My case (black), Christopher's case (red) with pull out MB tray
Back in December 2005 (Christmas), I built new PCs for all of the kids. Gregory already had a newer mid range gamer PC (with a robust AGP graphics card), the rest of us had antiquated Dell Pentium IIIs that I bought off of ebay. Despite them being a little bit outdated, the kids were thrilled to each have their very own PC. They were good enough for the times, but eventually the newer games would not play on them. The new 2005 Christmas PCs weren't true gaming PCs (they had integrated lower end graphics cards) but they were the latest technology and would therefore play most everything the kids wanted to play. Though soon enough Tory would need a slightly more capable graphics card for SIMS and also a bigger hard drive to store her audio books, etc. Gregory at that time got the best of the best, a Super Gaming PC with a $300+ graphics card. Christopher got a new red dragon case (pictured on the right above, very cool but very expensive, notice how his motherboard pulls out of the case on a tray so that it is very easy to work on) and then he just inherited all of the guts from Gregory's older gaming system. This would be as capable as the other new PCs (other than Gregory's new one), but the AGP graphics card was more "game" capable. Eventually this would bite us as the AGP architecture fell by the wayside and his motherboard/graphics card would not be scalable for the future leaving his PC stuck in time with regards to upgradability. It was a decent gaming rig but it kept getting too hot as the more demanding games pushed the hardware. This would cause the BIOS to shut the PC down to protect itself from damage (cooking). So Christopher was ready for a more capable machine, and so was I (the max memory my Dell would support was 1GB, not good when you're messing with photos/videos and such).
This Christmas Jonathan and Nathaniel got new graphics cards that would allow them to play some new games that they were also getting. Christopher's computer (with expensive older AGP graphics card) was barely able to play these games, and he tends to play more advanced games than the little guys. So Christopher didn't get anything for Christmas other than just a promise that he'd get a new rig soon. Since I too never got a new system back in 2005, (not entirely true, I got a hand me down Dell from a friend that was slightly better than any of my Pentium IIIs). So, I finally bought Christopher and myself new parts from newegg, mostly the same stuff for both except that Christopher got a beefier "gaming" graphics card.
Great memory $16/GB, a cheapy $40 gaming graphics card for me
The beauty is that these PCs are much cheaper and yet much better systems than the December 2005 ones since the technology has advanced quite a bit since then. We each got dual core CPU processors for a fraction of what I paid for the single cores in 2005 (the new quad cores of today are currently about 5X the price of the dual cores and don't offer all that much bang for the buck for today's software applications so I passed on those). We each got 4GB of memory, lots of disk storage and the mother boards are compatible with quad processors so they are scalable. Christopher's gaming graphics card is middle of the road. It was a $150 board on sale for $100. Considering the good gaming boards go for $300-$400, I considered this pretty cheap. The most demanding game out called Crysis is what everyone uses as a benchmark (we don't have that game). People on the newegg review boards said they can play Crysis with Christopher's grahics card at high resolution with only a little bit of lag (5%), or zero lag at medium resolution. For $200+ more, we could make that 5% little bit of lag go away... I don't think so! The beefier graphics boards get a lot hotter and consume more power so then you have to start thinking about water cooling, more and larger fans and a bigger power supply.
Christopher's Graphics Card, the new rigs are nice and clean (and new and fast)
But it is inevitable that newer more demanding software applications (games) will come out and these PCs will be left in the dark. For now (and probably at least 3-4 more years) even the 2005 computers are still fast enough and able to handle pretty much whatever we throw at them and we feel blessed to have them (and to be off the Pentium IIIs, which were also a great blessing for their time). Computer parts have definitely come down a lot, you can really build a screaming machine for not all that much money. 4GB of memory is only $65, a few years ago it was more than that for 1GB. I have been encouraging friends and family to swap out their motherboard, CPU and memory for about $150 and essentially they'll have a new fast current for the times rig. The power supply, hard drive and case can't be too antiquated though, beyond say 4-5 years and you're probably obsolete for the most part (other than for simple emailing and word processing). I still have a few of my old Pentium IIIs serving as file servers. They're fine for adminstering my little domain but not much else unless you have a lot of time (and patience). YouTubing, video and photo editing, etc are going to really bog you down unless you have something a little more modern. All of our monitors are the old CRT style except Cathleen's. I'd like to replace them with the flat LCDs, but they are doing their job so its hard to dish out the money, especially when the LCDs keep coming down in price. When I can get a 19"-21" for $100 each, I'll be ready to make the jump (they're twice that currently).
Eventually I'd like to have this 52 inch monitor sitting on my desk...
