I built my last computer almost three years ago.  Ever since I have had sporadic problems, including random reboots (often rebooting itself overnight for no reason), crashes, etc.  At first I thought it was the video card, and I had it replaced by the manufacturer.  The problem seemed to be fixed...until a couple months later when it started crashing again.  I switched to another model of video card altogether, and again it appeared to work...until it started acting up again.

New hardware didn't work.  Reinstalling Windows didn't work.  Upgrading to Vista didn't work.

Finally, last week I was doing some work before bed when suddenly the system shut off again.  With that, I had reached the limit.  I switched over to my backup server, and from it I ordered all the parts to build a new PC from Newegg.

For those interested, I built the following:

• EVGA nForce 680i SLI motherboard
• Intel Core2 Duo 2.4GHz processor (it was the best price/speed point, and as the motherboard is capable up to a Quad Core, I figure I can upgrade later).
• 4GB SLI 800MHz RAM
• 2x400GB SATAII drives in a striped RAID array (I have one more drive, and once I get one final 400GB drive, I plan to make it a striped/mirror array for full redundancy).
• 650 watt Antec Trio power supply
• 2 XFX nVidia GeForce 7950 GT 512MB video cards running together in SLI mode
• Windows Vista Ultimate
• An Antec case

Originally, I had planned on buying a Dell for my next system rather than building, but one of my requirements was SLI for my video cards.  Unfortunately, the only Dell systems with SLI are their high-end XPS series which come at a premium price.  As I already had one of the two video cards, the two hard drives, and a DVD-R, I was able to build a system for about $1500 less than an equivalent Dell.

At long last, the new system is up and running, so hopefully I will be able to blog more with the new system.