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Building a $200 Linux PC

Posted by Soulskill on from the cost-of-a-cheap-tux dept.

WesternActor writes "Computers are getting cheaper to buy every year, but there are still sometimes advantages to building them yourself. ExtremeTech has a story about how they sought out the parts for a $200 computer that (of course) runs Linux as a way of breaking the budget barrier. They even test it against a commercially available eMachines nettop to see how it compares in terms of performance. This probably isn't something everyone will want to do, but it's an interesting example of something you can do on the cheap if you put your mind to it."

21 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. What about atom? by mangu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For the price they paid for CPU+mobo they could have got a mobo with an Atom CPU soldered in. That socket doesn't come for free and, after all, when was the last time you had a CPU upgrade? By the time you want more performance you will most likely get a whole new system.

    1. Re:What about atom? by FreonTrip · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I think there's a market for a cheap Atom-based Linux box used for internet browsing, but the Athlon II X2 245 is literally at least four times faster at everything. The prices for dual Atom-based boards are also a little bit high for what you get, so from a value proposition what they've done makes sense.

      For what it's worth, I upgraded my CPU about two months ago - from a 2.6 GHz Athlon64 X2 to a 3 GHz Athlon II X2 - and it's been decently peppy. More importantly, it let me take the old CPU and pop it into a cheap Linux box of my own. :)

    2. Re:What about atom? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, they spent $20 to get a system that's five to ten times faster than the Atom would be yet still be within the $200 budget. Even if they could use the diff to get another meg of memory it'd never make up for it in practice.

    3. Re:What about atom? by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 5, Informative

      Were you only upgrading with Intel processors?

      The AMD AM3 processors are backwards compatible with AM2/AM2+ sockets and AM2+ processors are backwards compatible with AM2 sockets.

      AM2 came out in May, 2006.

      --
      while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
    4. Re:What about atom? by tomhudson · · Score: 3, Insightful
      The problem with upgrading just the cpu is that you're throwing out a cpu. Most people will upgrade both the cpu and motherboard, and keep the old ones as a spare, or make them into a headless file server, or give away the whole thing.

      Also, most people would be better off buying a cheap dual-core laptop $479 - 3 gig ram, dual core, 320 gig hd), refusing the MS install (-$55) and getting a refund on Windows, and they also won't have to buy a monitor (-$100), keyboard and mouse (-$25) mouse, ups (-$40), or wireless networking to steal wifi since they're so cheap ($25). So, laptop $479-$245=$234 vs their machine ($192) = $42 (and you don't have to pay shipping on the laptop or assemple it), for twice the hd space and 3x the ram - or you can sell the 2 gigs of ram to someone else and you're ahead of the game.

    5. Re:What about atom? by maugle · · Score: 4, Informative

      No, AMD's AM3 processors are potentially backwards compatible with AM2/AM2+ sockets and AM2+ processors are potentially backwards compatible with AM2 sockets. Getting a newer processor to work in an older motherboard may require the motherboard vendor to release an updated BIOS, and they might not do that.

      I found this out the hard way.
      Fuck you, Gigabyte.

    6. Re:What about atom? by Cylix · · Score: 4, Funny

      I should also note that I had substantial issues upgrading my AM2 system. I purchased a new quad core Intel proc. I had substantial issues lining up the pins and when the dremel failed to produce favorable results I went to see the local computer shop.

      They were completely horrified and helped educate me on some changes in the world. Eventually, they sent me home with a brand new 200 watt power supply and serial mouse.

      When that failed to work I decided to go to radio shack (the shack!) and see if they could get me on the right track.

      They were completely horrified at both the previous shop and the things I had done. Eventually, they too sent me home with a brand new cell phone and a subscription to subscription to satellite tv service. They said to ask the sat installer for assistance when he comes out next week.

      --
      "You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
    7. Re:What about atom? by Seth+Kriticos · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think there's a market for a cheap Atom-based Linux box used for internet browsing, but the Athlon II X2 245 is literally at least four times faster at everything.

      Indeed, it's around 4x faster at everything, including sucking up electric power and converting it to heat.

      The atom has a TDP of 8-14 W while the Athlon II is between 25-65 W. If you let both machines run for two years, then the combined purchasing price + the running cost put the Athlon in a very unfavorable spot, especially if you don't need the processing power on a regular basis.

      If you have a good reason to get a fast, power hungry CPU, then fine, but otherwise is would be a waste. Which is what I was wondering in the article about: what's the purpose of this kind of setup? Ignoring the running cost, noise output and some other factors. They seem to have been bored.

    8. Re:What about atom? by Darkness404 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Depends on where you live though and such. For a college student this is a pretty great deal because electricity is free, in many other places if you pay rent you get free electricity. For a lot of the unemployed, they can't afford to spend a bit more for less at the moment because they simply don't have the cash, on the other hand the electricity costs will come when they have a job to pay for it, etc.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  2. $200??? by dskoll · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's crazy-expensive. We recently bought 6 second-hand little HP desktops for $69 each. They only came with 512MB of RAM, so another $15 each upgraded them to 1GB, and they are perfectly serviceable desktops for our sales and admin team.

    The CPU is slower than in the story (single-core Athlon 64 at 1GHz), but performance is just fine.

    1. Re:$200??? by pinkj · · Score: 5, Informative

      They explained that they wanted to create a box for $200, but still be able to upgrade. The mobo is AM3 with DDR3 support, so they could skimp on the CPU and RAM for now with the intention to upgrade with recent technology in the future. They didn't mention it, but it seems they wanted to build a box with new parts as oppose to second hand ones.

  3. This has always been a plus for Linux, so? by adosch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Linux has always had the extreme flexibility to run on a wide range of processors types not to mention still get a nominal amount of performance and use out of something that is deemed 'obsolete' by Moore's Law. That's why I don't do bleeding edge hardware at home unless I have an absolute need for it (e.g. gaming, or some bloatware application that needs that type of horsepower) and it works great to be a bargain-basement shopper. Do I find this article surprising? Not at all.

  4. Supported Hardware by digitalhermit · · Score: 3, Interesting

    With the right hardware Linux is perfect for old hardware. You can customize and tune it quite a bit better than most other OSes. However, the caveat is that the hardware must be decently supported. For example, I have an old laptop with an ATI Mobility 7500 on which I installed Centos 5.5. Normally I'd just grab the FGLRX installer from ATI and remake a module, but in this case, the modules don't work properly. As a result, I'm using a non-accelerated video driver which is painfully slow even for non-intensive graphics such as scrolling a terminal window. I'm not conceding defeat yet. It might be a matter of putting the correct hardware ID into the source and re-compiling or it might be something else entirely. Luckily I know how to do that, but sometimes it's a chore. Not difficult to do, certainly, but a PITA.

    On the other hand I have some old single-core AMD Athlons running some virtual machines via Xen and KVM. Even after years of service, they still do a very good job. On a nightly basis they run some software rebuilds in some VMs and in others run DNS, LDAP, fileservers and mail. I have imported the VMs into a newer quad-core system, but until they die, they use less power than the modern machine.

  5. Re:How much disk space do they need...? by kevinmenzel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well my "mp3" collection is over 400GB - though that includes quite a lot of FLAC and WMA-lossless... just saying... (And that represents over 30,000 tracks)

  6. If It Didn't Run Linux it would be a $400 PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Since Windows 7 Home Premium retains for $199.99 it obviously has to run Linux otherwise it would be a $400 PC.

    I remember reading an article about 15 years ago that said the operating system used to account for 2% of the cost of a PC but by then it was 10% of the cost. It seems that thanks to falling hardware prices and rising prices from Microsoft we've now hit the point where the operating system can be 50% of the cost of the PC.

    For purely economical reasons children should use Linux exclusively in schools. As things stand the education system is just generating customers for Microsoft which allows Microsoft to charge whatever they want for the products. I say this as somebody who uses Windows exclusively and who's pissed off at the prices Microsoft charge for their retail software. If I'd grown up using Linux I'd have saved myself a lot of money.

    1. Re:If It Didn't Run Linux it would be a $400 PC by XanC · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What's the point of not pirating if you're going to violate the license anyway?

  7. excluding taxes and shipping? by dirtyhippie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    excluding taxes and shipping is pretty ridiculous. they could easily add 1/4 to the budget, and if saving money (not just "ooh, look what i can do") is really a goal, they would have included it.

  8. Used by michaelmalak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I get computers for the school staff for $90 apiece at http://www.techcentercomputers.com/ P4, 512MB, 80GB, XP.

  9. Why not just buy a used $200 PC? by Simonetta · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't see the point of this entire article. Why not just buy a used $200 PC and install Linux on it? Or just keep the Windows and install Linux as a dual-boot (If possible)? There are millions of used $200 PCs available. Nearly all will last another five years at least with normal use.

  10. Where's the monitor/etc.? by Jon+Abbott · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This system is not useful as a desktop if it doesn't include a monitor, keyboard and mouse. The cheapest monitor I see on Newegg is a $99 Hanns-G HW-173ABB 17" LCD monitor, so that would push the price up to $300. The cheapest keyboard and mouse set is about $10. Speakers are about $5. New total is $315 excluding shipping. There's also no mention of whether the integrated sound works in Linux, and whether the integrated video works well (or if Ubuntu resorts to safe graphics mode). I would not be complaining if they had mentioned any of these things in the article.

    --
    Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
  11. DIY to safe money? No by mrwolf007 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    While you can sure safe money on a diy-box there are far better reasons for that approach.
    Most pre-assembled boxes fail on a quite a couple of choices.
    Case:
    Unless you are getting some overpriced gamer boxes the case is crap! Hassle to upgrade, cheap materials, lots of edges you can cut yourself etc...
    I will be keeping my nice Chieftec tower for the next couple of iterations. Exchanging drives is a lot faster, everything is easy to to get too, nice cool and quiet (with the extra ventilation).
    Power Unit:
    One of the mayor sources of annoyance. Choosing an efficient and quiet one sure is relaxing.
    Mainboard:
    Mainboards happen to be the number one source of failure in PCs. Even rather expensive boxes usually have cheap boards since they cant advertise them (more ghz? No. More cores? No. More memory? No. More reliable capacitors? Ever see something like that in a description?)
    The mobo is the component i never safe money on. Its supposed to handle the next cpu as well and i rather keep a good mobo than getting the next asrock or similiar.

    Do i safe money compared to a similarly specced box from a retailer? No.
    But i know its more reliable and easy to upgrade, so i do safe money in the long run due to upgrading and have less hassle replacing sub-par components.