I promised myself I would upgrade my PC after I finished school, but as it turns out I'm not DONE done, just between degrees... ugh... Still, with a 4 month lull between classes, I've had plenty of time to amass and finally assemble parts.
Bachelor Spec (served me well, rest in peace):
Epox Socket939
Athlon64 X2 3800
Geforce 8800GT
2GB
HT Omega Claro Halo XT
250 + 300GB SATA hard drives
2x IDE DVD burners
Cisco USB wifi ethernet
Windows XP
I got some good deals on parts, carried some hardware over, got Windows for free through school. So now I have a solid and inexpensive system good enough to last me until I finish my Master's in 2014...
Master Spec:
ASRock 970DE3/U3S3 AM3+
Phenom II X4 965BE
8GB Corsair DDR3
Geforce GTS450 (free-- Thanks rogue426!!)
kept HT Omega sound card
Kingston Hyperx 120GB SDD
kept 300GB SATA hard drive
Rosewill PCI wifi ethernet (USB wireless sucks.. really badly...)
kept 1x IDE DVD drive
Windows 7 pro 64-bit
In the near future I will replace the DVD drives with SATA Blu ray drives, but that's at the bottom of my priority list. Nothing I'm reading on BR software is making me anxious to bother watching it on my computer.
The system feel is nothing short of instantaneous... I click to open Firefox, and the 10 or 15 second wait I'm used to is gone... in 3 seconds I have pages opening. I love it! I'm so used to XP (a 10 year marriage, no less) that Win7 is a big jump for me, but I'm adjusting. #1 issue is finding a good media player, since WMP12 is pure garbage ("vomit" is the only SFW word I can think of to describe it) and I can't get 10 or 11 to install in Windows 7. That's a work in progress.
The Rosewill card will randomly drop connection shortly after I wake the computer from sleep. Actually, it doesn't drop; it stays connected to the router but it says "no internet'. Running a diagnostic makes it work again, but it's still annoying so I will replace it soon.
Still a lot of tweaking and program installs to go, but so far so good!