First of all, the specifications of the beast:

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 512KB L2 Cache 64-bit Processor - Retail
Motherboard: K8N Neo Platinum
Video Card: SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON 9600 Video Card, 256MB DDR, 128-bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP, Model "ATLANTIS RADEON 9600"
Sound Card: M-AUDIO PCI Sound Card w/ MIDI and Digital I/O, Model "Audiophile 2496"
RAM: Two 512 MB Mushkin DDR PC-3200 Storage: Seagate 200GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive, IBM 14 GB, Samsung 14 GB Hard Drive
Case: Antec Solution Series Super Mid Tower Case with 350W Power Supply

Ordered parts from New Egg and Zzounds, and set about assembling it on 21st of August, 2004. I took apart the CD-RW drive, keyboard, and mouse, and an IDE cable from my old computer. It was an Intel Pentium 550 MHz with 192 MB RAM, and a 14 GB Hard Drive, so it was getting a little out of date. In the photograph above, you can see the empty shell. . .of the computer I had spent so many wonderful times with over the past 3 years.

Assembly of the computer was fairly simple.

Here are some instructions:

First of all, remember to back up all your data before taking anything apart. And be sure to ground your body to the steel frame of your computer case to prevent static from your body damaging the electronics.

Place your Chip on your motherboard gently, and pull the lever to fix it in, without damaging any of the hundreds of small pins underneath. Scrape the crappy resin that comes preapplied on the Heat-sink, and apply a small "two-rice" grain sized blob of Arctic Silver on top of your Chip. Gently lower the heat-sink and lock it in with the mechanism over the processor.

Plug in your Video card into the AGP slot. Sound card into the PCI slot. If you have other accessories (I had onboard LAN, so I didn't need an ethernet card) plug those in too. Also put in your RAM chips and fix them. Plug in your hard drives and CD-ROM drives with IDE cables (or SATA if you have them. . .I didn't) in some logical master-slave arrangement, keeping boot order in mind. And keep your fingers crossed.

When you turn on your computer, make sure the CPU doesn't overheat. The heat-sink fan should start off and stuff. Don't fry your electronics so early in the game.

It's quite a powerhouse. Microsoft Word opens up in a second. I can play Half Life 2 full screen with anti-aliasing on. I also installed Gentoo 64-bit Linux on one of my 14 GB Drives. The lack of good ATI Linux drivers, and M-Audio drivers has prevented me from using Linux more often. Utilities such as MSI's cool 'n quiet, drive my preference towards using windows further. I am planning to get my old box set up as a linux server, but I need to buy some cables and stuff for that. That will be another day. . .another page.