Harsh J

19th August 2009 marked the first death of my reliable P4-based PC. A huge power surge, coupled with the fact that I’d been using it for three years without a UPS lead to its demise. The SMPS conked off, and so did the board; a capacitor in both leaked. And there went my plans of waiting for an i5 based upgrade. In the past 5 years I’ve grown from being addicted to the PC to being dependent on it, and I needed a replacement to continue my daily tasks.

After realizing the board had leaked and was the reason of random boot issues even after replacing the SMPS that very day, I started to decide which is of more value to me – a laptop or a PC itself? The desire for a large screen, plus the cost of a properly customized Dell Studio 15 helped push a PC as the winner.

A round of inquiry later I had my configuration ready to be purchased.

• Intel Core 2 Duo 2.93 GHz (E7500, Wolfdale) Processor
• Intel DG41RQI Essential Desktop Board
• Transcend 2 GB DDR2 800 MHz RAM
• Seagate 500 GB 7200rpm SATA II HDD
• Samsung DVD-RAM 22x ODD
• Zotac Nvidia GeForce 9600GT PCI-E 2.0 Graphics Card
• Zebronics 500W Platinum PSU
• Logitech Internet Desktop KB/Mouse Combo
• Numeric 600 KVA UPS and a black cabinet to engulf all of the above with style.

Got the PC assembled by the dealer, since they had a policy to test the products you buy before they bill it. The total damage was 24,000 INR. Ironically, I haven’t bought a good display yet. Though the budget was extensible to around 35k, I decided to give a two or three month gap before buying a large 22″ or 24″ display, in hopes of better specs and price. For now, its back to the good ol’ SyncMaster 793DF from Samsung. Funnily, the market had only two C2Ds to choose from – E7400 or E7500 (Price difference of 200 INR).

Now am off to try out 64 bit stuff, a desire I’ve had for 3 long years! Ain’t gonna benchmark this, since the results will only be average