Fuzzy Thoughts

In my current quest to finally build myself a computer, I have purchased some additional parts that I will require for it. In this post, we take a quick look into the RAM, DVD burner, and keyboard/mouse combo that I chose.

As usual, the only place that I looked for parts was Newegg, and once again, they amaze me with their shipping and pricing. At the end of the project, I will post a total list of what everything cost me, but I will say that I got the RAM with almost a 50% discount that newegg was giving everybody. And the shipping, the package was at the school (since I’m at school right now, going into finals week) before I got the email that had the tracking number.

For the DVD Burner, there were a few things to consider. Did I want a drive that could take advantage of LightScribe? What was the maximum speed I wanted the drive to handle? Which manufacturer did I want to support? OEM or retail? In the end, I went with Lite-ON, the same people that made the external DVD burner that I’ve had for the past 2.5 years, and have been pleased with. I definitely wanted a retail box, since it would also include DVD burning software. I chose a 20X DVD-R model, since while most of the DVD’s that I use right now are only 16X, I might want to use 20X when the price drops.

Choosing the RAM was easier than choosing anything else was. There are only a few companies that I know of that are good with RAM, and the only one that had good reviews (well, as good reviews come as far as RAM is concerned) and a low price for what I was looking for was G.Skill. I was looking for 2GB dual channel kits, since the motherboard I’m going to get supports dual channel, and I wanted a total of 4GB, since I have four RAM slots, and plan on running Windows Vista. I also wanted heat spreaders on the RAM to help distribute the heat, even though I don’t think the case will be very hot on the inside once everything’s running (but the inside can never be cool enough).

The final piece that I purchased this time around was the keyboard and mouse. What was I looking for when I searched for them? Wireless, so I can move them elsewhere when I need the deskspace, made by a company that I’ve heard of (in a good light)…and that was about it. Oh, and it had to be a combo unit, I didn’t want to buy a keyboard and then have to buy a mouse.This was the first item I looked at, since one of my friend’s has a similar model and likes it. Reading the reviews on newegg, most of the issues seemed to be related to the range of the wireless, which shouldn’t be an issue for me. After that, it seemed to be random flukes with the manufacturing, which considering how many they make, will happen time to time. I think that’s about all I can say on the mouse and keyboard until I’ve had some time to use them and form my own opinion about them.

In less than a week I’m done with finals, and getting paid again. So it should only be a matter of weeks until I have all the parts and the computer is built. And I can’t wait until it is done and it is running. But what will I end up doing with my laptop? That is another story for some other time.