Annie and I recently bought a new desktop computer. Annie’s laptop has been creating dying electronic purple smoke and will die any day now. We need two computers in our household, and we both want to be able to game a bit more, so a decent desktop was a smart choice for us.

Ravenclaw, my MacBook Pro is now primarily Annie’s computer, while Valen, our new desktop is primarily mine. We swap based on need, and it has been going well so far.

Thanks to the gifts that people gave us for our wedding, we were basically able to find a way to afford the system. I took my time picking out different components to try to maximize performance for a minimum cost. I checked with people on Reddit before pulling the trigger, and the only comment I received was that the power supply was more than I needed, so I was super excited to order it.

For those that are interested:

• Corsair Carbide Series 300R Black Gaming Case
• AMD FX-6300 6 Core Processor
• ASUS M5A99X Evo R2.0 ATX AM3+ 990X Motherboard
• Gigabyte Radeon HD R9 270X OC 1100MHZ 2GB Video Card
• Corsair Vengeance Heatspreader 8GB 2X4GB DDR3-2133
• Intel 120GB 530 Series SSD
• Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA Hard Drive
• Thermaltake TR2 700w Power Supply

It took a bit to get the computer parts as the SSD for the system wasn’t highly stocked, but I’m glad I waited for it as I hope it will be a durable, long lasting system. NCIX was awesome as always, and for the first time, I live close enough to pick things up from there.

Annie built the computer, with very little help from me. It was really cool to watch her put it all together, though I was a bit sad as I enjoy building them too. We already had a monitor for the computer, as well as a mouse and speakers. The only other thing we had to pick up was a keyboard, and I chose a Logitech K120 as usual, since I don’t like wireless peripherals.

We’ve installed a ton of games onto the computer, and it is super fast. I am really enjoying using it, and so is Annie. She recently started playing Lord of the Rings Online and is both enjoying it, and being frustrated by it. I’ve only really used the computer to play Minecraft so far, and it is already our new media center for watching Netflix and hosting our Merlin nights.