Last week the power apparently went off in my home while I was out because my clocks were all flashing the wrong time. No biggie. That kind of thing happens all the time, and the only consequence is that you have to reset all your clocks.

The next day I realized my PC wouldn't boot. After a whole lot of fiddling and faddling, I decided my motherboard must have gotten fried from a power surge even though it was under the watchful eye of a surge protector.

Since it's a few years old now, I went ahead and decided to upgrade to a new box, so I did a bit of research and bought all the equipment that was cheap, but should also keep me running at good speeds for years to come. This is the story of that computer. I'll probably tell it in a piecemeal fashion, starting with a simple list of all the pieces of my puzzle.

I'm keeping my old hard drives, optical drives, and floppy drive (just carrying it along because it's there), but everything else will be new equipment. I considered keeping the same case, but it was a Dell and custom built for just the hardware that was already in it.

So here's a rundown of all the new stuff:

... more inside ...