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Hey guys I did it, I finally did it, I went out and I bought a whole new... set of parts to upgrade my existing computer with.

It's been somewhat of an emotional roller coaster ride, trying to figure out what is best for me, at this stage I'm having trouble with my current PC as it's frequently overheating, but everything I have spect out has been way too overpriced, sometimes close to 10 grand, I guess because I'm young and dumb and I'm not willing to compromise.

I can't just keep kicking the can down the road, eventually somethings gonna give.

I'm still holding out for the latest and greatest next best thing to come, and I just don't think that's going to happen.

I still need to use my current computer to get me through the rest of university, if I ever plan to finish my course that is. - I think my biggest issue at the moment is that I'm bound up in too many projects with varying complexity, undocumented build environments and I don't wish to sit down and go through the pain of re-creating\fixing them.

I think there are some lessons to be learned here that will hopefully prepare me for the future.

I've been jotting down my thoughts as I go through this process, I think I'm also a little bit reluctant to change so this is a big step forward for me.

I shall not continue to bore you dear reader with my thoughts of melancholy at this hour, here is the parts list:

With the cost aside I wrote out a reason for each part...

SSD: One of the jobs I was given over the summer was to upgrade a fleet of Dell OptiPlex 990's with SSD's replacing their OEM hard drive, I got to experience and observe faster load times and more reliable performance.

GPU: I have been blaming the CPU for most of my computers reliability issues, but I was never able to find evidence that the Phenoms run hot, quite the opposite, one suggestion was to get an AMD GPU as they work best with AMD CPUS, another was that the Fermi chip architecture is kind of trash and runs really hot, either way I need something to tide me over until I build a new machine.

CPU Cooling: Any thing seems to be better than the stock cooler...

PSU: Was a second hand freebie from my brother.

RAM: Was also a second hand freebie from my brother. (Now 8GB Total)

FANS: I didn't want the LEDs, but the Fans that I had originally planned to purchase were out of stock, so it seems other people don't care about the LEDs also, adding more fans will make the unit cooler, there is about 5 fans in this system now...

Cable (FANS): There is no fan controller in this system, so all the fans now run at 100% speed all of the time...

Card Reader (SSD mount): The card reader in my system, never seem to work properly, later I discovered it was due to a driver incompatibility with Windows 7, (Works in Windows XP), this has the added bonus of acting as an SSD mount, plus with the 3.5-inch bay now opened I can finally install an internal Floppy Disk drive.

Cable (Misc): There is no fan controller in this system, so all the fans now run at 100% speed all of the time..

These are the parts I kept over:

OS: Windows 7 Pro (64-Bit)

CPU: AMD Socket AM3 Phenom(tm) II Thuban x6-Core 1055T (2.80 GHz stock) 3.3GHz OC

MB: GIGABYTE GA-880GM-UD2H

HDD: Original: 1TB SATA II Seagate Barracuda at 7200RPM with 32MB Cache (Now became my secondary hard drive for data).

CASE: Cooler master Chassis Gladiator RC-600.

This will tide me over until I buy a new computer within the next year or so, I guess I call this a mid-generation refresh...

I've seen some negative press about Windows 10, and I am holding off on it until I have had a chance to fully evaluate it, I do however intend to update my laptop to it. - being a secondary device, it's not as important\mission critical, although it is the device that I take along with me to my university classes, although university will be wrapping up soon, and I've become an online\part time student as one of the places I interned at has now offered me a full-time job...

I have a weird relationship with this computer, I attribute that to my dads 486, that started life with only 4mb of RAM and a 256MB HDD, later it went to 16MB and received a whopping 1GB HDD, that computer was used well in to the early 2000's long after its usable life expectancy had past, now days we take this stuff for granted, computers\systems\parts, GPUs even less than a year old are now too old to be usable, it seems everyone must have the latest and greatest, or at least that is the mindset a lot of my colleagues seem to display, I'm not a luddite but I don't immediately class something as redundant just because a new shiny thing got released, my smart phone is old, I know, I don't care, so is my computer, but I'm happy either way.

I can give my best explanation as to why I am like this but I feel it's best to just say that I am a complex person.