All things must come to a end...

After two months of consideration, planning and even frustration, the wait is finally over!

I have ordered a brand new custom built computer from AVADirect. The specs of my new computer are now final and will not be changed anymore. Here they are:

ZALMAN, Z9 U3 Black mid-tower Case w/window, ATX, Steel/Plastic
ASUS M5A97 R2.0 motherboard with AM3+, AMD 970. Support for up to 32GB DDR3-2133 SDRAM, PCIe x16, SATA3, RAID support ATX
Quad-core AMD FX-4300 3.8 GHz - 4 GHz AM3+ 95 watt processor with 4MB L3 cache and support for up to DDR3-1866 SDRAM
Fractal Design Integra R2 500 watt power supply, 80 PLUS Bronze, 24-pin ATX12V v2.31 EPS12V, 1x 8/6-pin PCIe
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO copper/aluminum CPU cooler, Socket 2011/1155/1156/1366/775/FM1/AM3/AM2 w/1 gram of thermal compound
Western Digital 1 TB WD Black (WD1003FZEX) 7200 RPM SATA3 hard drive w/64MB Cache
Crucial 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) Ballistix Sport PC3-12800 DDR3 1.6 GHz CL9 1.5V Non-ECC SDRAM DIMM
EVGA GeForce 8400 GS 520 MHz w/1 GB GDDR3 1.2 GHz w/VGA+DVI+HDMI, PCIe x16
Lite-on, iHAS124 Black 24x SATA DVD±RW Dual-Layer Burner

Off of eBay, I order this item that has low stock on AVADirect, it is a Sabrent CRW-UINB USB 2.0 internal card reader. Another item that is still available, but has limited availability is the Fractal Design Integra R2 500 watt power supply.

The custom built PC that I ordered was $630.95. If you include $64.53 in ground shipping, the total will be up to $695.48. Since I'm including the card reader, the final total that I spent online is $706.47. The computer that I customised has a three year silver warranty package including parts and labor. If anything fails, the warranty can be exercised.

It will take AVADirect at least one to two weeks to assemble my new custom built computer. Components associated with the new computer will be thoroughly tested and burn-in for at least two to three days prior to shipping. In any event there are manufacturing defects or compatibility issues with the hardware, the processing order will eventually be delayed.

With that said, after more than 13 years...I'm afraid that all things are gonna have to come to a end. On Sunday night, I will back everything all of the data on this hard drive, unplug all of the USB ports, turn this computer off and stop using it. I will be unable to respond to anything until I get the new PC up and running.

When my new computer finally arrives, I will turn the computer back on use the hard disk wiping utility, turn the old computer off for the last time and unplug it. The end result is that the current computer that I'm using will be decommissioned!

It's been more than four years since I used this old computer again and I will NOT put this old computer back in the garage.

To close this, I strongly expect that this old computer (and the components associated with it) will highly likely be either sold or taken to a recycling center.

When I turn my new computer on for the first time, I will run MemTest86 for at least 24 hours to make sure that the newly installed memory is good. After that, I will try to install Windows Vista x64.

I would like to thank PR-Imagery for the help in customising this brand new computer and my friends for helping my do the research and homework regarding the new computer.

What are your thoughts about the finalisation of my new computer?