Building a budget Vista PC
I’m sending my MacBook Pro to an Apple repair center today because of the shutdown problem. According to an Apple tech support, the repair process could take up to 2 - 3 weeks depending on the problem. I cannot work without a computer for 3 weeks so I decided to build myself a PC and run Windows Vista RC1 on it.
Here’s the spec:
- GIGABYTE GA-M55SLI-S4
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-core Processor 3800+
- Generic 1GB RAM
- Western Digital 250GB Hard disk
- NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
It took me about 1.5 hours to build the computer, not bad for a guy who hasn’t build his own PC for a very long time. The most tricky part when building this PC was figuring out how to install the front USB/Firewire ports to the motherboard. The motherboard manual do not provide enough information. Luckily, I found this guide on how to install the usb port.
The installation of Windows Vista RC1 was fast and easy. Windows Vista installation process is a huge improvement over previous versions. I tested Vista a few months ago and it took a very long time for the installers to load the files.
Vista did not have a driver for my PCI wireless network card, so I had to pull a very long cable from my router to the PC so I can run Windows Update. Windows Update did find a driver for my wireless network card, once it installed the correct driver.
For the next few weeks, I’m going to live on the bleeding edge by using a release candidate software on my main computer. I’ll be posting more Windows Vista related posts on this blog for the next few weeks.
1. Oskar Syahbana 27 Sep 2006
Hm… that graphic card doesn’t look like a budget PC :P