to complement my new vidcard that i bought last month, i decided to spend what was left of my 13th month to further enhance my compie. and so, i bought these:

essentially, i upgraded from a single core to a dual core (AMD Athlon X2 5000+), albeit late in the game as quad cores are the latest ones; and from 1 Gig to a whopping 4 Gigs!(Team Elite 2x2Gb DDR2-800 Dual Channel Kit)   i know, i know... a bit over-the-top, as WinXP will not recognize the full 4Gigs. but i got a good deal for these stuff, so who am i to complain?!

now, the problem is, which silly me failed to see, was that with the procie being upped from single to dual, will mean more power will be needed, as the 8800GT is already a bit power-hungry, did not think about my current PSU. (which, by today's standards is considered "generic")

long story short, i fried the darn thing! didn't see any smoke or sparks though... it just died out. sad thing is, it took the mobo with it!  and so, these items were hastily bought:

despite reading horror stories about this brand of psu, i decided to get this because of budget constraints, and also hoping that this unit i got is not part of a bad/defective batch. the mobo, on the other hand (EMX-MCP61S-AVL) , is a recommended one, since one i don't plan on overclocking anyways, and i already have an 8800GT, so no sense in buying a mobo with a higher onboard video.

and so, with these recent purchases, it's safe to say i broke the bank again.  payday, oh payday... how i long for your return!