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You sound pretty convincing.

I think I got the largest/ heftiest/ most durable power supply available in Taiwan 5 years ago.

The case is about 23” X 23” X 8” with lots of extra fans—though I keep one side off and a 9” personal fan blowing on the mother board.

I never partition my HD’s and have several.

If I have to get a new power supply and HD’s so be it. Though I wonder at what point it makes more sense to go to SAMS and get an HP or as someone suggested, order a Dell.

But I like being able to swap things in and out myself without as much trouble as an HP or DELL would entail.

Sounds like there’s no cheap way to upgrade to a fairly hefty machine.

I use my machine mostly for word processing; surfing/posting net—primarily FR and ATS as well as Xcel for my grade sheet for my college classes.

I store a lot of pics on it. Starting to store music and a minor amount of short videos. The videos could grow. The pics grow steadily. Will probably dedicate a couple of HD’s for pics and videos when I upgrade—primary and backup.

Am a little curious . . .

there are 8 gig flash drives . . . would XP-64 BIT reside and run from those? I’m all for minimizing movement in hardware.

darkwing—Red Hat Fedora Core 8. X64 is better than UBUNTU in that ???

Isn’t UBUNTU more user friendly now? Have been dragging my feet for diving into Linux given learning curve and Microslops supposed sabotaging of such . . . But what do I know.

Sadly about a year ago, I had the Geeks at Best Buy check everything out, wipe everything and reinstall everything. Sigh. $500 down the drain.

Sure appreciate the kind responses of both of you.

Blessings,

darkwing—Red Hat Fedora Core 8. X64 is better than UBUNTU in that ???

I am just more familiar with Red Hat than UBUNTU. Personal Preference.

Sadly about a year ago, I had the Geeks at Best Buy check everything out, wipe everything and reinstall everything. Sigh. $500 down the drain.

Here's a news flash for you. The Geeks here know a lot more about computers then Best Buy...Just the customer service here is free, not very customer friendly, and you get what you pay for. Good Luck in getting a replacement.

But I like being able to swap things in and out myself without as much trouble as an HP or DELL would entail.

Yes - getting a good case that is big and easy to work with is much more fun. I'm partial to Coolermaster cases myself.

Some upgrades, such as adding memory and more storage are easy.

But once you go for the CPU, it takes out the motherboard, RAM and power supply with it.

the largest/ heftiest/ most durable power supply available in Taiwan 5 years ago.

Power supplies are sold rather like "peak power stereo" was sold in the sixties. Most of them simply won't hold anywhere near the rated power except under wildly unrealistic conditions. They are a major cause of system instability.

How many amps does your power supply provide on the 12 volt rails? Most modern "big" rigs will need 20 or 30 amps, depending on what you do for graphics.

My current favorite power supplies are PC Power & Cooling Silverstone, and Seasonic. I choose between these vendors based on which ones have the particular specs and features I need for a particular build.

One other thing ... I don't upgrade much. I build new ones. I always keep one (well, for me, several ;) PC's running while building the next one. It's a whole lot easier to research stuff on the web and order more parts and take ones time and not feel like one just jumped out of an airplane and forgot to bring along the parachute when one has a working PC along side the one being built. One can trouble shoot easier too, by trying different combinations to isolate what's not working.