*Growl* … *Snarl* …

That is the intimidating sound that will come from the following once it’s all put together (click image):

gear So Sean and I (I’d link to Sean’s blog if he actually had one, *glares at Sean*) bought some stuff over the weekend. Quite a bit, really. We’re both building new computers comprised of exactly the same components. So all the parts you see in that photo, there’s a duplicate of them in my lounge. You can probably figure out the specs for yourself, but for the craven (and also because I’m psyched about it) I’ll spell it out for you:

  • CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
    (2.40Ghz/Kentsfield/4MBx2/1066FSB/EMT64/XD/Quad Core)
  • RAM: Corsair Micro – QUAD2X4069-8500C5DF 4GB (4x XMS2 1GB) PC-8500 (1066MHz) DDR2, Non ECC Unbuffered, 5-5-5-15, Dominator Airflow Fan
  • MB: XFX nForce 780i 3-Way SLI, 3x PCIe 16x, 1333FSB, SATA, Dual GBLAN
  • GPU: XFX Geforce 8800GTS XXX Edition, 512MB GDDR3, 678/1972Mhz, (might get a 2nd one)
  • PSU: OCZ 850W GameXStream PSU, SLI Ready
  • OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit
  • CASE: Gigabyte 3D Aurora
  • HDD: 4x Western Digital Caviar 500GB @ 7200rpm, 16mb SATAII/300

So yeah, pretty excited. The purchase was justified as soon as StarCraft 2 was announced back in August 2007. From that day I vowed to buy a new gaming machine to ensure I can play StarCraft 2 the day it comes out. I know, Blizzard have always released their games with amazingly good scalability options, so maybe rushing out to get such a beast is a bit overkill. But truth be told we still don’t know what the requirements are and I’d rather play it with maximum settings than medium. Also, I’ve never built a gaming machine before, so I figured it was about time. So I’ve got the parts, but why haven’t I assembled it already? Well, we’re waiting for Daniel to come down from Adelaide to share all the pc-building-frenzied fun in about one week. Can’t wait. Stay tuned for a review of the completed system.