Scratch Built PC

Hey guys!

My first real post here, as Ste has been updating the blog for the majority of the time that it’s been online. I now have a project to be posting though, something which I hope interests a few people. Ste’s work on the cockpit and wheel side of things has been an inspiration to many people as proven by the steady rise in blog visists, and I’d certainly love to have a setup like that in the future. For the time being however, I’ve decided to put together my first scratch built PC.

After weeks of advice and reading reviews, I chose the parts that would make up my gaming rig. This isn’t a killer £1000 + setup, as we don’t all (me included) have that kind of money, but it is something that should do a great job of running race sims as they should be, with everything whacked up! You may find it a bit out of place, posting about a PC on a sim modding blog, but behind any enjoyable racing experience is the system that runs it. What I plan to do is write up a review of how I found things after the build (hopefully it will go well!). The main benfits to doing it this way can already be seen by the cost, as it is a lot cheaper to build your own, although of course there is the risk of doing something wrong. I’m fairly confident of doing it efficiently after reading what I have online, and have had experience of changing a couple of things around in my older PC, so I hope it works out.

I’ve also taken advantage of a great deal at ebuyer.com, buying a G25 for under £120. You can get it here. Equally, OverclockersUK have the same deal going, definitely worth it in my opinion. In the near future I also hope to be buying a 23″ (or bigger) full HD monitor, as an upgrade to the LG 19″ I have at the moment. Underneath is what my system will consist of, and an image to show the main components. Later on I’ll post a proper list of the costs!

[View with PicLens]

• Lancool PC-K58 Case
• Windows 7 64 bit
• Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz (Lynnfield) + Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler
• Asus P7P55D LE Motherboard
• OCZ Gold 4GB DDR3 1333Mhz RAM
• Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 Graphics Card
• Corsair 650w PSU
• 7,200 RPM Hitachi Hard Drive (From old system, formatting + partitioning for new OS)
• Toshiba 22x Disc Drive (From old system)

Thanks for reading,

Mike