A new sound card and monitor apparently wasn’t enough for my parents.
I was dragged to Fry’s Electronics again this past Friday to help them pick out a new video card. Money wasn’t much of an issue, they just wanted something that would handle games now and plenty in the near future. So I grabbed a GeForce 6800GT Overclocked for them. Got home, and remembered the Power Supply needed upgrading (the vid card needs about 400w, they had 300w). I told my parents to pick up a new PSU while I worked on other junk for their computer. I also told them to buy the more expensive ones, since cheap PSU’s with high wattage have always = bad…
Ha. My mom is a bargain whore, so she picked up a 600 watt PSU for $40. I didn’t know this until after I put it in. Started the computer up. Started up World of Warcraft, and bzzzt there goes the video card. It fried, or rather, the PSU fried it (this is when I learned the price/brand of the PSU). It was 5am in the morning and I haven’t slept yet, so I went to bed. Three hours later she is pounding on my door asking why her PC isn’t showing anything but a fuzzy-tv look. I explained, and told her to get a new PSU and take the vid card back since it was fried, and I was much too tired to go fuck around at a store picking and choosing hardware.
So I get online, and after asking Lance what a good PSU would be (since I just know high wattage + cheap = bad) I called mother dearest up when she was at the store. She got an Antec 480 watt for $130. Much better. While she was there she had the tech guys run a diagnostic on the video card before returning it. It wasn’t fried, it was working fine there. Wtf? Oh well. She got a new one anyway just to be safe.
I installed it, the new PSU, and oh shizzle. Playing games at high quality in (at least) 1280 x 1024 = ftw. The new monitor, new sound card, new video card, all make a sexy combonation to gaming.
Only problem is (according to my brother) the computer is now overheating. I checked it and the CPU is only at 50C, the GPU at about 70/75C, and nothing higher than that. It does run a lot warmer, but that’s to be expected. I think he’s just being a pain for the sake of being a pain.
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