| « Results Day - August 2008 | Going Downhill » |
Unpacking Photos
Today an excellent thing happened. The first set of parts for my new PC arrived. In this first package was the Motherboard, RAM and PSU. Here’s a some photos of said items straight out of the delivery box.

And the closeups
.
The Motherboard

The Motherboard is a Gigabyte MA790X-DS4, Socket AM2+. Here’s a birds eye view of the motherboard in all its glory:
.
Trust me, that sticker was there when I opened the box
It will be removed when I fully assemble this thing. Here, just for the sake of it, is the IO ports ![]()

The RAM

The RAM is a 2x2048MB DDR2 800MHz Corsair RAM Kit with an aluminium heat sink to help cooling, I thought they weren’t going to fit properly in the motherboard, so I had to try it out:


They fit perfectly
. Looks like I’m going to have a 64-bit OS though since I’ve got 4GB RAM, for those not in the know: 32-bit systems can only support 4GB of Memory in total, including Graphics RAM and System RAM. These modules would provide all 4GB from the start, then when you thrown in the 512MB Graphics RAM I’m throwing in. 64-bit Ubuntu ftw!
The PSU

The PSU is an Akasa 400W ATX PSU and Fan, it’s apparently very quiet but since I haven’t tested it yet I wouldn’t know. It has so many connections it’s unbelieveable. Also you can tell it’s gonna be special, it has it’s own special velcro cable ties:

What’s next?
I’m still waiting for the Case to arrive but it is due either today or tomorrow, most probably tomorrow. After that has arrived and when I next get paid the next purchase will be the CPU (an AMD Phenom X4 9850 2.5GHz Quad-Core processor with 4x512KB L2 cache) swiftly followed by the DVD drive, HDD (320GB SATA) and Graphics Card finally followed (unfortunately) by Windows Vista Home Premium. This machine is intended to be a gaming rig so I can’t not run Windows unfortunately. In the future I will hopefully get a new widescreen TFT monitor for it and a Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drive so I can watch all those fancy new movies 