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• Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
• Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
• Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.

• Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
• Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
• Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!

• Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
• Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
• Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.

• Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
• Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
• Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!

• Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
• Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
• Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.

• Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
• Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
• Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!

• Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
• Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
• Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.

• Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
• Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
• Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!

1. Apple is proprietary. They make the majority of the hardware that goes into their machines. They make their own monitors, accessories and a few other things that are essential to use.
   
2. Any competition for Apple would force Apple bankrupt. Does any one remember Power Mac? or Umax? Yes, they did help Apple with the system bus and a few other things, but they almost forced Apple to go under. Any competition would down right kill Apple.
   
3. Special functions/features would be lost. Since Apple makes their own hardware for their software, it is optimized for each other. Porting OS X to a x86 architecture would make Apple to generalize programs for many types of hardware. This would make things like quartz (unless there is hardware out for it) to run.

1. Apple is proprietary. They make the majority of the hardware that goes into their machines. They make their own monitors, accessories and a few other things that are essential to use.
   
2. Any competition for Apple would force Apple bankrupt. Does any one remember Power Mac? or Umax? Yes, they did help Apple with the system bus and a few other things, but they almost forced Apple to go under. Any competition would down right kill Apple.
   
3. Special functions/features would be lost. Since Apple makes their own hardware for their software, it is optimized for each other. Porting OS X to a x86 architecture would make Apple to generalize programs for many types of hardware. This would make things like quartz (unless there is hardware out for it) to run.

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

Why is this article posted to this dinky little uninformative review?

There's a Real Review over at Tom's.

Last but not least... you get what you pay for. I know, nobody wants to believe that, but it's mostly true. If you put down $60 for a motherboard, $20 for your RAM, and $30 for your case, I pity the stability of your computer. Every one of those components are going to be flakey, unless you're lucky (sometimes you do luck out and get good quality items).

If you carefully research the components that you are interested in then you can often times get excellent parts for considerably less than top dollar. It's all a matter of evaluating needs versus cost. For example, I paid less than $100 7 months ago for my DDR Athlon mainboard and got an Epox 8KHA+. It's an excellent board, is very fast and rock-solid stable. No compatibility issues and it has plenty of slots for expansion. At the same time I paid $40 for my Enlight 7237 mid-tower case with a 300W PSU. It's easy to get into, installation was simple and it looks and works fine. Around the same time I picked up a TDK VeloCD 24x10x40 CDRW for $70. It works great, burns everything I need to burn and hasn't made a single coaster. There's a lot more at work here than simple dumb luck. While I'm at it, I'd also like to point out the obvious: just because it costs more money doesn't mean that it's any better.

Don't get me wrong, I use $2 mice and $39 motherboards sometimes. But I know what I'm getting myself into,

And the implication you make here is that nobody else does. That's a bit of a ridiculous notion, especially when you consider the talents of the average Slashdot reader.

Holy shit, this post is long. I better get moderated up for all this typing.

It's usually quality, not quantity that matters.

Now, on to the matter of this "Mac-alike" case. It looks nice. It seems to be fairly well designed, though still not as well done as a true PowerMac case. The smoked glass/charcoal color doesn't really do much for me personally, but that's just a matter of personal taste (like the rest of my comments about it). When it comes down to it though, it basically looks like any other mid-tower case. I've got a room full of PCs that look basically the same as this one. What is really far more interesting to me are cases like the Shuttle SS40. I think that the small form factor is probably the way to go for the average user nowdays, and the Shuttle systems look damn good. And they're quiet. And if you're really obsessed with wanting a "Mac-alike", just pretend it's a G4 Cube.

Uhm, we're in the 21st century, and our "computers" are STILL huge metal boxes. Everything in the computerindustry shrinks, but aparently the case is the exception to prove the rule, as they keep making bigger and bigger cases.

Place the latest and greatest Full-Tower-Ultra-Plus-Mega-Giga-ATX case next to say, a Flex-ATX or Micro-ATX case, like the one Tom's Hardware has their hands on here, and tell me which one embodies progress.

Not to mention how nice it would be not to have to lug around a 30+ pound case (not to mention the heavy-ass 21" trinitron monitor) just to go to a LAN party.

*sigh* Big Iron isn't a description of mainframes - it's a description of the standard cases you and I use and the cause of our hernia.

You think the Wired thing is bad? Practically every time Tom's Hardware is updated a story is posted on Slashdot. I don't see the Wired articles as often.

None of this is all that surprising, really. Wired, Tom's, Slashdot, and a hell of a lot of other sites and mags largely cater to the same crowds. There's going to be some overlap between them.

Every time you play a CD, the machine automatically copies its tracks onto its built-in 20-gigabyte hard drive. It will then try to get album track information off the CD or, alternately, you can use the PC link to get titles off your favorite cddb-like site.

This new Sony machine will rip the CDs that I play. SO if I play one of the anti-ripping CDs in it will it rip it for me? Or will it not play it? The songs that it rips, it will get the albumn track info from a PC link. How soon will it be hacked? I would not be surprised if the PC link will be hacked before the release (if it is released at all).

MP3s are also copyrighted to Brandenburg, who has also created MP4. MP4 have better quality and are better than MP3s. Besides all the tighter restrictions on MP4s, why don't they use "the latest" in audio files?

Personally, I don't like mp3s, I have some, but not alot. I would prefer to rip my CDs to Ogg Vorbis if I rip them at all. The sony machine would look alot more appitizing if other music formats are used.

The 20 gig hard drive would be minimum that is factory installed. An updgrade to a 50 gig or greater would be ideal (Why not a 120 gig?) That way I won't have to worry about space. 20 gis just won't do it!

I don't know where you shop, but 8500 is significantly cheaper at every store you can find, and the performance is almost the same! (Tom's Hardware VGA charts).

1) ATI has a history of lying about driver support. The Rage Fury MAXX was released around the same time as Windows2000. I, like many other people, believed ATI when they said that they would develop drivers for the platform, that they were just around the corner, so that buying this card over the already-Win2K compatable NV cards would not be a waste of money. HOWEVER, ATI left the Maxx buyers high and dry when they announced, several months later, that they were incapable of producing Win2K drivers and had given up trying.

2) They consistently LAG the cards produced by NVIdiea by wide margins and, while trying to stuff a bunch of useless features down dev's throats, lack the freedom of a programable GPU that the Geforce3 (and higher) cards offer... the cards that game developers are all optimizing their hottest new titles for.

Want a little evidence of how badly ATI stinks? Tom's hardware did a great job testing all of the cards in one huge benchmark here.

DDR333 is here now, but you won't see a 333MHz FSB until Hammer hits the scene. According to Toms' Hardware, you won't even see it in Barton. While a DDR333 connection to the northbridge might be nice for smp setups, it'll be wasted connected by a 133 MHz DDR interface to one cpu. It'll help, just not as much as it should.

Link.

Yes, specced clock and voltage, and then heat sink shot (removed) to see what happened. The overheating ones were AMD procs; Pentiums did not (I say again, DID NOT) overheat anywhere near these temperatures.

I don't remember the ignition temp for your average plastic, but I do remember (from office fire safety training) that paper tended to have the lowest ignition temp of everyday materials, closely followed by wood. My associations to burning plastic are more along the lines of "toxic as hell so get out", I don't remember a specific temperature.

You are correct, but I must say that the Germanium diode you are talking about must be considered as an external source of randomness, since it's not something normally found in a computer.

It's as external as your network card is, which (also) (still) isn't part of quite a big part of the installed PC park.

Should be quite cheap to produce as a USB plug, too, and could finally remove this annoying "please move your mouse and press some keys" entrophy gathering some homebanking programs (and crypto key generators) still require.

What I meant to say is that in today's personal computers, there is nothing truely random.

Well, let me see, there is:

• Intel's i810 chipset:

  "The FWH - 82802

  Behind the name 'FWH' = 'Firmware Hub' you'll find a chip that's not much else than a 4 Mbit EEPROM plus a tiny bit of active silicon. The EEPROM contains the motherboard and graphics BIOS and the active silicon is a random number generator."

There is even Linux support for this (Character Devices -> Intel i8x0 Random Number generator support) and as far as a quick search on the net shows it's also present in the i815.

Although, but this is my perfectly personal opinion, I wouldn't trust some blackbox random number generator manufactured by Intel.

That turns out not to be the case. Even with 7200 disks, ATA 100 is able to handle 2 drives in parallel for RAID, on the same cable. Going to 10000 rpm and an ATA133 and it will still handle 2 very well. See: tomshardware

Also, the more traffic ATA eats up, the more CPU it eats

Moores law eats this issue for breakfast I think- harddrives are increasing in speed much more slowly than processors are. I mean, sure a SCSI interface saves processor but not that much.

Maybe I missed something, but this picture suggeste the heat of the processor is used to warm up the harddisk (or the other way around). Either way I think this is not what you want.

Still, it looks VERY cool.

After the tubing has been installed and the cooling circuit has been closed, turn the pump on, then pour the distilled water into the header tank until the entire system is filled with water. In order to break the surface tension of the water and prevent air bubbles from forming, add a drop of dishwashing liquid.

original page

I can think of something better to use than dishwashing liquid. Red Line Oil makes something called Water Wetter which does the same thing; Its primary function is to lessen water's surface tension in cooling systems in cars. From Red Line's webpage on the product (with advantages relating only to vehicles removed):

BENEFIT SUMMARY

• Doubles the wetting ability of water
• Improves heat transfer
• Reduces rust, corrosion and electrolysis of all metals
• Provides long term corrosion protection
• Cleans and lubricates water pump seals
• Prevents foaming
• Complexes with hard water to reduce scale

You can get a bottle of this, put a little bit in with your tiny computer cooling system, the rest in your car's, and you'll have better cooling all around. And this stuff prevents foaming, rather than promoting it like dishwasher liquid.

There is an article on Tom's Hardware about the newest Matrox card... It is capable of using THREE monitors in this fashion for several current games - they are listed in the article. Enjoy!

It's coming, but having a card that can swallow that kind of BW and not burst into flames is still a ways off.

A basic PCI bus can carry 128 MB per second (33 MHz * 32 bits/cycle = 1 Gb/s), and there exist double-speed and 64-bit variants of PCI. The faster 4x AGP runs at 1 GB per second. If each frame requires 1 GB of data transfer using a PS2-like approach of bringing in each set of textures and then rendering the corresponding triangles, you get 1 fps. Render this on a cluster of 24 machines, and you get the 24 fps of 35mm cinema.

That could be said of a lot of movies, since most movies only involves a few people.

One very good example would be Sleuth. An excellent movie...even though it ran over two hours, of which the majority had only 2 of the 6 actors on-screen.

Judging a movie by the number of people in it is much like judging a 3d game by the framerate it produces.

Hey wait, I just described Tom's Hardware site!

There's a big difference in clock speed, yes, but an 850mhz Duron is going to perform more like a 950mhz-1ghz Celeron, so it's not an entirely unfair comparison in that respect. (see this comparison for benchmarks comparing the duron 1200 to the celeron 1300 - yeah, an 850 Duron won't outperform a 1.3 celeron, but it's not exactly a landslide in the Celeron's direction either)

The real difference hardware-wise between these two is the hard drive. The Windows computer - 40g to the Lindows box's 10g - this matters a lot more than a few Mhz, IMHO!

Still, for many end users, the 10g is fine, and the extra $$$ they save is a big deal to them.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1645

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q2/020625/in dex.html

http://www.theinquirer.net/24060221.htm

Anandtech

Tom's Hardware

Tech Report

Extreme Tech

Anandtech and Tom's Hardware have also posted reviews.

Anand says that it isn't worth $400, especially in terms of frames per second. And Geforce4 Ti 4600s are only $300 online and the Radeon 8500 is only about two benjamins, and both offer better performance.

It says about the same thing that the above review does. Here's the link

How about something like this?

Just push clockspeed up at any cost - who cares about performance?

What? It's true that clock speed alone isn't a valid measure, but it is certainly a very important part of the equation. Intel's "Megahertz sells" paradigm is turning out to be a pretty effective strategy. They have been able to jack up their clock speeds almost at will (2.533 GHz on the P4 now with a clear path to 3.3 GHz by the end of the year). On the other hand, AMD has been struggling all year to speed up their processors. The result is that Intel is leaving AMD in the dust. As toms hardware puts it, "the Athlon design is already a bit outdated and is now reaching its limits."

The consensus is that performance problems with the new XScale platform are because of poor software - not because of flaws in the hardware.

1. First get an idea of how much you can afford to spend.
2. Think a bit about what sort of tasks you want the computer to do. Do you want high end video for gaming? Do you want to build a PVR? Do you want to build a small server to host web/ftp/email services over a broadband connection?
3. Go online and do some research to see what's out there to fulfill the role you envision for the machine. arstechnica, tom's hardware, anandtech, storage review, and other sites usually have good information on recent and upcoming technologies. I do a lot of looking to see what's out there and what's around the corner, then go back and revise my budget accordingly.
4. Decide what you need to buy. I don't generally go for the biggest, fastest, best, because it's generally twice as expensive (or more) as it will be in just a few months. I don't buy the cheapest stuff either, as it's usually of inferior quality, obsolete, or will give inferior performance compared to spending a small amount more on something better. I look at the price/performance curve, and generally buy in the "knee-bend" of the curve. The only exception is if there's something dirt cheap available for a non-critical component that doesn't make much of a difference (like a floppy drive, NIC, or keyboard) or an absolutely critical high-priority component that the system *needs* in order to perform its role adequately (like a GeForce card for a gaming station) or a SCSI controller for a file server.
5. Shop around. You can try pricewatch.com to get an idea what stuff is going for these days. But I find that shipping makes finding a real bargain somewhat difficult. That's especially true if you buy from more than one vendor. I try to go through one vendor, for simplicity's sake, and right now my choice is Newegg.com. They have very good service and their prices are often near the top of the pricewatch search results anyway. You can try local stores, too. Stay away from chains like CompUSA and Best Buy, and support small local businesses run by knowledgable, competant people. Their prices will generally be about twice the lowest you'll find on pricewatch, but you may find the convenience of not paying for shipping, not having to wait for delivery, and having someone to go to for questions and advice useful. If you're more experienced, you probably don't need that, but few people know everything about everything, and everyone you talk to can potentially teach you something.
6. Put it together. There's plenty of guides out there on the web that will go into detailed instructions on how to put a PC together if you need help. PC Mechanic is a good example, and there are many others out there. Read the instructions a few times until you know what you're doing, then do it.

Once you have decided what you want, you can do this for most of your items:

1. Check Pricewatch for lowest prices. (they now include S&H in the total)
2. Check the credibility of the companies with the lowest prices on pricewatch with ResellerRatings.com .
   I cant emphasize this enough. THIS is the most important step.

Other stuff:
You may be interested in special items, like a modded case, or a watercooling setup, these you have to look into yourself and you won't find them on pricewatch. Not necessary to build a computer.

ANTEC - best cases and power supplies

ASUS - motherboards, video cards

KINGSTON or CRUCIAL - RAM

LINKSYS - NIC's

Also it's good to look at Tom's Hardware and do a search for anything you are thinking about buying. Even if you don't find the model you are thinking about, you can probably find other products made by the same company and get some idea of the quality.

Secondly, when you build your system, start with just the case, motherboard, RAM and video card. Make sure this base configuration works before you start adding things to it.

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!

Check out arstechnica for more information on homebrew PC's. They have a lot of information regarding reviews of components of computer systems, as well as letting people on to deals on new components. Good site.

Other good sites that people mentioned in previous responses are: anandtech and toms hardware for component reviews, and pricegrabber and pricewatch for finding the best prices on things online, and newegg is just a great online company that is very reliable and inexpensive for purchasing lots of electronic/computer components.

sigh... but anyways -- the answer you seek is not short, but can be summerized: it depends on what you want.

lets have a few scenarios:

1) you want the fastest, most elaborate PC there is for whatever compensatory reasons. build you self all-the-way. pricewatch, pricegrabber, gotApex Deals, techbargains, and dealwalk are all fine sites to look for deals. flamingo world have some stuff too. pricewatch and pricegrabber gets you the goods, and the rest of them get you the "deals", for example Dell is selling a 20" flat panel (very nice, i have one) for ~1600 -- yesterday you could have gotten it ~1100. just have to check those places everyday. and oh yeah -- go to overclockers.com and find some people to sell you waterblocks, you will need it.

2) average man wanting an averagely fast computer. build can get you more customization and you can "grow into it" more... for the longest time dell would lock the MB so you can't swap processors! and then you can't tweek the MB on ram settings, blah blah either. price is similar if you go and find a good deal. a P4 2GHz can be had at dell for ~600 bux -- no way you can beat that, sorry, especially if you are in CA and have to pay tax+shipping for everybody from pricewatch.

3) your mom/dad. buy one -- in fact, buy one used -- or even better, sell them one of your old, "retired" ones.

4) laptop users -- buy -- because there is no options here. but today unless you are really into water cooling and all that, a laptop gives you the same speed / blah blah anyway. i have a UXGA on my laptop -- sure i have to squint when i look at things, but whatever. p.s. get a good vid.card if you buy a laptop: they are not upgradeable -- however if you are REALLY desperate you can get processors for laptops (micro-PGA) from ebay.

in the end -- for what we want to do (fast system, blah blah) building does not save money. but it's like hotrodding. i have gotten out of the gig a while back (o/c, etc etc) and wont turn back. it's just too much trouble. my laptop has 64M vid.mem and can run most of the games i need it to (and if it really runs bad, it's just a productivity killer anyway). i hope the sites listed in (1) helps -- they are the better ones i can come up with. and have fun -- and last thing. save the reciepts! if you build yourself you WILL, by laws of probabbility, have crap happen and you will know good and well what's an RMA *real* fast.

lastly -- to make everything work out by building -- you will be continously upgrading your hardware. which means
1) you need to recompile the kernel a lot / reinstall windows a lot
2) know ebay like the back of your hand. this is probabbly the only way you have a system that mostly works, does not cost you TOO bad, and you won't have tons of spare parts lying around.

so is it worth it?... well? what is "having a customized PC" worth to ya?

I am currently in the same situation.

First, you have to figure what you want to buy. Read reviews suchs as Tom's Hardware and Anandtech (to name a couple).

Second, get an idea of the minimum cost by searching pricewatch.

Third, find a vendor to buy from:

Pricewatch: I have been burned by the cheaper companies before, so I make sure they have a good return policy.

Large Internet Suppliers: I usually end up buying things from amazon or buy.com (who are now starting to sell components), there are also huge component stores like newegg.com.

Local: But I've found the best service comes from local reatilers, because you can get the part replaced or exchanged the same day. It is up to you and how much time you want to spend.

This topic is going to create some huge flamebait.

vossman

As someone already pointed out PriceWatch.Com and others are great for finding the best prices on components. But before that you need to know what to look for. Personally, I find Tom's Hardware to be a stellar source of information on what to buy. And it is geared to the do-it-yourself'er. There are others in this vein as well. Lastly, there is the tried and true realm of hard printed matter. Namely Computer Shopper. Though it doesn't seem to be what it used to... Enjoy.

Advice: Don't unless you enjoy it and can accept a high-level of frustration. That said, two places to go for some good information about parts, prices and how-to.

1. Anandtech
2. Tom's Hardware

1. New Egg - parts (e.g. cases, cards, motherboards, etc...)
2. Crucial - memory

Generally speaking I try to buy the majority, if not all my parts from one or two vendors, because shipping can really make or break a deal.

Look at the name of this site. "News for nerds...". If you want a review of what's out, go to Tom's Hardware If you want to know what he might have on his site in 5-10 years, then you look here.

On April 5th, Philippe Ramelet wrote an article about the Extigy's alleged 24-bit, 96kHz capabilities at Tom's Hardware Guide. Here's the debunking part.

On April 5th, Philippe Ramelet wrote an article about the Extigy's alleged 24-bit, 96kHz capabilities at Tom's Hardware Guide. Here's the debunking part.

Take a look at the pixel shader language it ain't that hard really (not if you know what your doing).
All the product seems to do is provide a few functions that would take vertex shader code to write from scratch.

Except that the 2200+ does not mean 2.2 GHz, smart guy. And the 2200+ is on a performance par with a 2.4GHz P4 despite running at ~1.9GHz. Jeez, at least read one of the articles before spouting off.

Clearly, the Thoroughbred would be a more compelling upgrade with a bigger L2 cache and a faster FSB, but the die shrink is worth something: it's down about 10 W.

Still, for a quiet system, I'd consider the 1 GHz C3, which runs at a miserly 12 W.

Both AMD and Intel regularly release new silicon rated at higher clock cycles. This isn't really that big of a deal. Tom's Hardware likes to make a statement rather than pull their punches, so it doesn't surprise me to see something meaningless like "Intel has won the CPU war". Many gamers now swear by AMD, and the damage to Intel's reputation will need to be repaired over time. Intel's deaper pockets may be churning out CPUs which are beating AMD's recent releases in Tom's comparisons, but the trust issue with consumers will lag behind the realities of comparitive performance, just as it used to in Intel's favor. AMD is winning the popular war even with their losses in specific battles.

It may not matter if Intel can deal with heat more effectively than AMD. The AMD CPUs are much cheaper and those with big concerns over heat will drop over $100 on a heatsink/fan.

The CPU war isn't nearly over. Even if Intel continues to win these individual skirmishes, they will still have to demoralize AMD's faithful. Intel may have bigger "weapons", but AMD has something that Intel doesn't to the same extent: trust, loyalty, and support as an underdog.

Both AMD and Intel regularly release new silicon rated at higher clock cycles. This isn't really that big of a deal. Tom's Hardware likes to make a statement rather than pull their punches, so it doesn't surprise me to see something meaningless like "Intel has won the CPU war". Many gamers now swear by AMD, and the damage to Intel's reputation will need to be repaired over time. Intel's deaper pockets may be churning out CPUs which are beating AMD's recent releases in Tom's comparisons, but the trust issue with consumers will lag behind the realities of comparitive performance, just as it used to in Intel's favor. AMD is winning the popular war even with their losses in specific battles.

It may not matter if Intel can deal with heat more effectively than AMD. The AMD CPUs are much cheaper and those with big concerns over heat will drop over $100 on a heatsink/fan.

The CPU war isn't nearly over. Even if Intel continues to win these individual skirmishes, they will still have to demoralize AMD's faithful. Intel may have bigger "weapons", but AMD has something that Intel doesn't to the same extent: trust, loyalty, and support as an underdog.

Get the Silverado CPU cooler; it has the most amazingly low sound level, bar none. There are a couple of articles on coolers at Tom's Hardware that you can check out; this link is the table of sound levels from one of the articles.

I believe you can find this cooler at OCPrices (the site in the original link for this article) once they're no longer slashdotted.

Good luck!

- Leo

I just bought a Dell 8100 with a Radeon 7500 and according to an article at Tom's hardware (TechTv has one also. Search for Radeon 7500) the Radeon is killing the GForce2GO chipset in framerate. Plus it has 64meg of video ram. It works great with Debian just make sure you get the latest X server 4.2 or the Radeon won't work.(Sure would be nice to be able to apt-get the 4.2 X server.) The UXGA screen is nice and 1600x1200 with X is even better. I duel boot WinXP and Debain (XP for games) and both work excellent with this setup. Check out the Radeon before buying that GForce2Go it seems to be the better card. ...Mr.Pantz

good article about just that topic at toms hardware.

Basically the new LCD monitors coming out this summer and towards the end of year are getting very close to whats required for high quality gaming. any monitor with a response time of 20 ms or less will yield at least 50 images per second displayed, and there are quite a few nice ones that you will be able to choose from with thoose kind of times very soon.

just be prepared to whip out close to 2 grand for one :P