Recently went to Sim Lim Square to purchase a new desktop PC as my old one that I have been using for years is slowing down considerably. I have also been pondering to change for ages and now when many cool games (Dragon Age, Left 4 Dead 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Mafia II, Max Payne 3, etc) are being or going to be realeased, it only motivates me further to upgrade. Total damage for the new system (without speakers, keyboard, mouse and monitor) is S$1226, which I will breakdown later in the post. 🙂
NZXT Beta Evo mid tower black steel chassis at S$79.
NZXT Beta Evo
- Black Internal finish for sleek look
- Support for up to 6 120mm fans with the option of dual 140mm at the top
- Meshed front panel allows for better airflow than traditional cases
More specification, information and product awards can be found on NZXT webby.
Intel Core i5-750 Processor for my Quad-Core Desktop.
MSI P55-CD53 mainboard and Intel Core i5-750 Processor bundle is at S$468. Both comes with 3 years warranty each.
Seasonic M12II 500W PSU at S$119. The PSU is modular and comes with 5 years warranty.
Team Elite DDR3 2 x 2GB (4GB) Set at S$146. Love the RAM heat sinks and it’s ideal for overclocking.
Samsung DVDRW 22X SATA at S$34.
Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA at S$121. Actually wanted to get a Caviar Black but because I have another 1TB Green, I thought I could RAID them next time if I decide to go with network storage. 🙂
MSI R5770 (ATI Radeon) at S$259. 850MHz Core, 1GB GDDR5 4800MHz Memory and with DirectX 11 & OpenCL support.
Fixed up all the parts and spent about 15mins to do some cable management. It’s really a spacious chassis which is good for air circulation. Oh, the chassis comes with 1 x 120mm fan (with blue LED) at the front grille. I will put up a couple of the 120mm fans soon!
Connected the new desktop to my 42″ plasma TV via HDMI to try and after which continue with the installation of Windows 7. After the usual process of updating and installing the necessary drivers, the first thing I did was install Left 4 Dead 2 and played for a couple of hours on the TV. It was really cool to play games on a big screen but there was some issues as well – my wireless keyboard and mouse was spoilt so I have to use a wired set, which caused me to stretch my arms to play due to the short cable lenght. Also I have to sit on the floor to play as the keyboard & mouse was on my coffee table and this hurts my bums! Wahahaha!
Think next up, I will consider to buy
- Wired or Wireless keyboard/mouse ( I will be using the desktop in study room)
- 24″ LCD monitor (now using a 17″ Samsung LCD)
- A couple of Coolermaster 120mm fans (to lower temperature when loading the CPU/GPU)
Maybe I will do some overclocking to benchmark too! But most importantly, the desktop is for me to do some work and of course, play some games when I am free! 🙂