My First Case Mod

My adventures in PC Modding began in Dec of 2001 when I had a Emachine with a 1.7GHz Celeron, 256MB of RAM running XP. It didn't even have an AGP slot to upgrade the video. The rear exhaust fan stopped working and I knew nothing about computers and how to fix it. I called Best Buy and Geek Squad quoted me $35 to replace it. That seemed crazy to me because I had looked at it and knew there was only 4 screws and one wire connecting it to the board. I just had to find a way to do it myself. I searched for PC repair and discovered PC Modding. I've been hooked ever since.

My first Mod was that case. I tried cutting a window in the case with a manual nibbler, but failed miserably. I had to throw away the side panel and I replaced it with a piece of plexi.

That was then and this is now. I still have that computer and I haven't modded it since, but I have upgraded the RAM to 1GB (the max it holds). Until a couple days ago it was the same computer when I realized that this PC no matter how ugly it turned out needs a serious gutting.

I kept the mod as it was for nostalgic sake and pulled everything out. All new components went in:

AMD BE-2300 1.9GHz
2GB Corsair DDR2-800
Radeon HD3870 1GB GDDR4
Soundblaster 7.1
600 Watt PSU
80GB hard drive
Windows Vista Ult