A New PC in the Vraxx-family

Well after a bit of a scare when FedEX dropped off my gear to my doorstep and didn't hold it at the drop site. In any case, the final configuration is indeed a Shuttle SN25P with an Ath64 (Venice core) 3500+ processor. Rounding out the memory and storage is 1GB of Mushkin RAM and a Western Digital 300GB SATA drive, lastly a Plextor 708A burner. A simple ATI X300 256MB vid card is being used for the display.

Given the Ath64 specs I may eventually consider the 64-bit version of XP, which would subsequently mean I'll need to double the RAM. An optional upgrade for early 2006 might be to swap out the basic Ath64 with an X2.

At first I found the SN25P a bit more forgiving space wise than my previous SN45G, but in some ways it is a bit more cumbersome. The tool-free rail guides for the HDD and Optical drive are an interesting design though for the DVD drive this also means that alignment can't be tightened up. Because the SN25P uses a hinged door to hide the drive alignment is key, a few degrees up and the tray will hit the front bezel. I'm somewhat leery about adding a 2nd or 3rd drive to the system, but hopefully I'll find no problems when I decide to expand.

So far so good, hopefully I'll have all the software loaded and data migrated before the end of the week.