It’s amazing how much clarity a few days can bring. Since I wrote the last few posts*, I finally got up the courage to go out to Micro Center and spend enormous gobs of money on fancy toys and hardware. More accurately, I went and bought stuff before I had a chance to psych myself out. Again.
So long story short, I finally got to make my long-anticipated pilgrimage to Micro Center to buy my parts to build my new computer. And it was awesome.
Sure, I’ve shopped at Micro Center before; it’s such an awesome store, how could you not? But I know better than to shop there too often, since it’s far too easy to buy much more than you intend to. And I had only been there in the past for little things, like a cheap keyboard or a housing for an old hard drive. I had never really invested into things. But doing so, being able to walk out the door with the myriad pieces required to build a completely new computing platform with my own bare hands.
I’m a little excited, can’t you tell?
How did I go about making my final decisions? Well, I basically thought and worried and went back and forth until I was annoyed enough with myself, then I went out and did something drastic before I could change my mind. My girlfriend was nice enough to humor me as I wandered the store; I really only got hung up on my choice of cases. They didn’t have the exact one I wanted (with a side window), so I made the mistake of looking at other options while in the store. I know, I know, I should really know better than that. But apparently I don’t, because I spent far too much time going back and forth about things before eventually settling on the non-windowed version of the case I had come in looking for.
What’s that, you say? You want to know what I ended up getting? Well, feast your eyes on the obligatory pre-assembly box photo!
The complete haul.
As for specs, this is what I ended up going with:
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CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K
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CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
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Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97-SLI
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RAM: 8 GB Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR3-1600
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SSD: 128 GB Sandisk
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Hard Drive: 2 TB Western Digital Black
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Video Card: MSI Geforce GTX 970 OC
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Case: Corsair Carbide 300R
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Power Supply: EVGA 600B
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DVD Drive: LG DVD Burner
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WiFi: Tenda W332P PCI card
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Fans: 2 included w/ case; Corsair SP120 Green (because my girlfriend loves me and I apparently amuse her)
I haven’t had a chance to start assembling things yet, but I did get all my available rebates off in the mail and am just waiting for a long enough stretch of time where I can start tinkering. I plan to write about the process, and may even go into why I chose the parts I did if I remember (TLDR: they were low price but good quality, and in stock).
* It may seem fairly sudden, but the last two posts were written on Friday, and this one was written on Monday. Yay, New Year buffer!
