Well, it really could not have gone more smoothly, save for the “duh” moment where I completely forgot to plug in the 8-pin connector from the power supply to the motherboard. My new computer is running Windows 7 and every game on max settings extremely smoothly. I learned a lesson from my last build that you never want to skimp on your graphics card, and I definitely don’t regret shelling out a bit extra for a quality card this time around. I expect this build to last me through the next 5 years a least, notwithstanding a few upgrades that I may consider, e.g., getting a WD Raptor hard drive to speed up the OS.

I’m going to continue to use the new system heavily for another week or so just to ensure that there are no underlying issues, and after that, I’ll send in the necessary rebates and write my reviews on Newegg.