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Building PCs - How do you Choose Your Components?
ATP asks: "It's been a few years since I built my current system by ordering parts from the cheapest vendors I could find. Everything went smoothly with very little research, and my system is still running great today. I'm now looking into building another desktop system, but I've become quickly overwhelmed by how complex components have become. In particular, motherboard/CPU compatibility are confusing (think: single/dual, socket 478/604/754/939/939pciExpress/940/LGA775, OS compatibility, memory types, etc). Is there a guide to the not-so-novice PC guru somewhere that would help me catch up on the developments in the last couple years?"
After years of building and maintaining my own systems I finally tried a new direction and bought a new Powerbook. Aside from some problems specific to transferring things like e-mail files over to the Mac, (all the gory glory is on my blog) and of course oddities like the lack of a right mouse button and backspace key, it has been pretty painless.
I guess that I just don't have the patience anymore to try and wrangle motherboards, CPUs, hard drives, peripherals, and Windows into a happy coexistence.
I wanted something that I could just plug in and run.
We'll see if I guessed right.
Three Squirrels
Head to Tom's Hardware or other high end review site. Look for their killer rig review from 6 months ago/1 generation off. Buy those parts and assemble. You'll have a next to top end machine at a fraction of the cost with a parts list that has been fully pounded out by the pro's.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
IF one knows that one wants a machine that will run "new" release programs in 3 years, that means AMD64, rather than 32-bit
( compatibility-problems, as-in programs simply not running, have been found on the Intel implimentation of x86_64 )
That cuts down the field greatly.
THEN, one looks at whether the thing is guaranteed to be wordprocessing-only
( or equivalent non-taxing, ie NO multimedia-rendering or vid-conferencing, ferinstance ),
and one can sanely go with single-channel-RAM ( socket 754 ),
rather-than dual-channel-RAM ( socket-939 or socket-940 )
THEN once looks at what kind of expandibility one may need, later. . .
Video-card?
No-longer does AGP count ( they aren't making top-end ones anymore, and soon won't be making middle-of-the-road ones, either! ),
so one requires PCIe ( PCI-Express ) 16x on the motherboard.
Does one want to be forced to find a firewire-card to add-in later? or does one want everything built-in?
Does one want the ability to add-in PCIe add-in cards for, say, high-end-audio, or for video-capture, or for ANYTHING?
one needs PCIe slots, then, too ( PCI is going the way of the dodo )
All in all, the one mobo I know-of, that at-the-moment covers it ( including a 4x PCIe slot, for later! ),
is by MSI http://www.msicomputer.com/index2.asp
Unfortunately, it's got a fan on the chipset,
so it's an on-when-one-uses-it cheap workstation-board,
rather-than an always-on everything-server-board
( fans die after however many running-hours they happen to survive )
http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?mode l=K8N_Neo4_Platinum&class=mb
Abit's got one that is missing the PCIe 4x slot, but that has no chipset-fan, called the
Abit AN8 Ultra
http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/techspec.php?c ategories=1&model=278
Right, that's the mobo, howabout the CPU?
syncronous-with-the-RAM is a good rule
IF the mobo can deal-with PC3200 RAM ( these 2 can ), then that means the RAM's communicating-speed is 400MHz ( rather-than, say, 333MHz ) .
Since there isn't any valid thing as 1/3 of a wait-cycle ( it's either 0 or it's 1, with computers ), I want the CPU's actual physical speed to be a multiple of that, like say 2000MHz.
That gets the speed, so what choices are there?
cheap, and I wasn't able to get-one, is the
SDA3400DIO28W Sempron 3400+ Socket 939 ( the "3400+" is the approximate equivalent in Intel-speed, known-as its "rating" )
More expensive, and having more on-chip cache-memory, is the
2.0 GHz 939-pin Athlon 64 3200+
Ultimate capability would-be the X2 chip ( 2 Athlon64 cores in one chip, so when one program is swamping one core, the system still responds )
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInforma tion/0,,30_118_9485_13041%5E13076,00.html
shows that cheapest multiple-of-400MHz X2 chip is the "3800+" and the highest-end is 2.4GHz "4800+"
Hit http://www.pricewatch.com/ to discover what sane-prices are for the things, but be sitting-down when you see the highest-end ones. .
Case? Aluminum. That keeps hard-drives cooler ( whole case acts like a nice-big heatsink ).
Make decorations for it using pipecleaners & a hot-melt-glue gun, if you want. . . : )
Video-card?
IF you want quiet, go for ATI rather-than NVidia ( fan-speed, I'm talking about, here ),
and if you want cheap, grab some X300 or something,
the higher-end cards the X800 XL is a very good bu
IPTables enhancement Fail2Ban bans cracker-login's
If there isn't a Free driver available I won't buy it. That excludes some of the hardware but I can still manage.
Agreed, even as a purely practical matter having free drivers available tends to improve your odds of being able to use it with some future/different OS/kernel. Most geeks (at least the kind that build their own systems) tend to have more than one computer and often pass systems/components down to others and try out different OSs. In general hardware with Free drivers tends to use standard interfaces that are likely supported by almost any OS.
I'm not discounting the value in sending the message to hardware makers that open drivers/specs are important but just saying that there are real world practical advantages as well.