Comedy of Errors Beyond My Control Upgrade Anecdote

Some anecdotal entertainment:

A few months ago my 8800GTS card died on me, so I bought an EVGA GTX460 OC to tide me over until my February upgrade. I got a great deal on New Egg.

Additionally, a few months ago, my second hard drive was failing (I keep a smaller one for my Vista install). Or so I thought it was failing. I was getting all kinds of drive related errors. So, I purchase a new hard drive. A quite nice one I might add. In the meantime, I thoroughly cleaned the inside of my computer. After all, I was getting CPU fan errors. One of my case fans did die, and the system ran hot. This was going on simultaneously with the hard drive issues. So I figured that fixed things. I put everything back together, no harm done . . .

But wait, I get a vicious virus. It was like whack-a-mole. I was getting virus warnings all over the place (despite my conscientious surfing habits and protection). Arghhhhhh.. Screw it - I will just upgrade. I ain't gonna play that game. I was going to upgrade in February anyway. So I post here for advice, and got some great advice. However, I decided to wait. After all, it is the holiday$. I decide to reinstall Windows Vista on the smaller drive I reserve for the OS . . . . .

My second hard drive seems to be crapping out. While I dealing with the virus, weird things were happening to the hard drive. I figured they were related. Well, I figured wrong. That sucker has one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel. I whipped out my Ultimate Boot Disk. No go. The drive is on the way out . . .

Well, a few months ago, when the hard drive began to act up, I purchased a 1.5 terabyte (thanks again New Egg.) drive for my, guess what, February upgrade! I did not use it after I cleaned the inside of my case because everything seemed to be working. So, I go to install it . . . .

The layout of my board will not allow that. The GTX460 is a hulking chunk of plastic and metal. It covers one of the SATA ports on the motherboard. The board only has two; the CD ROM is using the other. Typical.

As I was looking to tweak, I noticed my AGP port was reading the card/slot as 8X instead of 16X. I did some research, and even posted here for advice. In fact, it was just a few hours ago. Well, if you see that post, don't bother responding!

So, I ordered new parts tonight. I will be upgrading from an AMD 5600X2 to a 3.2 gig Phenom quad core with double the ram. I am thinking my new video card should get along swimmingly with the new CPU and board.

I just though some of you might enjoy reading my road to upgrading. I am sure many have had similar, and much worse experiences. It was one thing after another, and back again. On a semi-related note, we just refinanced our house and got about $1200 back at settlement and we did not have to pay this months mortgage. That eased the pain a little bit.

I am sure I will be back here once I get my new rig up and running for one reason or another.

Till then . . .

 

:-D

It's not just a hobby - it's an adventure!

 

Heh, I understand your pain with video cards covering SATA ports. That's the issue with my current motherboard, which has 4 SATA ports, but 2 are covered by my GTX 470. My tax return is going to fund a new motherboard/CPU/RAM.

 

This machine of mine has 2 SATA ports on the motherboard, but not a single SATA power connector in the thing.