics | 3D business and gaming graphics performance | 7.3 |
| Primary Hard Disk | Disk data transfer rate | 5.9 |
