I got my computer running a couple of weeks ago. A potential problem with NewEgg is that warranties are generally 30 days long, and customers pay all return shipping costs. However, even after returning my motherboard, I still paid less in shipping than I would have paid in sales tax had I bought locally.
The down side is that if something goes wrong, you will eat up most of that 30 day warranty period waiting for a new product. After that 30 day period, you have to handle all warranties through the manufacturer. Based on this experience, you may want to reconsider NewEgg unless you have known-good parts to swap out in case of a problem.
I selected the case based on my brother‘s recommendation. Fancy cases and huge power supplies aren’t that important to me, and I’ll bet this current case is overkill with its 420W power supply. Regardless, after rebate, it was actually less expensive than many plain jane, inexpensive 350W cases. And it has spiffy LEDs, so I can be all leetzor and stuff!
The side has a fan that lights up and shines on the inside.
With the flash on, you can see that I didn’t bother with fancy colored cables. I don’t care, since I am never going to look in there.
This is the front. Oooh, aaah!
This newer computer is unquestionably faster than that old Dell. It’s nice when two people can be logged in without dragging everything down to a crawl.
Unfortunately, all the kinks haven’t been worked out yet. Three days ago and twice today, the computer has had a BSOD and spontaneous reboot. It appears that this may be due to RAM problems. This is the STOP error:
The important numbers are 0x0000004e and 0x0000008f. These codes suggest either an I/O problem (unlikely) or a memory problem (more likely). I am not sure why I got so many days out of this memory before a problem showed up. Oh, well. another thing to diagnose! Upon reboot, Microsoft suggested I run a memory tester. I will see if that turns up anything. If not, I may run my memory through a memory tester (diagnostic equipment found in repair shops).