Frugal Computing

So I was tasked with spending under $300 to create a computer worthy of playing Battlefield 2. That task wasn't that hard, especially since I have some spare parts lying around...
I had a case, a hard drive, CD-ROM drive, Windows XP Pro, and MS Office 2003 to spare. Since this computer's main focus was to create word documents and play BF2, the CD-ROM drive would suffice.
Anywho, I dug up my spare copy of Windows XP Pro (academic versions replaced my retail versions, so I reactivated a retail XP Pro) and I had a few open licenses to MS Office 2003... so I threw those in.
If I didn't have a spare license of MSOffice2003 I would have just installed OpenOffice.

Anywho, the final computer ended up being:
Athlon 64 3500+ with 1GB DDR1 RAM
Geforce 8600GT and 120GB Hard Drive/CD-ROM drive
Windows XP Pro all running on a 450watt PSU

Yea, I went with the 8600GT since after a rebate it was only $80... I was going for lowest of the low with the ability to play BF2. After putting everything together I was happy to see BF2 runs very smooth at 1280x1024. Everyone's happy with this computer. I spent about $280 in parts and that was with tax and shipping. I suppose if you didn't have a copy of Windows lying around you could tack on about $150 for a license of XP Pro... Still a pretty good frugal computer and the most important thing is that it does what it needs to do with the budget that we had to accomodate for.
I did a stress test on the Power Supply I went with and it does great. It is a 450watt that we grabbed for about $40 and although it is on the light side, the power coming out of the unit is spot on and after the two days of straight testing it still holds up.

Some gamer profile information...

Hey, I've got a Wii, Xbox Live, and Steam, so if you have any of them, feel free to add me. My info is as follows:

XBL: ein311
Steam: ein311
Wii: 5845 5599 2444 9231

I don't have any online games for the Wii yet, but I'm anticipating the new SSB. I'm playing Gears of War and Lost Planet on the 360, but Lost Planet's mostly single player right now. As far as Steam goes, I'm always up for a little messing around on CS, but I've been sucked in with Bioshock as of late.

DOMINATING!

So I reinstalled Unreal Tournament 2004 yesterday after about 2 weeks worth (off and on) of content downloading and patch downloading, so I could jump right back in it.

After the install, patching, and installations of additional content--about half and hour total--I scoured to find a decent server.

Three matches later and I was top of the scoreboards for a game, and in the top 5 for the other two. I played two TDM and an ONS game. That really brought my confidence up.

And then I played Gears of War and got shattered.

Long story short, I can't wait until Unreal Tournament 3 comes out. I just hope it's super optimized like UT2k4 was, that game ran so smooth on anything.

I should be sleeping...but techy stuff calls!

So I got out of work early today. Hooray! Actually, it was my scheduled time, but seeing as how I always stay at least 30min later than I have to, I consider this early...
ANYWAY.

My 360 has an HDMI port on it. Great, except with my setup I don't have anything with an HDMI port. What does one do? Why, use an HDMI to DVI adapter!
So I have my 360 connected via DVI to my sweet 20" running at 1920x1080, and the sound right now is connected to the built in speakers...I'm too lazy to crawl under the desk and plug it into my line-in on my subwoofer. I will later today though, once I straighten my desk out again.

Instead of taking it from Microsoft and paying $100 for a wireless adapter, I decided to just go the frugal route and bridge my wireless connection on my computer to get the 360 connectivity. 2 minutes later I made the crossover cable and had the connection bridged. I set up the static IP on the 360 and voila--instant connectivity.

I also did an account migration and linked my existing Zune account to my Xbox Live account. It kind of sucks because my gamerscore and all of that have been reset, but that's OK--I only had about 200 or so gamerscore and not that many achievements... I can start over, no big deal. Plus now I have a convenient Zune content stream from my PC and all my MS-related accounts are linked under one email address.

Yea, I didn't really do anything special, just thought I'd blog about it. There's a lot to be said about the 360, it has a lot of awesome features. I'm downloading the skate demo right now. I'm a bit reluctant to buy another skating game, but if this brings enough of a change, I may go for it.

Newegg brings out my impatience...

Newegg says my order is on step 3. It was at step 3 yesterday. I really wish it was at step 5--the "shipped" stage. I'm growing impatient.
I don't like waiting.

But, to make matters worse, they are shipping my order in 3 different boxes. Great. I have one item on Step 5--a video cable. Awesome! So I have a video cable shipping to my house today while the awesome stuff I bought to go along with the cable isn't even shipped yet. This is going to irritate me to no degree.

On other news, I do highly recommend Bioshock. I've been playing it when I can, and it has been a blast. I have it for the PC and switching from the mouse/keyboard to the 360 controller, I have to say: Mouse and keyboard is much better than the 360 controller.
This is coming from someone who loves the 360 controller and thinks Gears of War should only be played with one. Just my personal preference, but I'm happy I bought the PC version. Securom and all.