The New Rig Is Alive!

Let me first start off by saying this PC build didn’t exactly go as planned. All of my components arrived yesterday from Newegg. Nothing was missing from my order so things started off right. It was like Christmas opening up all the boxes. After I had everything put together, it was time for the first power on. I plugged it all in and pressed the power button. The machine had some life; however I could not get any video. The motherboard wasn’t even able to POST. I talked with my buddy Greg and we tried a few things. After screwing around with the motherboard for about an hour, I decided to call Asus technical support. After a short 10 minute wait, I was on the horn with a human. After troubleshooting with the Asus tech for about 15 minutes, and removing everything from the board, the final diagnosis of the board was DOA. This morning I called Newegg. If I processed a RMA with Newegg, they would not ship me out a replacement until they received my old one. They also wanted to charge me $8 to ship the thing back. I talked to a very nice lady with Newegg and within a few minutes, I had a free return slip provided and also the RMA was changed to refund. So when they receive my old defective motherboard, I get 100% refund on my motherboard.

I couldn’t just sit around and have all these fast components waiting for some attention. Sebas and I hopped in the truck this morning and we made a quick trip down to Fry’s. The mission was simple – score a new board. After listening to some advice and input from Gregor, and chatting on the phone with Greg for quick reviews while I was at the store, I decided on the Asus P5B Deluxe. The biggest difference is that this board is it’s based on the Intel 965 chip set. The other difference, and most important, is that this board works.

See for yourself – below are some screen shots of the goodness:

Since I’m a geek, I had to make a photo gallery of the build. Check it out –> here.