I have a new computer. Not a Dual Core one, but I think this is the best I can get for around $750 (with the current exchange rate). After being a big fans of AMD for a long time, I’m moving to Intel and get Pentium 4 instead of AMD’s Sempron. For the memory, I spend a lot of the budget to invest on it and buy as much PC-3200 DDR SDRAM as my Asus motherboard can handle. By the way, this is also my first experience with Asus - my previous motherboards were Gigabyte’s and Abit’s.

So here’s the specs of my new computer:

• Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz processor, FSB 800, LGA775, HT support
• 2GB (2 x 1GB) of DDR400 PC-3200 SDRAM
• Asus P5GPL motherboard
• Seagate Barracuda 7,200rpm SATA 80GB hard disk
• Asus Extreme AX550 256MB graphic card (PCI Express)
• Simbadda Sim-Q casing

Actually, I’m rather disappointed with the mainboard and the graphic card. The motherboard that I want, P5P800 (quite old, but I heard many good things about it), was no longer available. My second choice, P5GDC-V Deluxe was not available either. Since Asus’ P5LD2 Deluxe is far out of my (budget’s) reach, I had to go with the P5GPL. Well, not really that bad though. Infact, I love its overclocking feature and the fact that I can overclocked my 3GHz processor into 3.6GHz without any problem… but I still want that P5P800…

For the graphic card, well, my first motherboard’s choice uses AGP slot, so I thought I could get a Radeon 9800 (with VIVO support) with the estimated budget. But since the P5GPL uses PCI Express slot, and the price for the VGA card on that type is still high, I can only afford a Radeon X550 card, which is Asus Extreme AX550. Wish I could buy the X1800XT-based graphic card…

For the rest of the hardware/peripheral, I’m using ones from my old computer. Like monitor, printer, scanner, speaker, etc. I’m planning to buy a 17-inch LCD monitor next month, hoping that the price will be much cheaper at that time. I’ll also thinking about a new printer, since my Canon’s BJC-265SP is already 6 years old! I do admit its endurance, and definitely will buy a new Canon’s printer later. I haven’t take a look at the models, but I hope there will be one with integrated fax/scanner function.

Finally, here’s the picture of my new PC, if you interested

I’ll post a detail specs on each part of my computer later.