My old desktop computer has been run very thin, no thanks to me, in the last 6 months or so since I got up and running again. The problem is, since day 1 of re-life, the fan in the power supply it's self has had odd moments of buzzing and being generally annoying...

I got a new desk now yesterday afternoon, and thus turned my computer off to set it aside. Due to some time setbacks it was late evening by the time I got everything hooked back up again. Plug in computer and components, turned it all on, logged in and left the room to chill and get some well needed food... upon re-entering my room I...knew the smell meant the power supply was over heating. I was really hoping it was just warm computer heating up the lacquer on my new desk...till shortly after sitting down and starting to check sites and updates. . . it turned off. The vent on the back of the computer was so hot I could have easily fried an egg on it...  

I pulled the plug. Let it cool off a bit...and I'm VERY shocked that it's up and running again at all. I should feel lucky, but I don't.. sadly, I know that was a sure sign that my poor old computer is on it's last legs. I can't really be surprised at all, with what I do to the poor old machine. Font making, imaging, gaming.. WoW and Minecraft... on 1GB of ram and a buzzy power supply. I'm lucky compy didn't explode. Thankfully it turned it's self off before it actually fried. But the facts remain... it's not going to last much longer.

To be honest... and quite frankly, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Ideally, I want a computer that will last, and put up with what I do to it- but I don't really have credit, and affording the $1,500 it would cost to order my "dream machine" outright just isn't going to happen. Not without a lot of saving, anyway. I'm probably looking at blowing 300 bucks at walmart for a halfway decent computer and tightening my belt in June (even though my birthday is next month) just to make sure I have a working computer, even though that's a lot to spend at once out of the blue, too.


I'm typing all of this up here on DA because I know a lot of people follow me here... So assuming people are actually reading this, maybe someone has some advice.




Minor update (Sun May 27, 2012, 1:16 AM)

The local Walmart's got an Acer Aspire am3470g-uw10p. I feel a little wishy washy about the idea of using a computer with an onboard graphics chip, but  if I compare the AMD Radeon HD 6530D graphics core to the 6 year old Nvidia GeForce 7300 LE... Well, I think "6 year old graphics card" says it all. The reviews on the chip and overall system make me think it will be worth the $400 price tag, and a decent machine to use while saving for what I really want.