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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822116148
NewEgg has a Fujitsu 300GB SCSI drive... for $730!

SCSI drives are significantly more expensive than SATA or IDE, especially when you get into the high capacities. The makers are expanding their SCSI lines, but most individuals don't need/can't afford the big ones. If you're a big enough business or government agency, the game changes.

First of all, a good 400GB SATA drive runs around $300. Note that it isn't even SATA2 which one would probably want for a high performance RAID (NCQ et al).

Second, 36GB is hardly the top end for SCSI drives. For a little more than $300 you can get 147GB SCSI drives. Also keep in mind that more drives means more striped performance. So more drives isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Granted, it is still more expensive for teh SCSI setup. I just think you should make a fair comparison.

-matthew

First of all, a good 400GB SATA drive runs around $300. Note that it isn't even SATA2 which one would probably want for a high performance RAID (NCQ et al).

Second, 36GB is hardly the top end for SCSI drives. For a little more than $300 you can get 147GB SCSI drives. Also keep in mind that more drives means more striped performance. So more drives isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Granted, it is still more expensive for teh SCSI setup. I just think you should make a fair comparison.

-matthew

I haven't gotten mad at anyone; I just look at the price before rebate, and that's the price. Which is why I shop at Newegg.com. Or Amazon.

DT

Ready for dual or single core action - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813131570

Change the voltage. It's easy to take a fan running at the usual 12v and make it run a bit slower (and QUIETER) by mixing voltages. Instead of connecting to the 12v line and ground, cross-connect to the 12v and 5v lines, giving the fan ~7v instead. This is a very easy hybrid approach, only requiring wire strippers and some electrical tape.

A brief, but good explanation is here: http://www.heatsink-guide.com/content.php?content= connector.shtml

If you need something more specific, then a fan controller is in order. Some examples (you can build your own internal to the case, but these look better and are obviously more easily accessible):

1 channel: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16835118217
3 channel: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813999506
4 channel: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813999504

You probably don't need anything more than the 3-channel. You can add more than one fan per channel on most decent controllers, as long as you set them high enough to get past initial start-up. If you have a large box like my RAID5 system (2x 120mm, 3x 80mm), you probably need the 4-channel fan controller.

Change the voltage. It's easy to take a fan running at the usual 12v and make it run a bit slower (and QUIETER) by mixing voltages. Instead of connecting to the 12v line and ground, cross-connect to the 12v and 5v lines, giving the fan ~7v instead. This is a very easy hybrid approach, only requiring wire strippers and some electrical tape.

A brief, but good explanation is here: http://www.heatsink-guide.com/content.php?content= connector.shtml

If you need something more specific, then a fan controller is in order. Some examples (you can build your own internal to the case, but these look better and are obviously more easily accessible):

1 channel: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16835118217
3 channel: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813999506
4 channel: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813999504

You probably don't need anything more than the 3-channel. You can add more than one fan per channel on most decent controllers, as long as you set them high enough to get past initial start-up. If you have a large box like my RAID5 system (2x 120mm, 3x 80mm), you probably need the 4-channel fan controller.

Change the voltage. It's easy to take a fan running at the usual 12v and make it run a bit slower (and QUIETER) by mixing voltages. Instead of connecting to the 12v line and ground, cross-connect to the 12v and 5v lines, giving the fan ~7v instead. This is a very easy hybrid approach, only requiring wire strippers and some electrical tape.

A brief, but good explanation is here: http://www.heatsink-guide.com/content.php?content= connector.shtml

If you need something more specific, then a fan controller is in order. Some examples (you can build your own internal to the case, but these look better and are obviously more easily accessible):

1 channel: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16835118217
3 channel: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813999506
4 channel: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813999504

You probably don't need anything more than the 3-channel. You can add more than one fan per channel on most decent controllers, as long as you set them high enough to get past initial start-up. If you have a large box like my RAID5 system (2x 120mm, 3x 80mm), you probably need the 4-channel fan controller.

Self-righteousness aside, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16833130111 + http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/Main _Page is a winning combination. It's been rock-solid for me on my mythbox under very heavy loads.

Plus the chipset maker (Railink) are good folks and release their specs + drivers to the F/OSS community.

Not to mention you can't exactly throw a Linksys router (hardware firewall) inbetween you and the wall when you are on dialup.

s/Linksys/El Cheapo/g

Neither the Multitech, nor the Apple Airport Base station, can be gotten for much under $200. In contrast, various Yum Cha ethernet routers can be found on Newegg and the like for under $25; sometimes less, if there's a rebate. I picked up a wireless router for $15 including tax after rebates from a local brick-and-mortar, just because it was too cheap to not have one. (It's currently turned on and pissing off wardrivers by running as an open "access" point... unconnected to any other network. The other open access point in the neighborhood seems to run a penetration test on anything that connects. Freindly neighborhood, huh?)

The cheapest NAT firewall for dialup would probably be the cheapest used PII PC you can find with a modem and NIC, the cheapest router or switch you can buy, and a *nix LiveCD. That would still run $100ish, and power costs might make it a false economy.

If you need such, I'd go with the Airport Base -- not because I'm an Apple fan (my job makes me use 'em, and they're nice, but I spend my own money on cheaper PC gear), but because I expect most people will eventually move off of dialup, and the Airport works just as well on DSL.

When choosing the processor to go in Godzilla we thought to ourselves, "What CPU should we choose to power the 'King of all Monster PVRs'?" We choose the Intel Pentium D 840 "Extreme Edition" Processor! What could be beating in the belly of a beast like Godzilla but the best processor Intel makes?

A run of the mill AMD chip?

An Athlon 64 3200+ runs $160.
The Intel Pentium D 840 EE runs $1010.

Q: Which one is cooler? A: AMD
Q: Which one is quieter? A: AMD
Q: Which one uses less electricity to watch a movie. A: AMD
Q: Which one uses less electricity to record 11 movies simultaneously? A: AMD
Q: Which one is capable of displaying 11 movies simultaneously from 11 onboard tuners? A: AMD
      (Witness the melting of their PVR, and the deafening noise of half a dozen fans at full speed.)
Guess which one can handle 11 TV tuners?

When choosing the processor to go in Godzilla we thought to ourselves, "What CPU should we choose to power the 'King of all Monster PVRs'?" We choose the Intel Pentium D 840 "Extreme Edition" Processor! What could be beating in the belly of a beast like Godzilla but the best processor Intel makes?

A run of the mill AMD chip?

An Athlon 64 3200+ runs $160.
The Intel Pentium D 840 EE runs $1010.

Q: Which one is cooler? A: AMD
Q: Which one is quieter? A: AMD
Q: Which one uses less electricity to watch a movie. A: AMD
Q: Which one uses less electricity to record 11 movies simultaneously? A: AMD
Q: Which one is capable of displaying 11 movies simultaneously from 11 onboard tuners? A: AMD
      (Witness the melting of their PVR, and the deafening noise of half a dozen fans at full speed.)
Guess which one can handle 11 TV tuners?

That was true when the Sempron first launched, but last summer they added 64-bit-enabled Semprons to the lineup (I think to counter 64-bit-enabled Celerons). The Semprons with 64-bit capability enabled are generally marketed with "64" in the product title, like this.

How about the HightPoint RocketRAID cards? The 1820a supports 8 SATA drives, supports 64-bit 133MHz PCI-X, but is PCI compatible and costs about $200. They have closed source linux drivers for 2.4 and 2.6 kernels.

I was looking at the same thing. And I ran across most of the devices out there, but their cost/benefits seem to be out-of-whack. If you want a ~1TB RAID-5 for ~$1K this is what I came up with. This still doesn't solve all of the backup, etc. issues that you should solve if you're running our data center, but I think this is for your house. Where if you're like me, you don't want to spend time maintaining your home systems; I have a job building (embedded) computers, I don't need to do it at home.

Get an Nvidia nForce 4 Ultra motherboard with RAID built in.
Supermicro 5 SATA hotswap drive chasis, (takes 3 5-1/4 chassis slots)
buy 3 or 4 SATA-II drives, (I was looking at 250GB recently)
Add your AMD processor, chassis, maybe a small PATA drive for booting up on, System mem, and cheap video card.

Here's mine, without the 4th hard drive to get to 1TB on newegg.

http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/Wishlist/WishS hareShow.asp?ID=1796760&WishListTitle=RAID+PC

I honestly wanted an appliance; but the appliances are overpriced, IMHO. And while this doesn't have appliance simplicity, it is cost effective and you get a new PC out of it too. I really wanted a dedicated RAID card, but the prices are crazy. An AMCC PowerPC XOR accelerator chip is about 1/2 the cost of a card, or so, but there should be enough of that left over to turn it into an appliance all by itself.

Too bad they're out of stock. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16817124010

I had the same experience with TigerDirect. I was looking for a particular motherboard that newegg didn't have in stock, but Tiger Direct did. I ordered four and also four hard drives that were at a good price. After a day nothing had yet shipped. That's when the order showed the drives were backordered. Just as you experienced, the web page said nothing about that when I placed the order... Took about 5 emails and a couple phone calls to get them to cancel the hard drives and send the motherboards. I wouldn't have been so upset if they had just shipped the parts they did have. Sheesh.

A few weeks later, I received a form email apologizing for the shipping problems. I expect a lot of people won't be shopping there again.

Been getting majority of my parts from NewEgg and Case-Mod (get a small discount if you access some parts from froogle) where I know what to expect.

This is what I did: http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/WishList/WishS hareShow.asp?ID=1764600

It's a 3U rack mount 8 drive server with a nice dual-core cpu to keep the software raid moving along. I directly attached all 8 drives to the motherboard (it has 8 SATA ports). Grub has some trouble figuring out which is bootable but since I wanted all disks to have grub on them (in case of a failure) that's just required a bit of fiddling. The big thing I needed to do was plug all the fans in the box into 5v instead of 12 since they are insanely loud otherwise. This required a bit of fiddling to rewire the power supply fan but nothing hard. Since not too many people have enclosed racks at home a quieter desktop case would make that a non-issue.

I did a raid1 /boot partition across all 8 disks. (Linux raid 1 will do more than just 2 disk mirroring) The main data partition is a 2.2 TB raid5 but I seriously considered raid6 and I'm keeping the option open. I like the idea of being still protected in the case of a disk failure since I won't be keeping a spare on site (unless I do.. hmm.)

This is a decent box but its a lot more work than should be involved in getting a simple home server. I will note that I get about 120 MB/s write speed and about 150MB/s read speed (sequential) which seems quite good to me.

Thecus 2100S (at newegg.com)

What about this thing? It sure is a hell of a lot cheaper than a Buffalo Terraserver (at $355 vs ~$800)
and seems to do what you want. It supports up to 1TB, has gigabit ethernet, uses SATA drives
and runs on an Xscale processor.

Nope, I don't work the company either. I'm just thinking about buying one for someone. (Disclaimer: I've
never used one of these, it just fits the specs...)

On to solutions. Buy yourself a big case

If you want a monster (sized) machine, a full tower will readily give you 2+8+10 bays into which you can properly mount a 3.5" HDD, and probably provide adequate cooling capacity as well.

Not to sound too much like an advertisement, but if you want elegant and realistic (18 drives???), the Lian Li PC3077 provides 7 external 5.25" bays, which will give you one CD/DVD drive, plus up to 8 3.5" HDDs with the Lian Li EX-34A 3x5.25 to 4x3.5" mounting kit (personally I prefer the Thermaltake A2309 iCage, which only gives you 1:1 (so 3 HDDs in 3 bays), but has simply wonderful heat dissipation). About as close as you'll get to a dedicated external RAID enclosure, but with decent cooling (many RAID enclosures suck for heat, and eat drives like candy) and a full PC inside the box.


Add 4 120GB 7200RPM SATA Drives (or what ever you can find cheap, even 200GB drives are relativly cheap these days).

The current dollars-per-gig crossover has reached the 400GB level (some posts actually suggested going with 80GB drives... while cheap per drive, that would cost almost a third more than going with 400GBs on a per-GB basis, not to mention only a fifth the total capacity in a given enclosure); and if you plan to go with a hardware RAID, don't worry too much about per-drive performance either... Go with the biggest cheapest drives you can get. Any modern drive will perform admirably in a RAID, and if you needed higher performance, you'd already know you need a dedicated NAS that eats low-capacity high-price SCSI drives.


Install Linux, share your harddrive using Samba. Done.

Agree completely. I'd suggest sharing most of the drive RO, however, with only a small portion RW. That way, any malware on connected 'doze machines can at worst wipe out the RW portion, with your "real" archive safely unmodifiable.

On to solutions. Buy yourself a big case

If you want a monster (sized) machine, a full tower will readily give you 2+8+10 bays into which you can properly mount a 3.5" HDD, and probably provide adequate cooling capacity as well.

Not to sound too much like an advertisement, but if you want elegant and realistic (18 drives???), the Lian Li PC3077 provides 7 external 5.25" bays, which will give you one CD/DVD drive, plus up to 8 3.5" HDDs with the Lian Li EX-34A 3x5.25 to 4x3.5" mounting kit (personally I prefer the Thermaltake A2309 iCage, which only gives you 1:1 (so 3 HDDs in 3 bays), but has simply wonderful heat dissipation). About as close as you'll get to a dedicated external RAID enclosure, but with decent cooling (many RAID enclosures suck for heat, and eat drives like candy) and a full PC inside the box.


Add 4 120GB 7200RPM SATA Drives (or what ever you can find cheap, even 200GB drives are relativly cheap these days).

The current dollars-per-gig crossover has reached the 400GB level (some posts actually suggested going with 80GB drives... while cheap per drive, that would cost almost a third more than going with 400GBs on a per-GB basis, not to mention only a fifth the total capacity in a given enclosure); and if you plan to go with a hardware RAID, don't worry too much about per-drive performance either... Go with the biggest cheapest drives you can get. Any modern drive will perform admirably in a RAID, and if you needed higher performance, you'd already know you need a dedicated NAS that eats low-capacity high-price SCSI drives.


Install Linux, share your harddrive using Samba. Done.

Agree completely. I'd suggest sharing most of the drive RO, however, with only a small portion RW. That way, any malware on connected 'doze machines can at worst wipe out the RW portion, with your "real" archive safely unmodifiable.

On to solutions. Buy yourself a big case

If you want a monster (sized) machine, a full tower will readily give you 2+8+10 bays into which you can properly mount a 3.5" HDD, and probably provide adequate cooling capacity as well.

Not to sound too much like an advertisement, but if you want elegant and realistic (18 drives???), the Lian Li PC3077 provides 7 external 5.25" bays, which will give you one CD/DVD drive, plus up to 8 3.5" HDDs with the Lian Li EX-34A 3x5.25 to 4x3.5" mounting kit (personally I prefer the Thermaltake A2309 iCage, which only gives you 1:1 (so 3 HDDs in 3 bays), but has simply wonderful heat dissipation). About as close as you'll get to a dedicated external RAID enclosure, but with decent cooling (many RAID enclosures suck for heat, and eat drives like candy) and a full PC inside the box.


Add 4 120GB 7200RPM SATA Drives (or what ever you can find cheap, even 200GB drives are relativly cheap these days).

The current dollars-per-gig crossover has reached the 400GB level (some posts actually suggested going with 80GB drives... while cheap per drive, that would cost almost a third more than going with 400GBs on a per-GB basis, not to mention only a fifth the total capacity in a given enclosure); and if you plan to go with a hardware RAID, don't worry too much about per-drive performance either... Go with the biggest cheapest drives you can get. Any modern drive will perform admirably in a RAID, and if you needed higher performance, you'd already know you need a dedicated NAS that eats low-capacity high-price SCSI drives.


Install Linux, share your harddrive using Samba. Done.

Agree completely. I'd suggest sharing most of the drive RO, however, with only a small portion RW. That way, any malware on connected 'doze machines can at worst wipe out the RW portion, with your "real" archive safely unmodifiable.

Because that's when I was spec'ing out the goodies that are making their way to me in the big, brown trucks as we speak. I'm satisfied with my purchases, but it would have been nice to hear what others came up with before blowing my year-end bonus.

4 x Maxtor 7L300S0 300GB SATA drives for $120 each from Newegg. (D'oh! They're $5 cheaper than last week!)
4-drive capable SATA external enclosure with hot-swap bays for $250 from Cooldrives.com.
Highpoint RocketRAID 1820A to turn it all into a RAID-5 with ~900GB capacity. $200, from Newegg.

This will all be driven by a G4/2x450MHz running Tiger Server.

RAID6 is not at all an odd combination. It uses a 2D parity scheme to ensure that there is no data loss in the array if there are any 2 drive failures simultaneously. Although I agree that I've never seen RAID6 controllers from promise, Newegg has some from Areca; though you'll pay quite a bit for them.

As CmdrTaco, I'm sure you have money coming out of your ears that you've harvested from the pseudo-religion that is Slashdot.

But for those of you with fewer fiscal resources, I will tell you the stories of my friend and me, a.k.a. The Master Rebaters.

My story is a simple one. I love music. I have over 1,000 CDs and have spent a lot of time meticulously ripping them with my friend CDex. So, I have some 350-400GB of data that I would like to archive. There are a multitude of possibilities but, since I'm short on cash, I opted for a simple $13 RAID 1 controller ... I know, I know, I'm going to catch hell for using such a crappy generic product. And I know many people who will tell you that VIA is crap when it comes to RAID controllers. Maybe you're one of them. If you are, I hear that the brand Promise provides excellent RAID controllers, you'll just pay a whole lot more for them. A couple of these babies in RAID 1 and you're set.

My friend, however, opted for a huge and expensive RAID 6 array controller made by Promise. Then he waited and waited until there was a 250 GB Maxtor rebate at CompUSA or Outpost and went in and bought five with cash. Then he filled out the rebates for relatives and played the waiting game. Huge initial investment but he received a lot of money back slowly. Result, a 1.1 ~ 1.2 TB RAID array. He got a lot more storage and more efficient use of the disks since a RAID 6 with striping allows for drives to be rebuilt in the array.

What he wasn't planning on was the logistics of what he would have to do to his Antec case as a result of all these drives. Fans. Airflow. Heat. These all became huge issues for him--especially in the summer. I'm not sure what your situation is with a case but I made no alterations to my case.

Now, there's a lot of things I skipped over that you can take into consideration, like SATA or ATA? 7,200 RPM or 10,000 RPM? 8MB or 16MB buffer? Striping size? etc. Honestly, those issues aren't worth my time to mess with. Sure sure, I'm losing precious ms seek/read time on my disks but I'm not that motivated.

In the end, if you're only looking for half a TB, do what I did. Those 500 GB drives will only get cheaper and if one blows, just pop another in. And if you really need that room to grow, grab the nice RAID controller that supports RAID 0-6 and just use two 500GBs leaving the other three slots open for the future when you might buy them and RAID 6 it.

What fails? The old IBM Deathstars. Beware!

I have been using this keyboard made by Kensington for a little over 6 months now and it's one of the greatest I've ever used. The keys are a little smaller than normal and the entire keyboard is way more compact than most others. The best part? It's only 30 dollars:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16823155003

Hope that helped! Good luck!

I was looking for the perfect keyboard for the longest time and I found one that I now absolutely love. Two of my friends loved it so much they got one for themselves. It's made by Kensington and I got it at Newegg. I was looking down their list of keyboards and saw that it had 34 reviews. I figured any keyboard that was worth writing a review for had to be good. It uses the scissor-switch laptop like keys so it's really responsive. I find it really strange and slow typing on a normal keyboard now. It has the keypad which you said you don't need but it still is a very narrow keyboard. It also has multimedia keys at the top which I'll find useful when playing CDs. All in all for 30 dollars it's quite decent. Here's the link:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16823155003

Good luck with your search!

The grandparent is right, there are no real affordable options. Either you pay 150-250 or you deal with the next to useless integrated video on your mobo. Something decent that will play most of the popular games at 'medium' without massive frame loss at around 75-100 dollars is needed.

Almost forgot. Be careful with the case and video card. The case won't allow full height video cards... the ones that extend past the bracket. You might want to consider a Lian-Li case instead. It's slightly more expensive, but will hold full height cards and twice as many hard drives. My friend got this one, and it looks decent. They also make it in silver.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16824112176

uhh... i think you mean 12MBytes/s, but they're getting even faster than that.

I don't know what kind of flash drive you have, but mine runs a hell of a lot faster than usb1.1 speeds. I haven't tun hdtach on it but it but i just copied 87 megs of mp3s onto it in ~6 seconds, that's 14.5 MBytes/sec, or 116Mbits/s

looking back up i see you said flash card... dunno fi you think it matters, but my 512MB SD card is narly as fast.

when you need parts today or tomorrow, you'll have to go local and pick them up yourself. If you need parts fast, get them from http://www.newegg.com/ - they are the best online computer parts company I have ever dealt with. They pretty much always ship stuff out the same day or the day after you place your order, and you can pay a $3 fee to ask them to give it their best shot at shipping it the same day - they refund the fee if they can't get it out that day.

I do own a network of computers. But nothing fancy like blue lights and see-thru windows or anything like this. In fact, trying to find a decent "beige" PC case is almost impossible. I had to settle for this instead. Of course, I did replace the blue LED fan. ;)

I do own a network of computers. But nothing fancy like blue lights and see-thru windows or anything like this. In fact, trying to find a decent "beige" PC case is almost impossible. I had to settle for this instead. Of course, I did replace the blue LED fan. ;)

That case you mention is a Lian Li, I'd definitely like one of those - they're not cheap: http://www.lian-li.com/product.htm . The cheapest one on Newegg (and yes I know Newegg is not the end all be all of online stores) is $199: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16811112051

But yes, you're right: the water cooling setup is an ugly implementation. They should've drilled holes in the top and ran the tubes through that instead and put elbows on it to bend it at a 90 degree angle to the box.

It is only because there is currently a shift going on from AGP to PCI-Express that he can't just buy the latest vid card and be happy.

I think he just wants others to help him justify a new computer.

Or he can't decide which of the 195 cards to buy...

(And that is just one vendor)

Let's face it... If there was truly a need then the decision could be made quite logically... and easily.

It is when desire is the main motivator (instead of need) that the decision gets "confusing" and "difficult".

Here's where the 'sweet spots' in terms of performance/price are, in my opinion; choose depending on your budget. (Of course, if your goal is to waste money, there's plenty of components available at or near $1000 prices, as well, but they don't provide much more than a 20% or so performance increase over the $200-300 options.)


Processor:
Athlon 64 3200+ ($160)
A 2GHz Athlon 64 with 512K cache. As is widely known, these beat the pants off of Pentium 4s.

Athlon 64 X2 3800+ ($320)
Two 2GHz Athlon 64s with 512K cache (dual core).



Motherboard:
Abit KN8 SLI ($110)
SLI doesn't carry much of a price premium any more these days, so it can't hurt to have the extra upgrade capability. Other brands like DFI, Asus, MSI, EPoX, are fine as well.



Memory:
2x 512MB Crucial PC-3200 ($95)
2x 1GB Crucial PC-3200 ($170)
Two is so you can run them in dual channel mode. Other good brands include Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, OCZ.


Video card:
GeForce 6600GT 128MB ($125)
8 pixel pipelines at 500MHz = 4 Gigasomethings

GeForce 6800GS 256MB ($190)
12 pipelines at 425MHz = 5.1 Gigasomethings. This also has double the memory and memory bandwidth of a 6600GT, so it'll handle higher resolutions and antialiasing levels much better.

GeForce 7800GT 256MB ($270)
20 pipelines at 400MHz = 8 Gigasomethings. This is almost exactly double a 6600GT in many respects (double the pixel pushing power, memory, and memory bandwidth).


If you want to find things out for yourself, I recommend browsing around at The Tech Report and AnandTech; I've found these two to consistently have the highest quality reviews and comparisons out there. Their system guides don't completely suck, either. (Neither do Ars Technica's, but they don't do hardware reviews).

Here's where the 'sweet spots' in terms of performance/price are, in my opinion; choose depending on your budget. (Of course, if your goal is to waste money, there's plenty of components available at or near $1000 prices, as well, but they don't provide much more than a 20% or so performance increase over the $200-300 options.)


Processor:
Athlon 64 3200+ ($160)
A 2GHz Athlon 64 with 512K cache. As is widely known, these beat the pants off of Pentium 4s.

Athlon 64 X2 3800+ ($320)
Two 2GHz Athlon 64s with 512K cache (dual core).



Motherboard:
Abit KN8 SLI ($110)
SLI doesn't carry much of a price premium any more these days, so it can't hurt to have the extra upgrade capability. Other brands like DFI, Asus, MSI, EPoX, are fine as well.



Memory:
2x 512MB Crucial PC-3200 ($95)
2x 1GB Crucial PC-3200 ($170)
Two is so you can run them in dual channel mode. Other good brands include Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, OCZ.


Video card:
GeForce 6600GT 128MB ($125)
8 pixel pipelines at 500MHz = 4 Gigasomethings

GeForce 6800GS 256MB ($190)
12 pipelines at 425MHz = 5.1 Gigasomethings. This also has double the memory and memory bandwidth of a 6600GT, so it'll handle higher resolutions and antialiasing levels much better.

GeForce 7800GT 256MB ($270)
20 pipelines at 400MHz = 8 Gigasomethings. This is almost exactly double a 6600GT in many respects (double the pixel pushing power, memory, and memory bandwidth).


If you want to find things out for yourself, I recommend browsing around at The Tech Report and AnandTech; I've found these two to consistently have the highest quality reviews and comparisons out there. Their system guides don't completely suck, either. (Neither do Ars Technica's, but they don't do hardware reviews).

Here's where the 'sweet spots' in terms of performance/price are, in my opinion; choose depending on your budget. (Of course, if your goal is to waste money, there's plenty of components available at or near $1000 prices, as well, but they don't provide much more than a 20% or so performance increase over the $200-300 options.)


Processor:
Athlon 64 3200+ ($160)
A 2GHz Athlon 64 with 512K cache. As is widely known, these beat the pants off of Pentium 4s.

Athlon 64 X2 3800+ ($320)
Two 2GHz Athlon 64s with 512K cache (dual core).



Motherboard:
Abit KN8 SLI ($110)
SLI doesn't carry much of a price premium any more these days, so it can't hurt to have the extra upgrade capability. Other brands like DFI, Asus, MSI, EPoX, are fine as well.



Memory:
2x 512MB Crucial PC-3200 ($95)
2x 1GB Crucial PC-3200 ($170)
Two is so you can run them in dual channel mode. Other good brands include Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, OCZ.


Video card:
GeForce 6600GT 128MB ($125)
8 pixel pipelines at 500MHz = 4 Gigasomethings

GeForce 6800GS 256MB ($190)
12 pipelines at 425MHz = 5.1 Gigasomethings. This also has double the memory and memory bandwidth of a 6600GT, so it'll handle higher resolutions and antialiasing levels much better.

GeForce 7800GT 256MB ($270)
20 pipelines at 400MHz = 8 Gigasomethings. This is almost exactly double a 6600GT in many respects (double the pixel pushing power, memory, and memory bandwidth).


If you want to find things out for yourself, I recommend browsing around at The Tech Report and AnandTech; I've found these two to consistently have the highest quality reviews and comparisons out there. Their system guides don't completely suck, either. (Neither do Ars Technica's, but they don't do hardware reviews).

Here's where the 'sweet spots' in terms of performance/price are, in my opinion; choose depending on your budget. (Of course, if your goal is to waste money, there's plenty of components available at or near $1000 prices, as well, but they don't provide much more than a 20% or so performance increase over the $200-300 options.)


Processor:
Athlon 64 3200+ ($160)
A 2GHz Athlon 64 with 512K cache. As is widely known, these beat the pants off of Pentium 4s.

Athlon 64 X2 3800+ ($320)
Two 2GHz Athlon 64s with 512K cache (dual core).



Motherboard:
Abit KN8 SLI ($110)
SLI doesn't carry much of a price premium any more these days, so it can't hurt to have the extra upgrade capability. Other brands like DFI, Asus, MSI, EPoX, are fine as well.



Memory:
2x 512MB Crucial PC-3200 ($95)
2x 1GB Crucial PC-3200 ($170)
Two is so you can run them in dual channel mode. Other good brands include Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, OCZ.


Video card:
GeForce 6600GT 128MB ($125)
8 pixel pipelines at 500MHz = 4 Gigasomethings

GeForce 6800GS 256MB ($190)
12 pipelines at 425MHz = 5.1 Gigasomethings. This also has double the memory and memory bandwidth of a 6600GT, so it'll handle higher resolutions and antialiasing levels much better.

GeForce 7800GT 256MB ($270)
20 pipelines at 400MHz = 8 Gigasomethings. This is almost exactly double a 6600GT in many respects (double the pixel pushing power, memory, and memory bandwidth).


If you want to find things out for yourself, I recommend browsing around at The Tech Report and AnandTech; I've found these two to consistently have the highest quality reviews and comparisons out there. Their system guides don't completely suck, either. (Neither do Ars Technica's, but they don't do hardware reviews).

Here's where the 'sweet spots' in terms of performance/price are, in my opinion; choose depending on your budget. (Of course, if your goal is to waste money, there's plenty of components available at or near $1000 prices, as well, but they don't provide much more than a 20% or so performance increase over the $200-300 options.)


Processor:
Athlon 64 3200+ ($160)
A 2GHz Athlon 64 with 512K cache. As is widely known, these beat the pants off of Pentium 4s.

Athlon 64 X2 3800+ ($320)
Two 2GHz Athlon 64s with 512K cache (dual core).



Motherboard:
Abit KN8 SLI ($110)
SLI doesn't carry much of a price premium any more these days, so it can't hurt to have the extra upgrade capability. Other brands like DFI, Asus, MSI, EPoX, are fine as well.



Memory:
2x 512MB Crucial PC-3200 ($95)
2x 1GB Crucial PC-3200 ($170)
Two is so you can run them in dual channel mode. Other good brands include Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, OCZ.


Video card:
GeForce 6600GT 128MB ($125)
8 pixel pipelines at 500MHz = 4 Gigasomethings

GeForce 6800GS 256MB ($190)
12 pipelines at 425MHz = 5.1 Gigasomethings. This also has double the memory and memory bandwidth of a 6600GT, so it'll handle higher resolutions and antialiasing levels much better.

GeForce 7800GT 256MB ($270)
20 pipelines at 400MHz = 8 Gigasomethings. This is almost exactly double a 6600GT in many respects (double the pixel pushing power, memory, and memory bandwidth).


If you want to find things out for yourself, I recommend browsing around at The Tech Report and AnandTech; I've found these two to consistently have the highest quality reviews and comparisons out there. Their system guides don't completely suck, either. (Neither do Ars Technica's, but they don't do hardware reviews).

Here's where the 'sweet spots' in terms of performance/price are, in my opinion; choose depending on your budget. (Of course, if your goal is to waste money, there's plenty of components available at or near $1000 prices, as well, but they don't provide much more than a 20% or so performance increase over the $200-300 options.)


Processor:
Athlon 64 3200+ ($160)
A 2GHz Athlon 64 with 512K cache. As is widely known, these beat the pants off of Pentium 4s.

Athlon 64 X2 3800+ ($320)
Two 2GHz Athlon 64s with 512K cache (dual core).



Motherboard:
Abit KN8 SLI ($110)
SLI doesn't carry much of a price premium any more these days, so it can't hurt to have the extra upgrade capability. Other brands like DFI, Asus, MSI, EPoX, are fine as well.



Memory:
2x 512MB Crucial PC-3200 ($95)
2x 1GB Crucial PC-3200 ($170)
Two is so you can run them in dual channel mode. Other good brands include Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, OCZ.


Video card:
GeForce 6600GT 128MB ($125)
8 pixel pipelines at 500MHz = 4 Gigasomethings

GeForce 6800GS 256MB ($190)
12 pipelines at 425MHz = 5.1 Gigasomethings. This also has double the memory and memory bandwidth of a 6600GT, so it'll handle higher resolutions and antialiasing levels much better.

GeForce 7800GT 256MB ($270)
20 pipelines at 400MHz = 8 Gigasomethings. This is almost exactly double a 6600GT in many respects (double the pixel pushing power, memory, and memory bandwidth).


If you want to find things out for yourself, I recommend browsing around at The Tech Report and AnandTech; I've found these two to consistently have the highest quality reviews and comparisons out there. Their system guides don't completely suck, either. (Neither do Ars Technica's, but they don't do hardware reviews).

Here's where the 'sweet spots' in terms of performance/price are, in my opinion; choose depending on your budget. (Of course, if your goal is to waste money, there's plenty of components available at or near $1000 prices, as well, but they don't provide much more than a 20% or so performance increase over the $200-300 options.)


Processor:
Athlon 64 3200+ ($160)
A 2GHz Athlon 64 with 512K cache. As is widely known, these beat the pants off of Pentium 4s.

Athlon 64 X2 3800+ ($320)
Two 2GHz Athlon 64s with 512K cache (dual core).



Motherboard:
Abit KN8 SLI ($110)
SLI doesn't carry much of a price premium any more these days, so it can't hurt to have the extra upgrade capability. Other brands like DFI, Asus, MSI, EPoX, are fine as well.



Memory:
2x 512MB Crucial PC-3200 ($95)
2x 1GB Crucial PC-3200 ($170)
Two is so you can run them in dual channel mode. Other good brands include Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, OCZ.


Video card:
GeForce 6600GT 128MB ($125)
8 pixel pipelines at 500MHz = 4 Gigasomethings

GeForce 6800GS 256MB ($190)
12 pipelines at 425MHz = 5.1 Gigasomethings. This also has double the memory and memory bandwidth of a 6600GT, so it'll handle higher resolutions and antialiasing levels much better.

GeForce 7800GT 256MB ($270)
20 pipelines at 400MHz = 8 Gigasomethings. This is almost exactly double a 6600GT in many respects (double the pixel pushing power, memory, and memory bandwidth).


If you want to find things out for yourself, I recommend browsing around at The Tech Report and AnandTech; I've found these two to consistently have the highest quality reviews and comparisons out there. Their system guides don't completely suck, either. (Neither do Ars Technica's, but they don't do hardware reviews).

Here's where the 'sweet spots' in terms of performance/price are, in my opinion; choose depending on your budget. (Of course, if your goal is to waste money, there's plenty of components available at or near $1000 prices, as well, but they don't provide much more than a 20% or so performance increase over the $200-300 options.)


Processor:
Athlon 64 3200+ ($160)
A 2GHz Athlon 64 with 512K cache. As is widely known, these beat the pants off of Pentium 4s.

Athlon 64 X2 3800+ ($320)
Two 2GHz Athlon 64s with 512K cache (dual core).



Motherboard:
Abit KN8 SLI ($110)
SLI doesn't carry much of a price premium any more these days, so it can't hurt to have the extra upgrade capability. Other brands like DFI, Asus, MSI, EPoX, are fine as well.



Memory:
2x 512MB Crucial PC-3200 ($95)
2x 1GB Crucial PC-3200 ($170)
Two is so you can run them in dual channel mode. Other good brands include Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, OCZ.


Video card:
GeForce 6600GT 128MB ($125)
8 pixel pipelines at 500MHz = 4 Gigasomethings

GeForce 6800GS 256MB ($190)
12 pipelines at 425MHz = 5.1 Gigasomethings. This also has double the memory and memory bandwidth of a 6600GT, so it'll handle higher resolutions and antialiasing levels much better.

GeForce 7800GT 256MB ($270)
20 pipelines at 400MHz = 8 Gigasomethings. This is almost exactly double a 6600GT in many respects (double the pixel pushing power, memory, and memory bandwidth).


If you want to find things out for yourself, I recommend browsing around at The Tech Report and AnandTech; I've found these two to consistently have the highest quality reviews and comparisons out there. Their system guides don't completely suck, either. (Neither do Ars Technica's, but they don't do hardware reviews).

I'd just say go with a nicer PSU with 0 fans in it. They can be had for just slightly more than $100 http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Manu factory=&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&P ropertyCodeValue=2331%3A14180&PropertyCodeValue=0& PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCo deValue=0&description=&MinPrice=&MaxPrice=&SubCate gory=58&Submit=Property

Check out the power supplies manufactured by Fortron Source (FSP Group) at newegg. Just browse by manufacturer. They get rave reviews and I have yet to have a problem with any I have installed. The prices are very reasonable. Most of the product pages list the amperage on each of the outputs, so you can compare with the expensive models. Go with a model that uses a 120mm fan, and the sound difference is amazing.

I'm not sure if this is still true, but they used to sell models with a Potentiometer to adjust the fan speed. When turned down, the fan is silent. When turned all the way up, the fan is barely audible.

I think I read somewhere that Sparkle power supplies are made by the same manufaturer, but they run a few dollars more for equivelant models.

Intel Pentium 4 511 Prescott 533MHz FSB LGA 775 EM64T Processor Model BX80547PE2800EN - Retail
There you go.

I would recommend the Lian Li PC70 case... or buying external drives. =)

Every computer has floppy drive connectors.

WHat if the system has no IDE bus (many new ones don't)?

This is where the decent into la-la land really begins.... (this was four years ago, things are better now).

The Windows laptop I was preparing the WiFi for (using the linux box as a router) was set up in 10 minutes. It downloaded the drivers from the net for me. All I have to do was enter the WEP.

Not in any way trying to defend Microsoft's stupidity on this issue, but you have this option: Sony USB Floppy Device. Sure, it's a bit pricey, but it's portable. These things work great, especially for computers whose floppy drives have died, and you need to ghost them from a floppy disk. 'Course, this idea is requisite that you have an available USB port, which I hope your new floppy-less machine does have.

As a related gripe, why the hell can't you just use a USB jumpdrive to load the drivers for the hard disk atInstall()? That should be a perfectly viable option: I know SuSE 10 let me do something like that.