Due to failing to RAM, and because of the borderline overload of the PSU, and simply because the AthlonX2 of Sakura was getting sluggish. Anyhow, an upgrade of the PSU, CPU, MOBO and more was definitely in order. But because the case was still okay, and the original components could be moved to Ayanami's case, from the outside, there was basically not a whole lot different between the first and this Sakura. Aside of the video card, the 3ware SATA RAID controller and two 500GB disks in RAID-1 were kept as well.

I did about two years with the same configuration: the 8800GTX and Q6700 really did their work very well. I ran a dual-boot Vista (for the DirectX 10 games) and XP (the others).

Later on, I was thinking about moving up my hardware, especially because my brother (who had since moved) was still using Maya, could use a better computer. As I was looking for new hardware, the 8800GTX suddenly gave out, which was a true bummer because I was looking to keep the card for my new computer and wait for the next generation of nvidia cards before replacing it.
So for my new system, I chose a new card, and for this one, selected a medium range nvidia card: a GeForce GTS 250. As my brother is not a gamer (accept maybe casually), this card is more than adequate.

Before moving Sakura II forward, I also kicked out the dualboot and upgraded to Windows 7 Home 64-bit. Additionally, I removed the 3ware RAID controller as this one's not really needed for my brother.