Slashdot Mirror

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearch.hmx?SCriteria =BA21207&CartID=done&nextloc=

Ouch. I used to use Mwave, and there's always Street Prices. I'd be as interested as you, though, in what alternatives are out there.

newegg is always my first choice for anything I buy. If newegg is out of stock on something, mwave is the second place I go.

Socket 754 chips generally cost far less than the s939 ones at comparable speeds...

Only until this Wednesday. These new 90nm chips run cooler too, 1.4V core instead of 1.5V. The 90nm 3500+ goes on sale Monday. I'd expect Newegg, MWave, and the rest of the usual suspects to get them around then or shortly thereafter.

DDR2 has much higher latency than DDR1 (negating one of the major AMD64 advantages) and costs twice as much. I don't know why AMD would bother with it. PCI-Express boards will be here soon enough, well before Christmas, if you absolutely have to have one.

AMD released the 90nm Athlon 64 3000+ Low-Voltage notebook CPUs today. Acer gets the first batch for their new Ferarri 3400 and Europe gets the first batch of those. Oh well, I'm holding out for an Athlon 64 notebook with a high-end nVidia GPU anyhow since ATI apparently can't be bothered to write decent 64-bit Linux drivers.

Just put together out second 2TB array today, We use the Promise UltraTrak SX8000, this is an 8x ATA disc array --> SCSI. The tower I put together today uses 8 (well 9.. one for hot swapping) WD 2500JD drives. The tower takes care of the actual RAID subsystem, we use, 5, though it supports 1, 10, 3, 30, 5, and 50, and possibly others.
This setup yeilds 1.75TB of usable space, at a cost of $3,708 (if you buy it from MWave good upport, and the best prices I have seen on this stuff), or a realized cost of $2.12/GB. If you go with WD2000JD drives you can save some money, coming in at $3,258 or $2.04/GB.

<a href="http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scri teria=3314314">gadget info</a> and <a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/01/ 0245257&mode=thread&tid=106&tid=137&tid=185">slash dot article</a>

It comes with the drives enclosures, trays and the RAID controller. They're hot swapable and the rebuild time is relatively fast. (4 hours for a 250GB mirror set) $170 from MWAVE.com

I even went so far as to buy a third tray for offsite storage. I replace the offsite tray with one of the production trays once a week. Promise also has a monitoring utility to put on your admin console so you cant get status alerts.

Best of luck!

FLAC is worth it for ripping. It's a well-supported lossless compression format that is free (as in speech), and encouraged by Xiph.org. With a 250GB hard drive for $180 at reputable stores, most people can rip their entire CD collection ~750CDs into a lossless format that will last. With FLAC, you only need to rip once.

I'm seriously hoping that this isn't a paper launch.

Why don't you go go buy one from here or here and let us know?

First, we still don't have a mass market consumer OS for native x86-64

Very true. And some of us just don't care. I wanted benchmarks for GCC and OpenSSL and Postgres, and all they showed was 32-bit Windows apps, which nobody but nobody cares about. Well, life is tough, I guess.

Come on now, let's try to at least look a little before making stupid claims. The nForce3 motherboards have been shipping for a while now.

You should check Reseller Ratings before buying from a new mail order store. They'll save you a lot of grief. FWIW, Multiwave and NewEgg are my two favorite toy stores, and both of them are highly rated on RR. Both have handled RMAs from me well.

I don't think I've had any rebates fulfilled from gear I've purchased at CompUSA.

Very nice.

Check out mini-itx.com. It seems to be a pretty good resource. I ended up buying parts from two of the companies listed in their USA resources page. I do however, have a couple of pointers for you. First, the 600 MHz Eden comes on the Eden-M motherboard which isn't all that well supported on Redhat 8.0 (no clue about 9, obviously) which is why I went with the Mandrake 9.1 beta. You will most likely have to download the ALSA drivers for the sound card (expect to spend some time building those). Second, if you go with a "fanless" case it will most likely require a "slim" cdrom drive. These take a 50 pin connector instead of a 40 pin connector for the IDE bus, 4 pins for electricity, and 4 pins for audio out. Make sure that the case either comes with the adaptor or you order one, they arn't easily avalible in the states (and don't buy one from www.ussa.com, current low price for a slim samsung 24x12x24x8 cdrw/dvd drive on pricewatch their service sucks, go with mwave.com instead. If you don't believe me look at bizrate.). Finally, the 401b WinTV card from Haupage has a funny way to encode sound, an external jumper to the input of the soundcard. This is actually a problem for the EPIA-M since you have a choice between 5.1 sound or stereo + line in + mic and any problems with the sound card affect your ability to coordinate sound and video. If you have a descent stereo you might want to get a different TV Encoder card.

The internet PC store Mwave has both Mwave and ECS brand notebook computers that are available without an OS. Prices aren't too bad either. The ECS models are a little unconventional, as they don't have internal batteries - they use only external batteries that must be purchased separately.

Mwave has a nice range of notebooks and PCs available without the M$ tax. Their notebooks don't quite meet the lightweight spec you provided, but they are nice nonetheless.

money is an issue (which it is for me) then I'm going through the time to research Price Watch

Hope you also research the companies as well. Otherwise you may be very unhappy with what you actually end up with.

My personal suggestion is to forget about Pricewatch and just buy from Newegg, or an equally highly rated vendor (I've also used MWave and Monarch Computers recently with good results - Monarch is local for me though). No, I have absolutely no interest in these companies, just good experiences. Newegg is the best of the three though - I've bought, returned, and RMA'd, all with absolutely zero issues.

As for a gaming PC - if you're not going to build it yourself, I wouldn't go Alienware unless you have money to burn. They're deeply overpriced for nothing special. Your best bet is to either go with an online vendor that sells entire systems (like Monarch) or to go to a local computer store and buy from there. The local angle always has the advantage of someone that you can lean on if you have problems or questions, and they're also very dependant on referrals for business, so they don't want to piss you off.

And, yes, they can get funky cases like Alienware has too.

What are you talking about???

The 600 is basically a regular micro-ATX computer case with a custom fascia and kind of funky drive mounts. I love this case, by the way...

atc600

The only complaint I have with it are the fans... Too damn loud! Of course I have a 10K RPM scsi drive in the mix so that doesn't help either. Upgrading the fans to panaflo's or something similar, throwing in maybe that cool looking vantec Nexus controller:

Vantec fan controller

Get some fast EIDE 8MB quiet drives, and your system would almost be ready for the AV rack.

Yes, Most come with the built on sound, but I turn that option off in the BIOS (the same way I can turn off the serial/parallel/hdd controllers also) and it doesn't affect any operation of the system, because as far as everything is concerned, when it doesn't show up on boot, it is not there.

My question has to be...did you even attempt to look before you asked? You stated that you needed "high-end" boards, however the research I have done seems to illustrate that all the "low cost" systems and motherboards use this method, and the more expensive motherboards don't integrate a whole lot other than the standard that has been in place for years now.

have fun filling up that hard drive...

oh, and you'll probably need on of these soon

yup, yup, yup

I have to agree with the majority here. My Z560's have a much better range than my Creative 5200's. I bought mine from Multiwave Direct for about $150 shipped.

I didn't have a chance to do a lot of listening tests, but I have been very impressed by these. I'm more of an enthusiast (read: wannabe) than an audiophile, but I don't think you'll be dissappointed.

TDK 2x DVD-R spindle of 50, $125. So $2.50 per disc for name-brand blanks. I've been using the generic 2x DVD-R's on the same page without trouble (spindle of 25 for $45) on my DVR-A04 with dvdrecord under Red Hat 8. Non-2x-certified blanks are of course cheaper, but I don't burn enough discs to worry about that. I haven't tried burning DVD videos yet, I suspect my old Sony 530D deck won't like them, but new decks are cheap. Pinnacle's StudioDV 8 (Windoze) ought to be simple enough to use once I get time to play with it, I used v7 to burn VCDs.

I searched around extensively before I was content with places to buy components. These are my (and many other Slashdotters I've seen) favorites. http://www.newegg.com and http://www.mwave.com

Assuming a base platform cost (without processor) of $400 for MoBo, memory etc., the P4 Xeon would have to be 17% faster than the Athlon to justify the premium. According to the benchmarks on Tom's Hardware, Intel would have a hard time attaining that.

Jan

• Are modern G4 towers quieter and/or cooler than comparable x86 workstations?

• Is it wiser to spend money on memory or megahertz?

• Is it best to buy everything directly from Apple, or just a minimum to be fleshed out with cheaper, after-market add-ons?

Shop around before you buy. With Apples current attitude toward industry standard parts, you can, generally, use all sorts of commodity, over-the-counter parts that are labled for PCs (NOTE: video cards don't follow this rule. Niether do modems. For most other types of cards you can either find Mac drivers online, or you can download programs from the manuacturers to flash that card's ROM for Mac use. It is best to do some research before you buy)

• What's the best video option for dual-head on Jaguar?

• Does OS X make SMP worth the investment?

• Is the SCSI performance gain great enough to be worth the investment over IDE?

Overall, my advice is to buy a middle of the line machine, skimp on memory directly from Apple (upgrade though a third party), possibly skimp on the hard drive as well (upgrade through a third party), get the best optical drive and video card Apple offers (software support is vital for both, so get them from Apple), and everything else is a toss-up. Buying middle of the line saves you some money, which is good since this is your first Mac: if you discover you don't like Apple products (not that I think that's likely to happen) you won't feel so bad about the money you spent. Once you are comfortable with Apple hardware, you can decide home much (or little) you want to spend on your next machine.

In general, unless there are compelling reasons to go for the top of the line, buying middle of the line is a good policy. When your machine is, inevitably, made obsolete, you won't feel so bad, since you weren't cutting edge to begin with. With Macs, you have the added advantage of, generally, being able to upgrade the system (new CPU, memory, disks, etc.) without needing an entirely new motherboard, so the middle of the line system will last longer than similar systems on the PC side.

The Matrox G550 can be had for around $100. It has two configurable outputs, so you can connect a TV and a VGA (or DVI) device at the same time. You can use the displays independently, or have them show the same output. Also, the DVD playback on the G550 (and the 400/450) is quite good. The colors are well saturated and there are no dropped frames on my PII-350.

I found mwave to be a pain in one regard: shipping to an address other than the billing address.

They require that you call up your credit card company and register your work address (or wherever) as a valid shipping address. This is a common enough requirement that the Citibank rep I talked with immediately knew what I was talking about. I've had lots of stuff shipped to my work address from both mwave and Newegg (which has the same requirement) and recommend them both. Between the two I can usually find the gear I want.

I'd recommend MWave -- They have really good hardware prices. I searched for DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM and found a good many products in there. Some for even under $300. Definitely worth a look. =)

you don't have to pay the MS tax. I recommend MWave. I purchased components from them for my new system and they were excellent. Also, eBay is a great place to find hard drives and SCSI cards.

heres a couple places that i really like

• http://www.pricewatch.com
• http://www.mwave.com
• http://www.augustustech.com

j0sh

If you're only buying one or two items, they charge a fixed shipping rate per item.
It's not quite a fixed shipping rate.

For instance, I put a round IDE cable which listed as $6 shipping and a WAP11 wireless access point which was listed as $10 shipping.

But after calculating the total shipping, it was a bit less at $15.01. Adding a second WAP11 brought the total up to $17 something.

Anyway, the thing to note is that I put the same 2 items into my cart at www.mwave.com and the shipping was only $9.49. And mwave's price on the WAP11 was $5-6 cheaper saving about $10 overall.

Given that the level of service from both mwave and newegg is about the same (I've actually found that mwave tends to get orders shipped sooner) I will usually order from mwave, but always check with newegg as well.

For parts, Mwave is unbeatable.

-Erwos

Mwave has a nice advantage that they will, for $9.00, put together and test a motherboard bundle, not a bad deal if you are nervous about putting a cooler on an Athlon or buying cheap RAM.

http://mwave.com. No bull, good prices, and a decent website. The only places I found with better prices had bad websites. Dell is ok but I prefer to put the extra dollars where I want them (Video, CPU, RAM) than where Dell wants them (Support contract, OS software, 950X CD-ROM drive)...

I have 4 machines that I have built from ordering separate components from MultiWave, and have yet to be disappointed. Yes, I have had instances when something did not work, and I was able to get a replacement shipped THAT day.

You also prevent the "lock in" that all of these major builders try to commit your system to. When I purchased a Gateway AMD system, it was with an ATI Radeon card. As I recently found out, after a year, ATI discontinued this model...thereby shutting me off from any updated drivers. This would lead you to believe "Well, just replace the card" and while this is my first suggestion, I can't do that due to the Motherboard/Video Card combination they used was specific to this case, and specific to Gateway.

By building your own, you know the exact limitations and upgradability of YOUR system. That way, if something is "out of date" or you need more room, you can expand with the knowledge that YOU made that happen.

1. Buy a barebones with the motherboard, CPU, and RAM of choice
2. Order all other parts from same vendor
3. Don't pay for assembly & testing
4. Receive parts, assemble
5. Install OS of choice...don't do the illegal thing
6. Burn it in for 72 hours...use memtest86 to test memory function...AMIDIAG for everything else
7. Enjoy the savings!

Step zero, figure out what you want to do with it. Do you want high-end sound? Gaming? Video capture? Entertainment system? Are you going to lug it around to LAN parties? This will help you trim things down.

First, go to TomsHardware.com, pick up a copy of MaximumPC, and hit other sites like ArsTechnica to read up on articles of importance to your project. You will need a rock-solid motherboard, don't get caught up in overclocking madness and other BS. If this is the first time you've built a machine you've got a lot of stuff to school yourself on without toasting a CPU or mobo. Wait until you know what you're doing. Baby steps. Check out compatibility issues, etc.

Second, don't do this to save money - you won't. Building a box isn't a way to save, it's to be assured that you'll get exactly what you want put together exactly how you want it. Also remember that you are your own warranty and that OEM equipment doesn't have the same warranty period as retail stuff in most cases. Also if you return stuff, there's usually a huge (20%+) restock fee, so make sure you're ordering what you think you're ordering. Caveat emptor.

Third, go to newegg.com or mwave.com and configure yourself up a box. Newegg will let you save your cart and whatnot, mwave is still stuck in 1997 in that regard. Anyway, poke, configure. Design your box around your specific wants and needs. Nip and tuck.

Certainly use pricewatch as a guide, but trust me - it's ALWAYS better to order your parts all from one place rather than be kept waiting for a CPU or couple of sticks of RAM to trickle in. Plus, there's less hassle if something's DOA.

Next, pick up a PC Upgrade & Repair book and a basic toolset. Read, read, read. Check your order to make damned sure that you didn't forget anything. If you're too squeamish to put the whole thing together yourself (you should put it together yourself, IMHO) you can get mwave or someone to prebuild it for your and tweak it when it comes in.

Anyway, if you decide to put it together yourself schedule a free weekend - yes, a whole weekend. Use common sense, a clean worktable without errant drinks or chips, anti-static gear, and a Zen-like ripose. Before you start tearing into your hardware READ THE MANUALS AND HOW-TOS FIRST.

Let me say that again: READ THE MANUALS AND HOW-TOS FIRST.

One more time, because since you're building it YOU are all the tech support you're ever going to get. READ THE MANUALS AND HOW-TOS FIRST. Check erratta online, grab the latest BIOS for your motherboard and drivers for your gear. All the drivers that come on your install CDs were out of date before the CDs were finished duplicating.

Having a running box and broadband handy to grab patches and do research while you construct is invaluable. So is the advice/help/EMT of a friendly geek buddy if you get stuck. Don't bug the crap out of your friend; I HATE being roped into a newbie install at 6:00PM on a Saturday night.

Anyway, make sure you have all your OS and application CDs laying around. Grab the latest ISOs of your favorite distro and make boot floppies.

There will be twists, turns, and headaches. But you'll get a sense of satisfaction and - over the years - invaluable experience with all kinds of wierd hardware and odd situations. Bask in pride as you fire up your very own custom box!

Mwave.com is the place to shop. I just got a new computer from mwave.com and I have bought most of my past components there. They have good prices and are willing to take returns. You can setup a custom box online, chosing your own components, and they will build it for you. Some times you can even get them to drop the assembly fee ($75). If they build it, you get a 1 year warrantee. And best of all, no MS tax!

Is MultiWave in southern California. Their prices are lower than any "local" computer store, and often, mwave is a supplier for local computer stores. If you live in the area, you can make an order online and go pick it up immediately.

Also, they won't rape you on shipping. Typically, shipping is cheaper than California tax (8%) so it really it a great buy no matter where you are. Only once in my five years of working with them has a part arrived bad, and they immediately shipped me out a replacement and paid for the return shipping of the bad item.

If an item is out of stock, the website says so in real time, and usually says when they are expecting them in. The format is very similar to www.newegg.com, though MWave came first. (sorry folks, looks like the egg was second!)

Just head over and build yourself an example system. You will not be disappointed!

I have had nothing but good experiences ordering from www.mwave.com. You can order everything you need from there its what I did the last two times I build computers.

MWave always accepts returns without a hassle. They are extremely fast about shipping in-stock items (I've been known to order after 6PM CST and they shipped it out that evening nearly every time--they're in California so it is after 4PM there, still impressive). And they are always polite and helpful whenever I've had to speak with them. Their prices aren't always the lowest, but they don't overcharge on shipping the way a lot of PriceWatch vendors do, so the bill comes out similar.

Anyway, I've learned that saving two dollars on a new motherboard just isn't worth the headaches of dealing with a bad vendor. I've been screwed out of $1100 because of idiotic return policies before (Googlegear.com, avoid those useless stumps at all costs), so I view MWave as the best value even if they aren't the cheapest price.

So, my suggestion:

MWave.com

They have nearly everything I ever buy...

newegg.com tcwo.com mwave.com

I personally use the same vendors most often but will use pricewatch to find deals when buying individual parts. my Fav vendors are:

• www.newEgg.com
• www.mwave.com
• www.hyperMicro.com (for scsi)
• www.axiontech.com
• www.2coolPc.com (oc cooling stuff)

Before you buy from ANYWHERE, check out ResellerRatings. You may not thank yourself (or me :-) later, but at least you won't be cursing yourself and the fly by night vendor that screwed you. Just remember to keep in mind: People (in general) are much more likely to bitch about bad service than praise good service.

That said, I've been really happy with NewEgg for equipment. For some higher end (or rather specific) cooling equipment, 2CoolTek is really good. Crucial is great if you're looking for high-quality RAM. PCBoost has never given me any trouble when dealing with less expensive RAM. And everyone and their brother will mention Pricewatch. :-) And although they aren't always the cheapest, Axiontech has always treated me right as well.
People have said good things about MWave, but I ordered a pair of NICs from them a while ago and they shipped in an old motherboard box without any padding -- rattling around loosely! Luckily they both worked.

But these are just MY experiences -- yours may vary.

First place I go is www.newegg.com, everyone seems to respect them and I have always had luck with them.

Then I go to www.mwave.com because I have actually been to their warehouse, although sometimes their prices are higher than others.

This past January I put together a dual Athlon system with SCSI from www.monarchcomputer.com and they had everything I needed and they put the heatsinks and procs on the motherboard for me (so I didn't have to worry about chipping the Athlon core.)

If those 3 places don't have it I usually go to a local shop because I don't like buying from any where else.

(Plus the first 2 places have good (IMHO) RMA support.)

It is worth it if you can spare the time to build the systems. Try buying from a vendor like MWave who will put the MB, CPU, and Memory together for you and test it, it will save you lots of time. Also buy GOOD Power Suplies/Cases. I build systems all the time, and the only power supplies i will use are Antec, same goes with fans. I have found them to be the most reliable on the market. I have systems that run in EXTREMELY dust environments, and don't get cleaned like they should. I can say that i have never had an antec power supply die, and i have had dozens of other manufacturers die. Other notes. Buy a good motherboard, and stick a decent video card on it. Don't use built in Video Cards, they are flaky at best. Good Luck with the project.

Ok why do I find it disturbing that I can buy AMD processors from my favorite dealer mwave
for less than the price AMD is saying it sells them to direct AMD customers in 1000-unit trays of course I'm assuming there, that the price is per processor not per thousand! :)

As another poster said, good luck finding a PCI hardware modem. Much less a USB hardware modem. Your best bet is a serial hardware modem.