About a week ago my desktop PC froze. I was surprised. This wasn't the hooptie I converted into my media PC and it wasn't the barebones laptop I picked up from Dell for $750 two years ago - this was my kicking-ass-and-taking-no-prisoners system I put together about a year ago. Back then, the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual Core processor was pretty quick - it was certainly more than I really needed for my usual computing activities. Outside of a crappy ECS motherboard that came for free with my processor, everything I put in that computer was from a reputable manufacturer.
That PC was rock solid. I once tried to freeze it by running all sorts of random clock cycle-devouring applications to no avail. If I remember correctly, I barely railed one of the processor cores.
I ran some of my own diagnostic trials and identified the Mobo as a very likely source of the problem, had Fry's give me a new mobo and processor (as per the terms of my $50 extended warranty). I hooked all the new stuff up, hit the button and the fans spun and the LEDs lit up . . . for like a second . . . then everything stopped. It didn't even post. And the power supply was making this high pitched whining sound. Even with none of the other hardware attached (disk drives, graphics card, USB ports, peripherals) it still wouldn't spin up. Nobody suspects the power supply! It's like the Spanish Inquisition or winning with an off-suit 2/7 in the pocket. When you have millions and millions of transistors that need to be working in perfect sync for those1's and 0's to actually mean anything, it's hard to suspect the power supply . . .
Anyway, I brought everything in to Fry's this morning to check out on their test bench to rule out the motherboard as the source and found that my graphics card is jacked up too somehow . . . So, I suspect my Power Supply jacked up my graphics card . . . or visa versa . . . In any case, I need a new power supply and graphics card.
Sooo, I'll need to find some new hardware and reinstall all my apps after I get all of my data off of that harddrive, but oddly enough, there's a little excitement stemming from the prospect of shopping for computer hardware :)
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