Chapter 1: False Hope

My story continues from 09/2009, I mentioned that I lived with 5 others in a shared house of students, graduated or dropped out, myself being the latter. An interesting bunch of misfits to say the least, 3 of my closest friends include Steve, Arijus and Mark.

Mark was a pharmacy masters final year student with a tendency to body building, naked parading, vegetarian cooking, internet trolling and self-medicating. Otherwise a nice guy oh... and he was serious about Rome: Total War! (Good game)

Arijus was taking a placement year out of a business degree to open a women's lingerie store in the Brighton lanes, not his best move! This guy would try to fix anything and everything himself including his Audi A4 imported from Lithuania, with nothing more than his laptop and some basic tools from a bargain tool box.

Steve is a law degree graduate and ReditUK Starcraft II tournament admin, caster and Master league Protoss player. MAD skills! As well as that he has a passion for Steam bargains, one I seem to have caught.

With the bill paid, and the help of my house mates I got straight (lol, too lazy to do anything immediately... a week or two) to buying my rig! Steve built his own rig, well he brought the parts but it arrived early and Arijus got excited and built it all before Steve woke up.

We scoured the internet, three geeks on a missions to max the credit card, together like the three musketeers with mice as our swords!... I didn't have a clue, and the others felt a little uncomfortable suggesting things, as I was very ignorant as to what I was looking at! So they tried to explain what was what. I ended up going to aria.co.uk and picked a few pretty things (not that I'm impulsive and I definitely never brought bagpipes or a snake on a whim) and stick of ram for the dust box (PC) I was using, whilst I was looking for the type of ram to get I discovered that the girl/woman I was seeing (now fiancée... :D) was a builder, as few of the components matched the case make and model!, I was a little nervous about spending everything at once, having previously declared that I would never get a credit card... oops! So I brought a few basics...

10/10/09

1 x G.SKILL DDR 400 PC3200 1GB (1GBx1) @ 24.09GBP (not worth linking)
1 x X-Blade MIDI Tower Case - Silver @ 27.54GBP (including 450W PSU)
1 x Asus M4A785TD-M EVO, AMD 785G Chipset, DDR3, AM3, mATX @ 70.28GBP
1 x AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0GHz, [AM3, Retail] @ 137.94GBP

Buying so few items turned out to be the most frustrating decision I have made in a long time! Although the extra ram helped subdue the need for a new computer. Having the case, mobo and pcu built uselessly in the corner of my room was eating at me....

...£235.76 build total so far...