Built myself a new PC for Christmas

Built myself a new PC for Christmas

My site, http://j2ee.mine.nu ,
which is basically apache/tomcat, running on a linux box,
which was running on a PC in my study has been replaced by something better.

The spec of the old PC was:
200mhz pentium
64mb of ram
6gb hard disk

this adds up to one slow system, in todays terms, although back in 1997 when I bought this PC, I paid about £1800 for it!

I have only recently set up the site and put linux on it - Mandrake 10.0, so that I could have a java web development box semi-permenantly connected to the internet, but the old pC was just painfully slow.

So I decided to gather my limited resources and build a new box!

Here goes:
Processor: AMD Athlon 1600XP +
Case: Zorro-x Midi Tower Black 400W - £28.20

This box was the cheapest one I could find with a 400W PSU. Very reasonably priced with a lot of features:
Clear window side panel
2 Front mounted USB and ports (In addition to the rear ones on motherboard
Stylish front panel with blue and red LED lights
This box also uses a single screw at the back, making it very quick to open up.
When purchased, from www.microdirect.co.uk, their site said the case only had one in fact it has two, one in the middle of the side panel, and one attached to a hole in the top

Motherboard: Asrock K7VT4A+ - £22.67
KT400A Skt A 333FSB DDR333 8x AGP +LAN +USB2.0 +6 ch. Audio ATX
Manual actually says it supports 400FSB?
Compatible Processors Athlon, Duron, Athlon XP, Sempron
Sound card - VIA VT8235 - 5.1 channel surround
Network adapter - VIA Tahoe VT6103 - Ethernet, Fast Ethernet

Memory: Crucial 256mb PC2700 - £25
HD: 160 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 8MB Cache 7200rpm ATA133 - £53.05
Video: Inno3d Geforce3 ti200 64mb - liberated from another pc

I used instructions at http://www.mysuperpc.com/ as my guide. By the way, i've never built my own pc before!

First step was to install the processor onto the motherboard:
The processor socket is the wide square in the right-hand portion of the motherboard

The processor is installed using Zero Insertion Force (ZIF). The ZIF is provided by the metal insertion arm shown at the bottom of the socket

It was relatively easy to turn the processor the right way, insert it, then pull the arm down to lock the processor in place.

Install The CPU Cooler
I installed a coolermaster cooler onto the processor. Not having done this before, it seemed like a lot of force was required with a screwdriver to lock the cooler into place

Install The RAM
System memory consists of one stick of Crucial PC2700 DDR memory.

As400 Iseries