My [not so] new Rig

Assembled a new rig for myself this February. Had been using the old one since 2004. Although I kept adding a hardware or two here and there, though still in perfect working condition, it had begun to show its age around a couple of years back itself.

So I finally decided to assemble a new one, convincing my folks that a new computer would work wonders to my otherwise indifferent academic performance . Though no way did they buy that argument, they permitted me to go ahead with my purchase .

After much procrastination, that carried on through the entire seventh semester [after having received permission from my folks even before the 7^th Sem began :D], I finally got down to selecting the hardware in December of 2009, and by mid-January 2010 had ascertained fairly well, what hardware I was going to build my Computer with.

I had also set myself a strict budgetary restriction of Rs.50,000 INR [around $1090 USD] – under no circumstances was my rig going to cost more than that. With this constraint in view, I set about building the rig, ably advised by the wonderful people at the ThinkDigit Forum.

The current configuration of my Rig is as follows:

Hardware	Company/Model	Cost
Processor	Athlon II X4 620 (2.6GHz)	Rs. 4850 INR [$105 USD approx]
Motherboard	Asus M4A785TD-V EVO	Rs. 6500 INR [$141 USD approx]
GPU	ATI Radeon™ HD 5750 chipset - based Sapphire Graphics Card [1 GB DDR5]	Rs. 8650 INR [$189 USD approx]
RAM	Corsair VS2GB1333D3G (2 * 2 GB)	Rs. 5800 total [$126 USD approx]
HDD	1.5 TB Western Digital SATA Caviar Green	Rs. 5900 INR [$128 USD approx]
Monitor	Samsung 2233SW	Rs. 8900 INR [$193 USD approx]
Keyboard	Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000	Rs. 1000 INR [$21 USD approx]
Mouse	iBall Laser Precise Speedster - Mini	Rs. 500 INR [$10 USD approx]
Optical Drive/Burner	LG GH22NP20 DVD writer [SATA]	Rs. 1050 INR [$22 USD]
Cabinet	Cooler Master Elite 330	Rs. 2450 INR [$53 USD approx]
PSU	Gigabyte Superb 460W	Rs. 2350 INR [$51 USD approx]
Bluetooth Dongle	Generic Chinese Brand	Rs 75 INR [$1.6 USD approx]
DVI Cable	Generic Chinese Brand	Rs. 300 INR [$6.52 USD approx]
DKE-2 cable	Generic Chinese Brand	Rs. 100 INR [$2.1 USD approx]

Exchange rate [assumption]: $1 USD = Rs. 46 INR

I also scavenged some Hardware from the old computer, thereby saving me some moolah that I used to buy the other hardware whose cost would otherwise have pushed my budget above the Rs. 50,000 – a BIG No No!.

Hardware	Company/Model	Cost
Speakers	Altec Lansing ATP3	NA
Headset	Altec Lansing AHS502i	NA
UPS	APC Back-UPS ES 500	NA

The total amount came to Rs. 48425 INR [$1052 USD approximately], well within my allotted budget, much to my folks surprise, if I may add .

Assembling a computer after a gap of nearly 3-odd years, I was a little nervous at the beginning, but then preparing myself by reading the manuals and keeping them at the side while I assembled the rig did the trick – assembled it without issues the first time itself.

Haven’t run any benchmark tests yet, but working with CATIA, while there is a video encoding taking place in the background along with optical disk burning and a small analysis being carried out using Ansys, not to mention music playing, did not quite bother the computer one bit, as I was easily able to do my work in CATIA with no hanging or time lag occurring. Was working with a simple assembly and the analysis too was pretty basic – haven’t tried any complex stuff yet.

Using Windows 7 Ultimate Edition [x86] as my primary OS [meaning only 2 GB of my RAM is being currently detected by the OS] and have left around 300 GB of HDD space un-partitioned for other OSes.

Warning/Note: The Asus Motherboard manual mentions Kingston’s KVR1333D3N9 2G in its list of recommended RAM sticks. Reading this I had first purchased that RAM as it also cost less. However, right from the moment I booted my computer for the first time, I started facing problems that varied from the computer hanging up suddenly to the computer getting restarted automatically. Finally after I went to my vendor, he suggested that I change the RAM and take the Corsair RAMs instead, which incidentally does not happen to be in the Asus’s list of recommended RAMs for the motherboard.

Some of the more pictures of the rig.

Uploaded these and the rest of the pictures, including that of my old computer, on Picasa Web – Rig Pics.

Godspeed