From birth canal to graduation
After many months of broken promises and years of substandard PC gaming, I have succumbed to the peer pressure and bought myself…a gaming rig. As a diehard Mac user since my first Color Classic in 1993, I must confess that I am a complete virgin when it comes to the inner workings of a PC. However, at the urging of the Eat My Bomb editorial staff, I decided to go with a do-it-yourself rig.

Thanks to Brixtone in particular who specced out all of the necessary components which are as follows.

Case
COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP Black SECC
Hard Drive
Seagate ST3500631NS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB
Motherboard
ASUS P5LD2 R2.0 LGA 775 Intel 945P ATX Intel Motherboard
Optical Drive
Lite-On CD/DVD Burner
OS
Microsoft Windows XP Professional With SP2B 1 Pack - OEM
Power Supply
COOLER MASTER Real Power Pro RS-650-ACAA-A1 ATX12V
Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 Conroe 2.33GHz
RAM
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM
Video Card
EVGA 320-P2-N815-AR GeForce 8800GTS 320M

Originally, I was going to get my dad to put the rig together. He’s good at that kind of stuff and claims to have put several PCs together from scratch at work. However, I really wanted to take ownership of this project so I decided that with some video-conference help from Brix, I’d be able to do it myself. I’m going to divulge the back page of this story by letting everyone know the rig is up and running and I’m ecstatic with the results.

But let’s take a journey back in time to Thursday night…when rigs were but a far-off memory and the word Fuck would be one that could be uttered at wee hours of the morning. First of all, for all of the delicate inner workings that a computer contains, you sure have to be forceful at times in arranging things in place. I.E. Ram, Motherboard, Power Supply, etc. The fine line between perfectly snug and precariously dangling is rather small and it is one I’m sure I crossed several times.

So after four hours of swearing, temporarily giving up several times, and 15 lost connections to AIM VideoChat, I finished building the rig around 1 in the morning. AWESOME! And now for bed.

Friday Night: Installation of Windows…Oh wait. That won’t work. I need to install some motherboard update from…ahem…a Floppy Disk. HIGH DENSITY BITCHES! After harvesting the floppy drive from my jettisoned Dell and latching it onto the new rig, it turns out we could install Windows after all and then update the BIOS later. So we had that going for us.

So everything’s fly at this point, right? Oh, wait, except for the fact that the rig is running at about 250 degrees Celsius. So, now it’s off to the store Saturday evening to get some Thermal Paste. Hey Dan. Turns out I didn’t quite get the Heatsink snug with the processor on the first try. Time to apply some Mad Dog brand Thermal Paste! But first, I needed to remove the old paste because it had been naughty like Dago Frank. And since I live alone, I have no rubbing alcohol. What could I use? What could I use?

I enjoyed a Screwdriver with my screwdriver. ZING!

Why cheap Vodka of course! So, I busted out the Gordon’s and some Q-tips and with rather swift ease, I removed the old paste and then applied the new. This, along with connecting a fourth fan, cooled the processor nicely and now I’m off and running. It still takes 3-4 minutes to get to Windows but that’s something I can deal with later. I’m still ironing out some kinks with driver updates that aren’t allowing me to play games like Half Life or Bioshock but games like FEAR and WoW look unbelievable. Better than I could have hoped.

This paste did not taste like chicken

Long story short, and it’s too late for that, I’m pleased with the result but hated the process. Next time, I’m payin Fred Willard to do it. Because he will.