2015 Update
Installed two new cases fans because the other ones were getting so loud that it was bothering my hearing. These two new fans are much quieter and take up less space in my computer case. The loudness rating on the box is 15 dBA. Thankfully, I measured the size of the fans before I ordered them. Most fans these days are 120mm, but my requires 80mm fans which is measured across the square frame of the fan. The previous fans had an unneeded wires and a metal plate for switching the light off and on. The lights on the new fans are very bright and has just one wire for plugging into the power supply.
SilenX EFX-08-15B Effizio Silent Blue LDS Case Fan – 80mm, Fluid Dynamic Bearing, 15dBA, 1700 RPM $7.99 x 2
2012 Rebuild
Below are the components that I used to rebuild the system that I originally put together in 2005. I had originally just intended to replace the broken IDE DVD drive, but all of the current DVD drives for sale are SATA. My motherboard did have SATA connectors, but my power supply did not have SATA power cables. I changed the power supply to a new one with SATA power cables, and I went ahead and installed a new SATA hard drive since the IDE hard drive was nearly out of space. My motherboard and BIOS could not detect the new DVD and hard drives, I’m assuming because it uses a old SATA specification. This led me to install a new motherboard and CPU, so that I could use the new drives. Since the old graphics card was AGP8X, I went ahead and installed a new graphics card since the motherboard only has PCI Express. The memory was upgraded as well, since the new motherboard uses DDR3. After wiring the power and reset switches, the rebuilt system booted up successfully.
Logisys LED Sunlight Stick – Blue
HP 24X Multiformat DVD/CD Writer (dvd1260i) 34.99
Seagate Barracuda Desktop Internal Drive 2TB 64MB cache 7200 RPM (STBD2000101) 114.99
Antec 450W power suppy (VP450) 49.99
MSI 760GM-P23 (FX) AMD Socket AM3+ Motherboard +
AMD Phenom II X6 1045T 2.70GHz AM3 Processor +
Kingston HyperX Red 8GB Memory Module 169.99
PNY GeForce GTX 550 Ti Video Card 1024 MB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 2.0 (x16) 119.99
PNY 4GB DDR3 24.99
Total Rebuild cost (before taxes): 514.94
2005 System
Below are the specifications and images of the computer I built in 2005. This system has a bright yellow case with glowing blue case lights.
Original Specifications
- CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+
- Power: 420 Watts
- Motherboard: MSI K8TNEO-FSR
- RAM: 512 MB DDR
- Network: Onboard 10/100/1000
My Mods
- Two blue cathode rod case lights
- Two case fans with blue circular cathode lights
- Two blue lighted IDE cables
- Installed nVidia GeForce 6600GT 128MB AGP8X Graphics Card
- Installed WD 160MB (7200 RPM, 8MB Cache) Hard Drive
- Installed NWM Dual Format Double Layer DVD Recorder Drive
(16X DVD+R, 12X DVD-R, 4X DVD+/-RW, 48X CR-R)
Images
2003 System
Below are images of the computer I built in 2003. This system has a black case with glow green case lights.
