Home Computer & Gaming Rig

Computers have always been a point of fascination for me but did not hold my interest throughout the years. Back in the summer of 1979 I was programming with DOS, before it became MS-DOS in 1981, recreating the game Pong. Pong was old news at that point, having graced our black and white TV’s seen since 1972 and best known for its Odyssey appearance. Nonetheless, it was challenging enough for a kid with limited experience. I had some success but would rather have run threw the woods instead of sitting behind a monitor – seriously. I quit the summer class and ran around he apple orchards and dirt pits near our home. It was not until graduate school in the 1990’s that computers caught my interest again and that probably had something to do with the visual nature of later machines. Nonetheless, word processing was the main use, then posting content to the web via HTML, and finally computer games.

After the turn of the century I was tired of the buy-a-new-Dell every two years cycle so I built my first custom machine. Ah, freedom from tech support! I encourage everyone to do the same. It takes a little reading and frequent visits to online forums (unofficial tech support I guess) but the process is not hard. For a high end machine it’s a cheaper option. The lower end machines are now so inexpensive that you might as well buy a $400 mass produced workhorse. If you build your own you will find out it’s not a magic box but a conglomeration of parts, each with its own slot. You end up with more responsibility but if you use the thing enough it's liberaing. It certainly makes you less dependent. You can not future proof a machine but if you do it correctly you can build some life into that box.

The specs for my “dorkbox” are listed below. It runs all the current graphic hogging games smooth as butter on a hot pan. Ok, not all of them but I don’t think that’s the fault of my rig. With a little online investigation the rare problematic game usually reviles its “known problems” and poor code. Anyway, I love my current gaming setup. When FattyLumpkin is not camped out in front of the keyboard there’s a lot of space for work, fun, and spacing out.

My System:

• Case - ASPIRE (Turbo Case) X-Superalien Blue Aluminum Server Case
• Power Supply - Aspire Turbo Case 500W 12V Black Dual Fan Aluminum Power Supply
• Mobo - MSI "K8N Neo2 Platinum" NVIDIA nForce3 ULTRA Chipset for AMD Socket 939
• CPU - AMD Athlon 64 3500+, 512K, L2 Cache, 64-bit Processor 939 Pin
• RAM - 2 Gigs of Corsair Value Select 184 Pin 512MBx4 DDR PC-3200
• Video Card - BFG GeForce 6800GT, 256MB GDDR3, 256-Bit, 8X AGP
• Hard Drive - Maxtor 300GB 7200RPM SATA, 16 MB Buffer, Model 6B300S0
• Monitor - UltraSharp 2001FP 20.1-inch Flat Panel LCD
• OS - Windows XP Pro