About 4 months ago I began a long journey of putting together my own gaming PC.  As I have the opportunity to travel around the country meeting people in high places I thought I would beg, borrow, and steal top parts for my rig to help alleviate the costs and allow me to do it the right way.  Well now my new baby is done, and I can continue playing my current addiction WoW with no lag at all Woot!!!

I would like to thank Jeff from ATI, Bubba from AMD, Harry from ABIT, and the nice gentlemen from Logitech whose card I lost and alas I can not remember his name.  However, the donations these guys gave me allowed for a top of the line gaming rig with their parts as well as allowed me to buy some other stuff I needed- including my 27in LCD HDTV Monitor he he.  I only spent $1000 on this baby out of pocket and you guys can see it is worth much more he he.

My first piece to the puzzle and what started it all was a little tower I got at the 400 Man LAN Party in Seattle.  It just looked pretty and had a see through side so I thought “why not go ahead and put some stuff in it?” As I was headed to the ATI LAN Party in TX soon after I thought that would be a great place to start.  Jeff from ATI (whom I actually play WoW with and hang out at events) luckily can’t say no to a girl and easily handed me over one of the ATI Radeon X800 XL Cards.  This card was just what I needed to start my hardware collection, with 16 intense pixel pipelines, fast clock speeds, and ATI’s leading image enhancement technology to allow me to play my games on my HDTV.  I was super happy when I got my card, but when I found out that Jeff sent Brooke one of the 850’s in the mail you can imagine what crap I gave him- especially as she hasn’t even used hers yet!  But, I am still on him to upgrade for me, and he says the best one is coming… we’ll see lol.

Next down my list for people I knew that could hook a girl up was Bubba from AMD. A great guy who also shared my love for MMO’s, he also made the saying “it never hurts to ask” quite easy.  I sidled up to him also at the ATI LAN Party while he was engrossed in City of Hero’s, gave him a hug and said “I NEED a processor and I hear you’re the man to talk to!” Of course Bubba was the man and while I didn’t leave with my processor, good to his word one arrived a week later. The AMD Athlon 64 processor is designed to deliver performance and a must have for any gamer as it will allow for migration later to 64-bit computing (I tried running the trial of Windows 64 then realized a lot of my other software had to be upgraded as well so I decided to put this off for a bit he he).  With this baby in my bag, I was almost ready to fly the super highway, I just needed a great Mother Board and hmmmm… where was a girl to get that?

This was easy I thought, after all I do know Jonathan, why not hit him up for one?  After all he proposed to us all once before, why wouldn’t he want to help out one of his fellow gamers?  Well, it didn’t even end up like that.  I happened to run into Harry from ABIT before Fatal1ty, so as everyone knows I am not shy, I thought I would go introduce myself (ok I had Bubba introduce me, I am not as aggressive as you all think, but ALMOST!).

Harry was very nice and did not seem at all taken aback when I flat out asked him to hook me up with one of the top motherboards on the market. Of course he had heard of the Frag Dolls before so it makes it much easier to introduce yourself, but it probably goes to say all these guys get people asking them for the hook up all the time.  He asked me to shoot him an email on which one I wanted and said he would send it.  It took a few months to get it, but WOOT when this baby arrived a month ago I knew I was set to go. Fatal1ty AN8 motherboard is engineered by ABIT with help from our favorite pro gamer Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, This baby was packed with stuff including four 184-pin DIMM sockets, support of dual channel DDR400 non-ECC un-buffered memory and support of maximum memory capacity up to 4GB.  I only put 1GB in so far but more is on the way!  No to mention the whole thing has red LED lights that glows and makes it all pretty (nice since this is why I got the case with the side open on it he he.  Also handy was the ABIT AudioMAX Sound Card it came with that supports 7.1 Surround Sound with an optical input/output (yes I have 7.1 sound hooked to my projector so I can use this already!) so, yay me, I didn’t have to go buy a sound card as well!

The last contribution to the “Build Valkyrie’s PC Fund,” came from Logitech who saw me drooling over their latest keyboard and mouse.  It has a LCD Keyboard display that lets you know when you get an IM or email, view application info, see the time and date, etc, etc. etc.  It also is able to synchronize with one button to a Bluetooth phone or PDA, and came with a rechargeable laser mouse that I absolutely love, because it glides easily.  This key board and mouse are so cool, let me tell you, that I am pretty sure I would have bought it on my own had I came across it at the store before seeing it at an event.

The last things I put in my PC where the normal stuff I could buy on my own to complete my rig.  I got a Sony 256GB Hard Drive, 2 512 sticks of DDR memory, a CD/DVD RW drive, and a 26in. LCD/HDTV monitor to finish.  As I have never put together my own PC, nor do I even pretend to know what I am doing, I got a little help over the phone with one of our forum members, Vision2279.  He also helped guide me on what memory and drives I needed to get to go with my PC, as well as some driver installations for when I first installed the 64-Bit Windows and was having issues.  Sticking things in the motherboard was easy; the hardest part was sticking the pins into the soundcard as I had no clue what to do with them, lol.  I still can’t talk on my microphone on teamspeak but at least I have sound and can hear.

Over all I am ashamed to say it took me about 8 hours to put my PC together completely and install all the software and drivers.  I don’t really care how long it took though, because when I first logged onto WoW and had not one bit of lag in Iron Forge it made it all worth it to me.  I am now a Level 60 and can’t afford the lag in PVP or in dungeons and now have more of a chance to own those horde out there.  Now, seeing what a great PC can do I know I can never go back.