I've had a plan to slowly upgrade my 'puter over the course of the next year in order to prepare of Longhorn. For Christmas, I asked for an Asus A7N8X DLX mobo and an AMD 2500+ Barton (both of which I got! whoo hoo!). While I don't think this'll be up to snuff to display Longhorn in all it's glory, it will whet my appetite for upgrading and speed. While I'm not a huge fan of onboard anything, Anandtech had really good things to say about nForce2's onboard goodies (LAN and SoundStorm). While I've been up and running since Christmas day with this rig, there have been a few things that I've wanted to upgrade for quite some time. The first of which were my speakers.

With the birthday money I recieved, I was able to take a pretty good chunk out of the $200 the Logitech Z-5300s cost. I fought a bit with the center channel not working. As it turns out, some manufacturers reverse the center/sub channel, and nVidia has a little utility to reverse it so it fits your speaker set/sound card. Once I got everything working properly (and the adjustments to the EQ tweaked), I fired up Desert Combat, UT2K3, and UT2K4 demo. Wow! It's amazing going from a 2.1 setup to a 5.1 surround sound setup. This speaker set rocks (and thumps!). The shock combo in UT2K3 blew me away.

As far as music goes, these puppies are awesome. I have never heard Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings or Faure's Pavane sound this good (except in a live concert, that is). Rock sounds great, although it took a bit of tweaking to get Linkin Park to not sound too bassy.

If you're looking for an affordable 5.1 speaker set, take a peak at these babies. They're THX certified! Once I get a DVD ROM in my comp, you can bet I'll be watching movies on it!