Happy Birthday, REX

My good old PC, Metal Gear REX is five years old today... I can't believe it! I bought it on the same day five years ago, but kept it in its package for another month till I had finished my General Secondary school exams. Although I chose the specs my self, I had someone else build it for me... I redeemed myself with building Arsenal Gear with my own hands.

We have a lot of good memories together. We shared lots of good games, movies and music on it. The first game that I installed on it was GTAIII, even though I had already beaten it then, but I wanted to see how it would run with all the settings on high! The last game that I installed on it was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which ran fine, but not with all the eye candy that I am seeing now on Arsenal Gear.

Metal Gear REX started its life with these specs:

• Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz, 512 KB L2 cache, Northwood Core 120 nm, Socket 478
• Gigabyte 8IR2003 running the Intel 865 chipset with built-in Realtek AC'97 sound codec
• Manli GeForce 4 MX 440 AGP 4X 128 MB (now in Shagohod, my oldest surviving system)
  
• 512 MB DDR-RAM 266 MHz (2x256 MB)
• 120 GB Western Digital HDD 7200 RPM
• Floppy Disk Drive (KIA)
  
• ASUS 52X CD-ROM (now in Shagohod)
  
• Sony 52x24x52x CD burner
• 17" LG CRT

Throughout the years, REX received the following upgrades and/or replacements:

• Intel Processor heatsink and fan (replacement)
• Realtek 8139 PCI Network Interface Card (add-on)
• Sony 16X DVD-ROM (add-on) (now KIA)
• XFX GeForce 6600 128 MB AGP 8X (running as AGP 4X due to motherboard limitation) (replacement)
• BenQ DW1640 DVD burner (add-on)
• Kingston 512 MB DDR-RAM 400 MHz (running as 266 MHz) (add-on)
• A VIA-based PCI-to-USB 2.0 card (add-on)

Not to count 4 power supplies, 5 mice, countless IDE cables, 60 and 80 mm system fans, 1 GPU cooler for the 6600 and 1 GPU slot cooler.

I am still proud that the keybaord that came with REX is still functioning properly (I am typing this from it). The same goes for the outstanding LG CRT.

I hope that you remain alive for many years, my dear REX. We still can learn a lot of things from each other.

He is running now Windows XP along with Ubuntu 8.04.