Well, it's been an interesting week trying to get my new computer to run without problems. After installing everything, it worked without problems in Windows. However, trying to play World of Warcraft gave me problems. Sometimes the video would work, sometimes it wouldn't. So I uninstalled the Creative X-Fi sound card and that seemed to fix my video problems, but I then had audio problems when using the on-board sound.

So I decided to get a new motherboard. I ordered a Gigabyte board, a new cooler, a 150 gig Raptor hard drive, and a fan bus online. They all arrived Monday, so I took my "old" new computer apart and put everything in the new motherboard. Ran all the cables nice and neat and went to power it up. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Dead motherboard. So I then returned everything to the "old" motherboard, hooked everything up, and proceeded to re-install Windows on the new hard drive, giving it another shot at working with a clean system and without the sound card.

Unfortunately, that didn't work either. So, since everything was brand new in the system except the video card, I bought a new video card at Microcenter last night. Instead of going with nVidia as I have been doing the past few years, I went back to good ol' ATI which has been making good products recently that rival nVidia. I picked up a high-end "budget" card for $200 with a $50 mail in rebate. Installed it, re-installed Windows, and everything seems to be working. I had no time last night to check it out.

The sound might have cracked once while booting World of Warcraft the first time, so I need to test that out. If it continues to give me problems, I'll try the X-Fi again as it might have just been having problems with the nVidia graphics card (which would explain why it never worked in my old computer).

So now that I've spent another $500 that I didn't anticipate, this stupid thing is costing me more than I would have liked. For the price, I probably could have gotten something similarly configured from a high-end boutique shop like Alienware or Falcon Northwest that would be guaranteed to not have problems and come with a warranty.

As it is, I'm left with a nVidia 7800 that works some times and not others, a dead motherboard, and a 74 gig Raptor that is in the new computer, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. Maybe just MP3s...

Oh yeah, and the cooler I bought - an Arctic Cooler 7 Pro doesn't really work as advertised. It is big, intimidating, and loud. It also isn't cooperating well with the motherboard as it should be able to speed up and slow down as needed. And even though it runs at a low speed, it's got a high-pitched whirr that is quite annoying and I needed to shut it down before bed last night. I can go back to the stock fan (which is probably what I'll do) or maybe tonight I can pick up a Zalman cooler. Hopefully I can find one that doesn't require motherboard removal for installation.

URL: ATI/AMD X850 XT Platinum Edition