Well, it’s arrived. My media PC is now up and going and has spent all weekend being used to play Pirates! (which is fantastic). The only reason I’ve stopped to write about it is that Polly has beaten me from the machine so she can play!
It did end up differing slightly from what was planned. The CPU jumped to a 3200+ as, thanks to a special, there ended up being but 8 quid in it. And the MB changed to an ECS RS482-M – same chipset, older southbridge, 20 quid cheaper and (here’s the kicker) in stock. Komplett were the only bunch I could find with the MCS board and when the 28th rolled around and it still said ‘expected stock on the 25th’ I jumped ship (incidentally, it still says the same today). Even better, I ordered it from PCNextDay at 1630 and it arrived the following morning. Super. The rest cam from MicroDirect, which were great bar their insistence on delivering to the cardholder address only for the first order. Luckily Polly was home as otherwise…
Of course the Aria case turned out to be a bitch to work on. And boy is it crowded in there. But despite the hardware crammed in there it’s been running reasonably cool through everything so far. Fingers crossed it holds up for Civilisation IV!
