Christmas Comes Early
As has been the tradition for the past 3 years, I arrived at 3:30 a.m. Black Friday morning outside my local Best Buy to patiently await the mayhem and bargains with my friend Jenny. While it may seem insane (in fact even now as I'm typing it, it does seem insane), it only happens once a year and ends up being pretty fun. This year, unlike other years, I couldn't decide what I wanted so I decided to piece together a new computer even though I really didn't need one. To do so, I got half my goods at Best Buy: 20x LG DVD writer, 2GB PC5300 DDR2, and a 300 GB SATA hard drive. Aside from the video card (GeForce 7950 XFX), which I bought from an acquaintance, I purchased the rest at Fry's: 500W Antec power supply, ECS 671T-M motherboard and now my prized possession, the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600.
I did a lot of research on the ECS motherboard and while I didn't find good things, the deal was too good to pass up at just under $200 for the pair. At that price, any amount of time that the motherboard holds up is gravy. And really, I haven't been disappointed with the motherboard so far. At least the documentation was much better than most Abit or Asus motherboards I've used in the past and the setup was pretty standard. There were a lot of people in forums and mailing lists that I saw asking if the 671T-M is really compatible with the Core 2 Quad because it's never explicitly stated in any of the documentation or online. And yes, I'm using the two together as we speak and I didn't have any problems. I did have a problem installing the video card so right now I'm using onboard video, but I think that had to do with the power supply rather than the motherboard.
Oh yes, the power supply. 
I learned a very valuable lesson today, which prompted me to come up with the graphic at right. I was about to look into my video card woes when I decided to re-seat my grounding wrist-wrap. I hooked it just a little too close to the metal plate inside the power supply and POOF! ...all the lights in the house are out. After flipping the breaker, I tried to start the computer but got absolutely nothing in response. Imagine my worry when I thought perhaps the entire system was toast. ...then imagine my relief when I realized the amount of voltage that would have shot through my mortal body had I not been properly grounded! Luckily only the power supply was lost and it was a steal anyway at $7 after rebate (granted I did spend 2 hours in line waiting to purchase it). The moral of the story: keep the grounding clip away from the power supply.
This has been a public service announcement from Captain Obvious.
Comments
I should comment that in fact the ECS motherboard has not held up well. Most USB products will no longer work with my computer :-/ It's true what they say, you get what you pay for.