The end of an era

I've gutted Estella. She is no more. This is cause for happiness!

Something hasn't been quite right with her since she was built, anyway. I never managed to fix the boot issues (which makes me believe it's the mobo's fault), and the mobo actively refused to recognize a good third of my USB ports (there were two bent pins in that area when it arrived, methinks that's the cause. Fuck you, ex-boyfriend, for getting it open box. It's like the fuck-you that kept on fucking. FOR TWO YEARS!). But, since I had nine ports on the front alone, I dealt with the other problem by never turning off the computer unless it was a dire emergency.

There's a problem with that. My graphics card is the size of Madagascar, and since the PNW doesn't use air conditioning, Estella would make my bedroom easily five degrees warmer than the rest of the house. Also the fans are loud when the room's that hot. And that's terrible.

So when it decided to stop recognizing the other USB ports? I decided change was needed. I bought a new mobo. An Intel mobo. And though it may be a weird thing to say, it's a pretty fucking sexy mobo. Everything is laid out really well, there are no cord issues, things are neatly labeled and color-coded. It's a joy to work with instead of an absolute fucking pain in the ass like the last one was. (Oddly enough, they're both by ASUS.)

While I was at it, I was browsing around and looking at how much prices had dropped, and realized that for $350 I could give my computer enough of an upgrade to work flawlessly for me for the next few years, especially since I tend to run a year behind the PC gaming curve. So I got more RAM, another DVD drive, a new processor (quad-core, stop laughing smugly Tim, it was $10 more than an Intel dual-core) and another hard drive (SATA, not IDE, my old hard drive is going to be retired to file storage.)

I'm still waiting for the processor to get here, but when it does, everything else will be ready. Case was gutted, everything was cleaned, wheels are on (thank god I hate dragging the fucking tower around), mobo is back in, everything is connected. I also downloaded the Windows 7 beta since I'm admittedly curious and definitely have more than enough room for two OSes. (Also I want something that's 64-bit just so I can see.)

In short? Happy birthday to me. In another week I should have a computer I can safely turn off when I'm done for the night.