New Machine Upgrade

For my birthday present my wife gave me the go ahead to upgrade my gaming machine.  Of course this came with the understanding that we’ll be upgrading hers in a few months.  This came after I was on NewEgg pricing out a replacement MB/CPU/RAM/Video Card that would fit in my current case.  When it came time to order I decided to change the specs and cover the extra expenses out of my own pocket.  Of course with those changes came trouble.

The parts came in today.  I rushed to get them into my case.  First mistake I made in ordering was that the AMD Retail package for my Phenom 9950 came with a heat sink.  I had ordered an ASUS heat sink.  The two were virtually identical.  I was fine with that, however.  Gives me the option of ordering an OEM for my wife’s machine later.

CPU/RAM/Heat sink all fit together perfectly.  They went into the case nice and easy.  Next up was the video card.  My old setup had an 7600GT.  Not a bad card but since my old MB is 6 years old and AGP I figured if I were going to upgrade to PCIE might as well go all out and get a great PCIE card that’ll last me for some years.  I went for an MSI GTX 265.  This card is a monster!  1 slot for the card, 1 slot for the cooling unit and it is the longest card I have seen since the oritinal PC XT days.  No joke!  It barely squeezed into my case.  The rear of the card snug up against the HD enclosure.  The length of the card is 10.5 inches.  The length of the case from the rear plate to the drive enclosure, 10.5 inches.  The lip on the back plate of the case, 1/8th of an inch.  Ouch!

Once the card was in I noticed two more things which made it apparent I needed to make changes.  First, my PSU only had one PCIE connector.  The card requires 2.  I never even knew about PCIE power connectors so didn’t know to look at the specs.  Second, when checking the MB for spare parts from the video card box I noticed a capacitor floating loose.  After inspecting the video card and MB I figured the capacitor came from the MB.

So, MB is bad and needs to be RMAed.  I have faith in NewEgg’s RMA.  They’ve done good by me on one occasion though their handling of my Rock Band 2 problem could have been much better.

The PSU needs to be replaced (and this one is but months old) and the case needs to be replaced, too, since I need more room for the video card.  I’m not too concerned about this as we would have had to replace my wife’s case and PSU when it comes time to upgrade her machine.  So when that time comes I’ll just keep the limitations of this case in mind (10″ card length, 1 PCIE power connector) and use my old case for her machine instead.