The New PC

I needed to replace the aging P4 system in my arcade cab if I wanted to run HyperSpin to the level of quality I was after and chuck some other emulators on there. I already had a spare 600W power supply that I could use so placed an order for the following bits to build the new machine:

• Intel Core i3 540 CPU (3.06GHz)
• Gigabyte H55M-UD2H Motherboard
• 4Gb Corsair XMS3 DDR3 RAM (2x 2Gb)
• 500Gb Seagate Barracuda Hard Drive
• Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler
• Coolermaster Elite 360 Case
• Samsung DVD Drive

It all went together pretty easily, although the CPU cooler is a tight fit in that case, and the system posted first time :-)

Once I'd installed Windows I spent a bit of time overclocking it to see what I could get out of the CPU. At the moment I've got it running at 4GHz with headroom to go higher if needed, but tbh nothing I've put on there so far has come close to struggling and the system's running quite cool so I think I'll leave it for a while. The only other work I've done is to wire the button in the arcade cab, which is top right in the pic (Push to Eject Coins), to the Power On/Off header on the motherboard. So now, when the cab is sealed up, I can turn  it on and off using the old coin return button :-)

That's it for the hardware, HyperSpin and emulators are next........