The quest for the Shark


It all began at the end of my grade 11 school year, the summer was hot and I was in need of a gaming rig capable of handling any game out. My friend was working at an assembly line like place for the summer, I was working at a food processing plant that made bread, I was doing various things there like working with dough that was sent through the line and later baked. This lasted about a week and then my friend called me and said there were some possible work opening and got me in.

This was a good way for me to make money as the pas was $10/hour compared to $8 at my old work. It was not easy though I had to work as part of the shipping team. As a team we would get IBM cash registers from from testing and we would dis-assemble them so they could be shipped in cube like boxes. Having no AC and hauling the register from spot to spot in order to box them was not a very pleasant thing to do but in the end it all worked out.

the supervisor was very lenient as was evident by some people doing absolutely nothing and all that was said, "Hows it going guys? OK!" This fueled my anger as I had to bust my ass while these Jackasses did nothing. I had no more of it so me and my friend decided to extend out breaks by a couple of minutes every day and near the last couple of days that I worked there our break, due to a scheduling error, was almost 2 and a half hours. The following week I had gone on vacation.

The vacation was great but that is when I began to think about the possible components I would need to quench my thirst for a gaming rig. The vacation in Maine was great it allowed me to recall the recent games that were out and their specks. As well I had though about some good components that could last for a couple of years without having to upgrade.

Upon my return me and my friend collaborated on the components we would need. We found a small shop that had the best prices for the things we needed as well as having to pay no labor fees if bought two of the same PCs and paid in cash. This was then followed by the list of specks what we had decided on after deliberation with the shop owner, and there it was:

___________________________________________________________________________
Case: Thermaltake Shark Black
Motherboard: Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+
Memory: Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X2048-6400C4 2GB DDR2-800 CL 4-4-4-12
GPU: BFG Geforce 7950 GX2 1GB
PSU: OCZ Game Extreme 600w
DVD: Pioneer 111D
HDD: Western Digital Caviar 16mb cache 250gb x 2
Sound Card: Creative SB Audigy 4
___________________________________________________________________________

Little did we know a storm was brewing. Having ordered the PCs in August getting ready for the school year to begin we called the store and received the news, delay! being crushed by this we wanted to know what was the problem apparently they had not received the ram yet from their supplier so we had to wait a week. We made a call a week later and then again more delays! the CPU was no where to be found the internet sent a blaze with massive shortage everywhere and prices going up to $600+ for the ones that were available. The wait was not bearable with AMD saying little to nothing on supply to any retailers we had to downgrade to the 4600. We then went on to purchase the machines a week before September and on arrival only to be disappointed, the memory was still MIA, we got replacement stick for the time being until a moth later with no memory in site I demanded the money paid for the ram to be refunded for the junk value ram installed on my PC. I was then forced to buy the memory separately from NCIX which took all of 4 days to process my order and get it to my front steps.

At last it was complete! The shark was born!
___________________________________________________________________________
Case: Thermaltake Shark Black
Motherboard: Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+
Memory: Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X2048-6400C4 2GB DDR2-800 CL 4-4-4-12
GPU: BFG Geforce 7950 GX2 1GB
PSU: OCZ Game Extreme 600w
DVD: Pioneer 111D
HDD: Western Digital Caviar 16mb cache 250gb x 2
Sound Card: Creative SB Audigy 4
___________________________________________________________________________

Now about one and a half years later it shows its age with the CPU being the bottleneck in most new games like Call of Duty 4, Crysis(XD), Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, World in Conflict and Universe at War.

Now I leave you with the shark underneath my desk waiting for its monthly dusting.


In the dark, crappy phone camera grrr...