New PC

My old PC lasted me for 7 years (I know because I bought it 1 year before my girl was born) and its acting strangely recently.  Instead of reformatting, I asked my sister (who had took over the computer from me since I was away in Thailand most of the time) if she wants a new one.  She replied "It's about time you asked me that computer!"

So I spend a week or 2 to research a bit on the latest hardware and calculated my budget.  I want another system that could last for another 5 to 6 years so my budget would be on the above average end.

so here's the specs for those hardware nuts.

Casing : Cooler Master 912 HAF Advance
PSU: Cooler Master 625W Silent Pro M2
MB: Gigabyte Z77X-D3H
CPU: i5-3550
Memory: 8GB Kingston Hyper X 1600 (2x4GB)
SSD: Corsair T3 Sata 3 120GB
LG 24x DVD-ROM and writer
Xigmatek 5.25 inch 4x USB 2.0, 2x USB 3.0 front ports, eSATA port and USB 3.0 Card reader. 

I also have my 2x 1TB Sata HDD transferred over to my new system.  Total damage on the new system is around 1.6k SGD.  Pretty expensive but I checked out the DELL Extreme CPU series and its nothing near my system's spec and quality so its a good buy.

Initially I have some concerns of building it myself.  It has been a long time since I did one and technology sure changes.  Nowadays the PSU is actually at the bottom and wow, the fans on the casings were HUGE!  It was an hour job fixing with all the wires and stuff.  Good thing is that the power cables are finally all SATA standards.  Even my DVD drive uses SATA.  No more long ribbon cables!  (Can see how mountain turtle I am :P)

I booted up the PC and ran the bios.  Wat liew!  Now system bios can use Mouse and got 3D interface one leh.... kns... I really missed out a lot of stuff.  Installed Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit and SSD sure delivered its promises.  Blazing fast boot time.  How fast?  Let's just say I turn on the CPU and then followed by my monitor.  Once the screen refreshes, it's already in the login screen... scary. (Its a bit slower now after I loaded more programs into it but still fast compared to a normal HDD.

Tested Lightroom 4.1 and Photoshop CS 6 and pretty satisfied with the speed.   

So now I'm all set and think I will get some 3D intensive games to try out my graphics card :P..  Later..