As you might have gathered from my last entry, I built my very first computer as a present for the boyfriend. He needed an upgrade for his gaming machine and we found that his 2006 model just couldn't be upgraded any further and the latest games wouldn't run... So, we would refit it. New motherboard, new processor, new graphics card.

He wanted a top-of-the-range machine so that it wouldn't need upgrading for a while yet, so we selected the almost-best-but-not-quite (not made of money here :P ) parts.

We went with the following:

• Gigabyte EX58-UD3R motherboard
• Intel Core i7-920 @ 2.66GHz processor
• ASUS EN9600GT (with Nvidia Geforce 9600GT GPU/1GB VRAM) graphics card
• 6GB Corsair DDR3 RAM

When it arrived, we found that ah - previous computer case was a Micro ATX form and the motherboard we purchased was ATX. The graphics card required at least 400W of power and the current PSU would only supply 115W. Hmmm. Oh well, blame my n00biness. :P Out we went again, and picked out the following extra parts:

• Jeantech Arctic 600W PSU
• Jeantech Luna case with fiddly light-up bits
• Sony BD-ROM Blu-ray/DVD/CD-ROM

So! Now we build (pictures described by text underneath them)...

Parts!

The working area - ooh, shiny

In goes the motherboard

Processor

Almost there... Most of the bits in now!

Aaaand... Then I forgot to take more pictures, so here's the finished product:

The front bit opens up to reveal the optical drive etc. Yes, it lights up (not my idea...), but it worked first time, the drivers and everything installed without a problem, and everything is great :D We took the 200GB hard drive and 8-in-1 card reader out of the old computer as they were still pretty good, then reformatted the lot and put Windows 7 RC 64-bit edition on there (it previously had XP Media Center which would only see 2GB of RAM :\ ) and lo and behold... Latest games run fine, not found a single problem with it yet. We'll definitely be getting the full version of Windows 7 when it comes out as the boyfriend hates Vista and needs DirectX 10 for his games (which is only available in Vista and 7)... So, there we have it. He can pay for that though :P

I was surprised to find that it worked, to be honest... I'd never built a computer from scratch and while I did have some guidance at first, I was apparently doing so well I didn't need it XD

More pics can be seen on my Flickr account :)

Did you make the same mistake I did, and update to Safari 4 when it was offered as a Software Update, then found some things didn't work any more, or you just plain don't like Safari 4? If so, here's how to revert back to Safari 3.2.3 on Mac OS X Leopard.

1. Remove your existing Safari installation. Drag /Applications/Safari.app to the Trash, and rename the ~/Library/Safari folder to something else (you're essentially making a backup here). It is important that you empty the Trash after doing this, as I found my 'new' Safari copied itself to my Trash folder.
2. Rename ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist and ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.RSS.plist (if you have it - I didn't, but then I wasn't subscribed to any feeds) to something else (backups again - these files contain your bookmarks and RSS feeds so if you don't want to lose them, don't skip this step)
3. Edit /System/Library/Frameworks/WebKit.framework/Resources/Info.plist and replace all instances of the number 5530 with 5525.
4. Download Safari 3.2.3 and install it (you will be asked to reboot afterwards)
5. Hey presto, you have Safari 3 again! Replace the files from step 2 (you may need to remove the new files created by Safari 3). Some people have said this doesn't seem to work for them, and if it doesn't for you or screws up your Safari, you might need to open the files and add your bookmarks back in manually... It seems there might be an inconsistency in the XML but I haven't looked into it in too much detail.

There you go, just thought I would share :P

I will blog properly a bit later on - just the small matter of a car crash to sort out (I wasn't in the car, but the boyfriend was - he's ok, car is pretty much a write off though. Someone smashed into him) and a newly built computer (not mine, but I had fun building it XD ) which needs me to put together a build guide for it (yes Melissa, you can stop nagging me now :P ) :D

PS. (I like brackets () () )

23°C (73°F), bright, sunny, not a cloud in the sky. :D I love the south of England (visiting mah parentz, yo) for that... The north (where I currently live) doesn't give us much other than wind and rain lately :(

Does anyone out there have a T-Mobile G1 or an HTC Magic phone (i.e. an Android-powered phone)? If so, since the update to Android 1.5, has your phone been unstable? I have a UK version of the G1 and my calendar crashes on me ALL THE TIME. Some sort of patch was released on Friday but that hasn't fixed my constant issues. Googling seems to suggest it's not a widely known problem so I wonder why mine is being weird. Also, my battery life has gone from around 2 days to less than one now and I'm hardly using the thing. WTF >:(

And now back to fiddling with old computers. Yay! /geek