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After shipping my MAME controller back to the manufacturer I was presented with a straight up replacement of the existing Plexiglas top and essentially trying it again as is. I was also given the option of anchoring the Plexiglas in place with several tiny black screws:

After mulling it over for a day I decided to go ahead with the screws. This way I know for sure that the issue is not going to occur again. My current control panel on the cabinet has these black screws on the surface and it doesn’t take away from the looks of the panel at all.

I’m hoping that I can get the panel back by the end of next week. I’m itching to tear out the old panel and begin mating up the new one to the cabinet.

It wasn’t until this morning that I realized just how much time has passed since my last PC upgrade. Over four years since I last sat down and built a new PC from scratch. For the record here is my current PC which has changed very little since it was built:

AMD 64 3000+
Corsair XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series, (Twin Pack) 184 Pin 1GB(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200
Asus K8T800 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket 754 CPU, Model K8V Deluxe
ANTEC Aluminum Super Mini Tower Case with 350W Power Supply, Model LanBoy
Zalman CNPS7000A-AlCu Aluminum + Copper CPU Cooler for AMD XP Socket 462,754

The only part I’ve upgraded is the video card. It started out with a Visiontek Ti4600 and it currently has an ATI X850GT in it.

I’ve tried ignoring the issues that this PC has begun to exhibit for at least 6 months. It’s slow to load, slow to switch users, lags when opening programs, slow shutting down. Did I mention it is slow?

The back breaker of course is gaming related. For some reason I can’t play games in window mode anymore. Doing so causes the PC to crash hard and only a reboot gets things moving again. Indeed, it is time to build a new PC.

This go round I plan to use the following parts:

Motherboard – GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L P35+ICH9
A well reviewed motherboard that should do the trick for me. It is missing a firewire port so I will need to pick up a cheap firewire card at some point.

Memory – 2Gx2|GSK F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK
I will use XP at first but the idea of Vista on the horizon makes me go with 4gig of ram this time around.

Case LIANLI|PC-A06A
The cabinet that our PC sits in has a rather small opening for the PC cabinet. Because of this I’m severely limited in my case choice and usually have to spend more than I would if we had a full opening. Lian-LI is a rather high end case but considering that I won’t be doing this again until 2013 or so it’s worth the expense.

Video card MSI NX8800GT 512M OC RT
Scored a nice deal on this one. First Nvidia based card for me in a long time. This is the main reason for the entire PC upgrade. My old PC used the AGP slot for video cards. New video cards require a PC with a PCI-E slot. Hence the total upgrade.

CPU INTEL|C2D E6750 2.66G 65N 4M
First Intel CPU in at least 4 years including all of my work purchases. This chip series is supposed to be very good.

PSU CORSAIR|CMPSU-520HX RT
I splurged here just like the case. With the new video card, SATA HDD and the Intel CPU I figured I better get a beefier psu than previously. This psu is modular, which means I can pick and choose how many of each type of cable I use and not have extra cables just laying in the case.

Hopefully I get all of the materials to begin building this weekend. I’ll post some pictures of the install as it happens.