On top of the busy work week, my troubles were compounded when the graphics card on my main gaming computer died on me. The symptoms actually started on Saturday when I was playing Street Fighter 4 (which I had just bought on the Impulse platform). All of a sudden, the display just shut down and the computer locked up. I had to do a hard reset but everything seemed normal after that. The next day the computer locked up again with just the browser open. After some experimentation, I found that trying to do anything 3D related would first cause odd artifacts to accumulate on the screen and then lock the computer up.

Since reseating the card and blowing off the surface dust didn’t help, it was time to shop for a new card. My original card was a 8800 GT that came with the Dell XPS 420. While it’s showing its age a bit, I’ve actually been quite pleased with it especially since I rarely play the latest and hottest games these days. I am however annoyed that the card died just two months after the warranty expired. This is actually the second time something from Dell died on me soon after its warranty expired. If I ever buy anything from them again, I’m going to make sure I buy an extended warranty as well.

Buying a new card would be a straightforward matter in Kuala Lumpur, but a hassle here in Kota Kinabalu. Pretty much the best card I could find was a 9800 GTX, which is just a renamed version of my existing card. I could ask a shop to order it for us but the prices seemed expensive and it would take a significant amount of time. Worse of all, I needed to find an upgrade that would fit in my existing case and work with its power supply unit. As geeky as I am, I have very little experience with computer hardware so buying one without being to test it with my rig first was a real problem.

I turned to LYN for help and after getting some advice from there, opted to buy a Palit GTX 260 Sonic from one of the vendors there. The whole thing went more smoothly and quickly than I expected. It also cost significantly less than if I were to buy it from a retailer in KL. The card arrived only one day after I made payment. I had some worries about it being able to fit, but after some nudging and jiggling, it went in and everything seems to be working perfectly at the moment. So the lessons I learned from this experience are:

1. Buying from LYN really does work and is both convenient and cheap to boot.
2. A GTX 260 does fit in a Dell XPS 420 but only just.
3. I shouldn’t play graphics intensive games in a hot room with the air-conditioner off.