As some of you may know, I have been having a ton of computer problems lately. It started about three weeks ago, when my system would hang (re: lag/freeze every 30 seconds) inexplicably during normal operations. These got so bad to the point where I couldn’t even make it out of BIOS without the whole thing freezing on me. After extensive troubleshooting (and mistakenly getting a new graphics card), I finally pinned down the problem on my faulty motherboard, which conveniently decided to give up on me almost exactly 3 years after my 2nd build (7/23/2010). Of course, thanks to Moore’s Law, the LGA 1366 CPU socket has already been discontinued for some time, which meant that I not only needed to replace my mobo, but my CPU as well. I ended up picking up a new mobo, CPU, graphics card, and case for less than $500, and brought in my old RAM, PSU, DVD drive, and hard drives to complete my 3rd PC build:

The system has been up and running since Friday night without a hitch, and with minimal performance decline relative to my old build (I was running an i7 which is a quad-core processor, versus i3, which is a duo-core). Overall, this is a budget PC build with some legacy high-end parts thrown in the mix, and I’m quite happy with the result. Obviously, I can’t multitask to the degree I did before, but all things considered, if I assume that this build carries me over another 3 years (I’m hoping for more than that), then I’m essentially paying less than $15 a month for my system, whereas that same number was much higher before due to the high initial cost of my 2nd build. The lesson here is that in an age where technology is still advancing so rapidly, it doesn’t make that much sense to pay for a premium build.

Here are some pictures from my latest project:

 

Interesting/nerdy fact: I named my 3rd system WOLVERINE because although it’s much cheaper and smaller than my old system (RAI), it still pulls the same amount of weight, much like an actual wolverine. I didn’t even realize that I happened to build it on the exact same day that the new Wolverine movie came out in theaters in the U.S. Now if that’s not fate, I don’t know what is.