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Building 2011's Sub-$200 Computer
adeelarshad82 links to PC Magazine's recent account (updating a similar quest detailed last year) "to see if a decent PC could put together for less than $200. Turns out that between some great deals, an AMD processor, and a Linux OS, it can actually be done." They actually come out with a decent-enough system for that money — but omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating.
And it has Linux on it? Crap, at least get Win XP.
You can get an eeePC netbook for $199 RETAIL at Best Buy...Best Buy!!! I know this is talking about desktops, but it just doesn't seem that surprising...
but omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating.
It's 2011, dammit, why do people still use optical drives?
Of course, like if you had used your optical drive in the last few months.
Seriously, why would one want an optical drive in a PC these days?
So they comparison shopped a bunch of parts, and editorialized about every one. Big deal - go to Newegg, hit the sales, and don't overindulge and this is an easy project. How is this even news?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
"omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating"
Optical disks? How quaint! :)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
What is this, 2005? It's not worth the hassle to build a desktop PC any longer.
In fact, I haven't used a desktop in several months.
I can't wait until these sorts of things are possible with commodity ARM (or other architecture) chips as well, especially for overall power consumption.
Here Here.
Get a fucking USB one if you are stuck on them.
I use mine mainly to rip audio CDs.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
My optical drive broke down about 3 years ago. I've never had to replace it. So I agree, for some, it might not be needed at all.
I've used my optical drive probably twice this calendar year, once to install an old game and once to install MFC printer s/w that's not available for download. For the most part I can do without one.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Optical drives are dated and obsolete. I boot a live CD via USB then grab the stage3 for an OS install. Backups are done via the network.
I wouldn't put an optical drive in if budget weren't an issue. The few watts it consumes while plugged in are a terrible waste of power for something never used.
Who even wants to load an OS via optical? Talk about slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.
Once you install via USB you'll never go back.
Because the people that put out content for the computer ship on them. A cheap 4G mem stick is ~$4, to press 4.7G DVD costs them pennies. Until there is a useful way to allow customers to DL onto their own memory sticks, optical will stick around.
When students were grown in schools to design computers, rather than processors designed in companies the tried and true method of market success,
this is when the industry failed into the hands of educators.
So many better architectures, waiting to be minitiarised for more efficiency from prior fabricatio nmethods, are going to be ditched in favor of these shitty designs now.
We all could have dreamed about the reality of a VAX on your wristwatch, a cluster of 21264 Alpha systems on a 5-plug UPS power strip, a UltraSPARC 3 PDA, or a SGI MIPS -based Heads-up-Display, but no: we get shitty chinese ARM's and everyone worships Apple Compooters Corpse for Jobs queefing a Tablet out his droors that is just as slim as he is from cancer!
but omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating.
It's 2011, dammit, why do people still use optical drives?
Because they want to.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Probably more important than an optical drive
I can unequivocally say no. We sell a lot of little desktop computers without an optical drive. They come with Ubuntu usually and maybe 1/3 of our customer base gets one. They are extra. The minimal configured systems are without keyboard, mouse, monitor or optical drive and run $249. People are not renting DVDs any longer and most have never watched a DVD on the computer in the first place. Some areas have a higher than usual younger user base (Portland) and there is more demand for an optical drive (or at least there was) in these region. Elsewhere though most people do not watch movies on the PC.
I know I did not even blink about missing an optical drive from my latest build. Even MS supports creating a boot-able USB drive with Windows 7 on it! Granted you need an existing copy of windows but still. I cast my vote firmly in the fewer moving parts camp.
What is this "Audio CD" you speak of? Is it like an Audi TT?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Too slow and USB3 are expensive at this time.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Not including the optical drive seems like future proofing to me :-p.
Jonathanjk.com
> omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating
Why? Even if you can get a DVD burner for under $20 - if the goal is to build a sub-$200 computer, and you can install all your software without one, then why intentionally eat up 10% of your budget on something you don't even need?
Ahoy there, matey! Abandon ye olde music acquisition ways and say arrrrrrrrgh.
Yo ho, yo ho......
It's what recordings that aren't available in the iTunes store come on.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's 2011, dammit, why do people still use optical drives?
When I built my last PC (less than a month ago) I neglected to include an optical drive (which was actually an oversight). I've since had to order one because I can't play DVDs, I can't install games from disc (not everyone has unlimited 100Mbps internet), I can't rip audio CDs and it's hardly practical to keep all the various recovery and install CD images on USB sticks (cheap as they are, buy 20 and they soon add up - plus you can't put them in a wallet).
While blank DVDs cost a hundredth of the price of equivalent flash memory, optical media is not dead. I would happily pay £15 for a SATA DVD+/-RW drive for that convenience.
I've bought 4 USB thumb drives over the past 5 years and so far, 2 have failed. These little bastards weren't cheap either. I've also got CDs I burned about 7 years ago that still work fine. Not ONE failure. Therefore, everything gets backed up to DVDs.
The car stereo also doesn't play MP3s (2007 model, factory stereo) so I can either A: spend about $200 on an aftermarket mp3 adapter or B: burn CDs.
"Optical drive"? Is that the slidey thing you put those sort of shaving mirror thingies into? I remember we used to use something like that in the olden days.
It's 2011, dammit, why do people still use optical drives?
Possibly because, just because it's 2011 doesn't mean all past cds/dvds are magically converted into usbs.
Dammit archaeologists, it's 2011! Why are you still reading clay tablets!
Because I have close to 100 CDs and 30 DVDs. Yeah, I'm old school. Ripping them onto my hard drive would take up too much space.
Kind of tangentially on-topic (wink-wink), but ... I am planning to upgrade my home server machine, which has been humming not so quietly since 2003. Sadly, I have not much dabbed in PC hardware since then -- do you guys know any online references with example configuration for decent, quiet machines to use as a starting point? My basic requirements are ecc registered ram, a terabyte or so of some kind of raid, a quad CPU and a well-supported video running Linux and, very occasionally, an odd windows instance in VirtualBox. TIA for any opinions.
I've used a 3.5" floppy drive more recently than I've used an optical drive.
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Only 30 DVDs? That's not going to take much space at all. Certainly not much at all by modern HDD standards.
Even the drives that come in cheap low profile machines (nettops) are probably large enough to accomodate all of that.
30BD's would be another matter though.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I built a better system (WITH A VIDEO CARD AND OPTICAL DRIVE, PCMAG) for $189 on Pricewatch.
AND YOU CAN GAME ON IT.
But you forget about monitor pricing.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Its not my dream rig or anything, but picking off just about the cheapest item in each category yields $184 from newegg.
CPU $42 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103888
Motherboard $38 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813153181
RAM $25 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134635
Case & PSU $30 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811162059
HD $34 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148698
DVD $17 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118031
Even MS supports creating a boot-able USB drive with Windows 7 on it!
Somehow, I had missed that little bit of "trivia". I have to say, "About time!" I remember my early days with Windows, trying to work around a bad CD-rom in some cases, or a scratched up CD in others. And, trying to get someone's driver installed by way of the floppy drive which was often full of lint and dust. Yes, it's about time that MS actually SUPPORTS a boot-able USB. Take all my headaches, multiplied by all the people worldwide who had to work around that limitation, and you most certainly have billions of hours of wasted time!
Of course, these days, I don't spend much time fixing people's trashed out computers. I guess that's why I wasn't aware that Microsoft had come out of the stone ages.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's because they want to distribute software to you with an optical drive. It's not that big a deal in the Desktop space (its just so they can rip you off an extra $50). The real problem with it is in the laptop market you could fit an extra 2-hours+ of battery life in the space or a descent discrete graphics card or even a more robust cooling system that could add years of life to your laptop. It's ridiculous that you can't even find a 14-inch or larger laptop without a optical drive.
Realy? I've fond hard drives to be cheap and effective.
1TB of storage is a monsterous stack of DVD's or a small hard drive. 2TB is even worse.
As far as hard drive reliability, make 2 or 3 copies. 3 2TB hard drives is pretty easy to handle, DVD's pretty darn difficult.
I don't have a blu ray drive, but I dont' see it being momumentally better.
Optical is dead, and flash drives aren't reliable.
Missing:
- keyboard
- mouse
- network cable
- monitor?
- USB key to install from
- Friend to copy OS onto your USB key
- taxes (for those lucky to have them)
I think the real cheat is any budget that involves a mail-in rebate.
The article starts out about financial difficulties and then provides a price that doesn't reflect the walk home price. 3-6 weeks you might make that money back IF you are lucky that the rebate was honored.
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
You must be rather young. You obviously don't remember the good old days, back when this site first started and was overrun with spam and trolls.
I'm currently on a bit of a "get legit" roll when it comes to my media. All my software is acquired legally via the net so that's OK, it's just stuff like movies and music that I still require an optical drive for. Why?
1. I like my music in FLAC format. There are very few digital music stores which sell in this format. My favourite by far is http://bandcamp.com/ but they don't have much mainstream/big-artist stuff.
2. Even if I didn't have a preference for FLAC, there aren't any legal digital music stores around which service my needs with at least a high-bitrate MP3. I don't want to use iTunes because I don't want to deal with AAC (I can convert them but I don't want a dependency on iTunes anyway). Amazon still hasn't, for whatever reason, opened an MP3 store here in Australia yet despite promising to open up to the world many years ago.
3. You can forget about any legit digital movie stores selling non-DRMed stuff either.
So what do I do? I buy music CDs and rip them to FLAC. I buy DVDs and use HandBrake to convert them, or just play them directly with VLC. Both of these cases require an optical drive, and until such a time occurs that physical sales of media are completely abolished, I will continue to do this. UNLESS... a suitable online store apears in my area which sells non-DRMed music AND video of what I want, in my preferred format. At this rate that's going to take a very long time (if ever), so I do what I can to stave off piracy.
The Internet?
Get a $15 optical drive then. Whatever.
You do realize optical drives are shit, right?
expandfairuse.org
So it's where the Pirate Bay stores its torrents?
SSC
you could of gotten a amd board with a newer ATI chipset with DVI for about $15 more and for like $30 more a AM3+ board.
It fails because you need to load an OS from somewhere, from something, so you need to include the cost of the USB stick and time/cost of downloading Linux. I didn't see the cost of HD cable either. CPU Heatsink? Minor stuff but it all adds up. 2 GB of ram? pfft. Why have a HD at all? boot from USB and use Network storage.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I don't have an optical drive in my desktop. When I want to burn a CD to playon my Sega Saturn I have to boot up an old P3 box. That's about all I use it for.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Don't like the idea of useing a cheap PSU with a case for under $30 much less a under $30 psu.
If you think about it, USB sticks are probably a good flat-out replacement for CDWRs/DVDWRs. They're faster, more convenient, and hold more. You can put them on your keychain. Just go with it, drop the optical, replace with USB.
ARM is a good architecture. It offers the 16 registers recommended, and fast interrupt registers, for quick processor mode changes (helpful for micro kernels). Its 32 bit instructions have conditional instructions to avoid small loops. ARM pioneered the high density code instruction set with Thumb. Today, MIPS is copying the ARM's past innovations.
Good point. I have already started using an HD for backups but I still back up to optical too, just in case the HD dies. It certainly is a chore to make several DVDs to back up several GB of files but at least if one or two go bad, I have more backups. If a HD goes bad, I'm screwed.
However, even more to your point, the price per GB falls every year and capacity increases. Behold HD size in rough terms:
1985: top-of-the-line HD had MAYBE 10MB. It also cost about $5000.
1995: about 8-10 GB. Cost: I honestly don't know.
2005: about 500 GB.... around $120.
Today: 2TB... $90.
Imagine 2020... or 2030... holy shit. I can see the Fry's ad now: "100 PB for $120. While supplies last." [Factoring in the estimated inflation].
But what the hell does someone do with 100 PB? As is the case with CPU speeds, we will eventually hit a ceiling. Except in this case, the ceiling will be what is practical vs. what is possible. I can't imagine someone ever using that much HD space except for perhaps a company that never destroys old customer data.
Don't like the idea of useing a cheap PSU with a case for under $30 much less a under $30 psu.
Get off your horse. One of the best power supplies I ever owned was free after mail-in rebate: a 500 watt no name brand.
The question is do you really want to be a cheapskate on something you are going to use hours everyday?
But what the hell does someone do with 100 PB? As is the case with CPU speeds, we will eventually hit a ceiling. Except in this case, the ceiling will be what is practical vs. what is possible. I can't imagine someone ever using that much HD space except for perhaps a company that never destroys old customer data.
You lack imagination then. I can easily think of someone using that much without even breaking a sweat, like e.g. many people like to keep a pristine collection of their music files as FLAC files, and those tend to take a lot of space. Similarly, many people like to keep 1:1 copies of their movies and animation and TV series, and even at 1080p those tend to eat space like crazy. And just think about it: in 2020 1080p will be really low resolution and movies will likely weigh in at about 200Gb even with reasonable compression.
And think about it, sometimes people have computers serving the whole family. I too have a home server with 2.5Tb storage at the moment, and it's starting to get full, and it's only serving 3 PCs. With a moderately-sized family it could get filled up pretty fast with everyone storing their stuff there.
I do give you that that text-documents and Excel spreadsheets don't use that much space, but many people use their PCs for much more than just using those kinds of files.
From www.tigerdirect.com I bought one of their "kit" computers with an AMD Quad Core CPU, 2gb of Ram, a 500gb HD, a DVD r/w, and Ubuntu. I added a kb with a touchpad that I already had around the office and "viola!" a sub-200 desktop *with* optical drive. I haven't done a thing to it since... and I'm posting from it now.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
It seems to me I remember sometime along in the early 90's arguing with my wife about whether to put a 40MB HD in our new comp, or an 85MB HD. The wife couldn't imagine ever filling up 40MB, much less 85 MB.
Pretty much same argument happened a few years back, arguing over whether to put a 250GB HD in a new comp. That time, *I* was the one who couldn't imagine ever needing that much space.
And in the same way, our grandkids will wonder how we ever managed to limp along with ONLY 1 PB of HD in our comps....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Beagleboards are 149.00USD and Pandaboards are 179.00USD you then just need an SD card 4G or better. I run a pandaboard myself for some D-Star ham radio stuff.
Ever measured the power drain on that? Don't forget to factor in power factor. My old Athlon XP system (which was stripped down of various high-drain performance parts when it became a server) has more draw than my i7 potato cooker thanks to it's no-name 350W supply's 0.67 power factor vs. the 0.98 or so power factor of the i7's high end PSU. Never mind that the voltage from the cheapy PSU varies quite a bit and is actually out of tolerance on the 5V side. I'd replace it, but that machine is due for retirement anyhow as it's now a backup to a backup server...
I do a bit of consulting on the side, and most system failures are caused by no name, came-with-the-cheap-case power supplies. It's like the good old C64 era all over again: most of those died due to the epoxy-filled craptastic power supply being wildly out of spec.
PSU test results:
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ - 110W @0.67 PF = 164W
Intel i7 920 - 130W @0.98 PF = 133W
This is fully powered up (no sleep states) but not doing any heavy workload. Heavy workload flips those around, of course, but the older PSU is still using an extra 50% power for nothing other than heating the mains wires.
Not only the power factor issue, but that "500w" power supply has a whole 18 amps available on the +12v rail. A whole 216 watts of power available. Go ahead and try to find even a decently built 350w with less amperage on the +12v rails. It won't be easy. I've seen far too many generic power supplies failing, taking other components out with them. I've seen MANY more cases of this than brand name power supplies taking out the motherboard when it fails, even if it was defective on the first power up. A little research on power supplies can go a long way.
If you take out the mail in rebate (which they probably won't honour, and even if they do it will be six months later), it clocks in just over $200.
I understand the fascination with the latest and greatest technology, because I was a willing participant on the upgrade treadmill for many years. But I realized that the best price to performance ratio is actually in used gear.
For the $191 the authors of the article spent on brand new items I could have built a system that is at least twice more powerful, and with better components all around. As an example, I found a Phenom II X4 955 with OEM heatsink for only $4 more than they spent on their Athlon II X2 270. I have many more examples, but the general trend is a used previous generation component will be about twice cheaper than a new current generation component.
When buying used there is the issue of limited availability and timing, since you do need to check your local deals sites daily to find what you need. But even in the worst case scenario I was able to build a system from scratch within a week or two, without compromising on components quality. I may not have been able to chose between Sapphire, eVGA or Asus when buying a new video card, but when saving hundreds of dollars over the brand new prices it suddenly doesn't matter that much.
One thing the article got right was their choice of processors. If costs are not an issue and the overriding criterion is performance, then Intel is your only option. But AMD is by far a much better value as a platform. Most reviews I've seen are comparing the price and performance of the CPUs themselves, but that is only part of the picture. When you add the motherboard and RAM to the equation, an Intel platform becomes significantly more expensive. When the Core i series was released, the cost of the Intel CPU, motherboard and DDR3 RAM was roughly twice more than an equivalent AMD setup with DDR2 RAM, even though the overall performance difference was under 10%.
At that time I chose an AMD Phenom II X4 945 because ironically it was faster than an Intel Core i7 920 when playing Bethesda games (Oblivion and Fallout3 at that time).
I've done quite a few system builds using this AMD bundle deal that Micro Center has had going on for some time now. Every single system works flawlessly, even the ones with the Powerspec case/power supply (more business if the PSU does fail, and I haven't seen one take a motherboard out yet.)
Phenom II X2 560 Black edition: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0347369 $87.99
Biostar A780L3G AM3 760G mATX Motherboard: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0351634 $FREE
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500gb SATA 6.0gbps: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0352164 $49.99
Micro Center branded 2x2gb of DDR3 1333: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0353218 $19.99
PowerSpec TX-381 Micro ATX Computer Case: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0330536 $24.99
Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 500w PSU: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0295037 $37.99
Samsung 22x SATA DVD-RW drive: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0293049 $21.99
Grand Total of $255.10 after tax.
You have an overclockable dual core CPU (I wouldn't push too far with the stock heatsink and with that motherboard, but a little bump to 3.6 GHz shouldn't be an issue.), better graphics than the system in the article, twice as much system memory (4gb vs. 2gb), an optical drive, an actual decent power supply, a case with a handle on it, and I could probably go on, but i'd hope you all get the point. A whole $45 more before tax, not including the lame $8 mail in rebate for the power supply. Definitely worth every penny, and this is all something you could pick up and have together in a couple hours assuming you have a store close to you. Most would likely pay $40+ for the convenience alone. I also didn't shop around too much. Better might be possible.
I'm typing this from a G4 laptop I threw Debian on. It has everything I need for a "modern" OS and I do web development on it. Paid $200 bucks and couldn't be happier. Well I could, but for the price you can't beat it. If people really want to get the best hardware for cheap, hit up craigslist and put Linux on something, it's the best bang for your buck.
Ignore netbooks and Ipads and crap and you can get yourself setup with a basic video editing workstation.
The question is do you really want to keep buying throwaway mobile toy electronics, or set the path for a base level video editing workstation? Forget about the ARTICLE for a minute. Ya know? Fuck $200. Save your money till you have $300, or $400 . Quit mortgaging your life away.
>Optical media
>2011
Isn't that why you would also want to use a filesystem such as ZFS for better file integrity along with putting several of the drives in RAID so that you can just replace one if it fails.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
Never skimp on the PSU, it will make your hardware less durable, sound worse quality, will behave badly with power micro-outages, take down your PC in a thunderstorm instead of only it failing and so on.
You should cheap out on the rest, even get a Sempron if it's what it takes, as it's worth former $1000 CPUs such as Athlon FX 57 and Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. It even unlocks into Athlon X2 with a simple BIOS setting. You profit from not having to run an antivirus and adobe, java, quicktime etc. updater.
Regarding optical drive : get an used one from the trash, even the one from your Pentium 166 will install ubuntu just fine (and is better at ripping damaged CDs). Even the case can be scavenged from the pentium 2/3 era and will be a bit higher quality and easier to work with.
You should get a $40 PSU, not a $30 PSU + case. a 400W or 350WFortron / FSP group one is rock solid and will run your PC stable for a decade. Those a real watts too :).
http://www.pcmag.com/article/print/287106
Why don't you fuckers just put these in the summary?
I agree. Buying a new computer is a worse deal than buying a new car. I just got a refurbished HP laptop with 6 GB RAM, 750 GB HD, 17" monitor, and Intel Core I5 for less than $400. Equivalent desktops can be gotten for less than $200.
I don't respond to AC's.
Tehe money you save in energy will be initially (did I say initial, I meant instantly) lost in getting new fans with no noise! , when you FIGURE it out that you need the smaller than normal fan, and it uses even LESS watts, and costs less and the dude that sells them is legit then your stoked. Maybe you even dare try to provide your own power to it? Whoever made these racks, did a brilliant job. Unlike the Brilliant banksters. There's your trend hint for the day
the geforce 6100 is still supported by the latest proprietary nvidia drivers. it's very slow but will run your quake 2 and quake 3, tux, 2D opengl games which are the only ones easily running on linux anyway.
This CPU and memory amount cost a bit more in 2009, but I think I spent under €300 overall (including the HDDs).
Nowadays I would want to equip a new PC with at least 4GB, particularly since the additional cost is about €30-€40.
optical drive in a modern machine what do you want next a floppy?
i dont own a computer with a optical drive and there is 6 machines in my house.
> in 2020 1080p will be really low resolution and movies will likely weigh in at about 200Gb even with reasonable compression.
Hmm. Thought experiment: Normal high def movies today still tend to be under 10 GB. Let's round way up to 20 GB. The next resolution will be "4K" - double in both directions, so 4x the pixels. That only gets us up to 40-80 GB and assumes compression doesn't get any better than the current h264. Current optical disc tech (blu ray) is supposed to handle 100 GB per disc - that'd be four layers instead of today's 1-2 layers, so it'd easily handle 40-80 GB movies but not 200GB movies.
And 4K is a ridiculously good resolution. Most people today already sit too far from their HDTV to fully perceive the top high def resolution. At the same distance, they'd need a 4K TV of double the diagonal length to perceive the same percentage of quality of a 4K video. 70"-120" TVs? Oh dear. Time to completely redesign the living room again.
640GB ought to be enough for everybody.
Buy one that has been already used. Why not? With 200 buckets you can get a good PC (better then this) and recycling instead of throwing away new e-waste.
two words, raspberry pi
http://www.raspberrypi.org/
An ARM Linux box for $25
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
...In their 2011Mac Minis . With app stores pushed to the consumers, Optical Drives seems to fade away. Even Microsoft is supporting natively the .iso files in win8, another nod to a system with no optical drive.
In June I got a brand new Dell XPS L502x with 4GB RAM, 500GB RAM and Quad Core i7 and a 15" 1080p screen (NVidia graphics, but of the "bad" Optimus kind).... For 525€ (Always count 1$=1€ when the dollar is weak). How did I do it? Pure luck. I've been subscribed to their newsletter for ages as you pretty much always can get 5% off. If you need a computer, that 5% is at least 5%. Sometimes they do this action "scratch ticket style". You get a code, and this code will give you 5%, 10%, 25% or 50% off. I never expected they would actually give anyone 50%, but I amused myself setting together a laptop I'd think would be nice, but for which I would never have paid full price. I entered my code and to my astonishment, I got the 50% off.
I bought 3 machines. One for my sister, one for my brother and one for me. I could have ordered up to 5, but my credit card wouldn't have let me. (Max 2000€/month)
Now, I agree you had a good deal, but you can get nifty *new* stuff cheap too...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Great, because, people living in poverty who need affordable computing also typically have permanent residences, consistent (running) AC power, and not enough to carry around during the busy day already -- they need PCs.
This will be worth reading when it's about laptops.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
And just think about it: in 2020 1080p will be really low resolution
Pure bullshit.
1080p isnt going away any time soon. Hell, its not even the standard resolution yet (that would be 720p)
Also, over the past 10 years the number of pixels per inch has gone DOWN towards lower densities, not UP towards higher densities. ~150 pixels per inch was fairly typical on mid-to-high end CRT's but then the LCD craze happened and nearly everyone is now running only 100 pixels per inch or less ('cept in niche cases like hand held devices)
"His name was James Damore."
Over 50% of worldwide PC sales fit this price and description. "White box" manufacturing, aka the "Good enough" market, overtook name brands way back. This is news to the wealthy OECD nations, I guess, but sales in those countries are now less than half of worldwide sales, and white box PCs are about 35% of sales even in the USA.
Gently reply
For kicks, I just spec'ed up a Mac Pro on the apple store. Under $20130.00 fully optioned. (I didn't buy it though)
Frankly, the Raspberry PI looks like a decent system that after adding monitor, keyboard, and various other usb items would make a great computer system for under $200. I plan to pick up several of these when they come on the market and it doesn't appear that they are vapourware like many items from other companies in the past.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
1) Itunes - sure there are plenty of great media players and what not for linux... but if you have an ios device whether its a new ipod, ipod touch, iphone, or ipad (and literally tens of millions of completely normal people do, they need itunes)."
Umm - my daughter uses I-Tunes on her Ubuntu machine. She's 17, and had no problem installing it and getting her ipod working.
2) TurboTax etc... yep its just one week a year. But millions of completely ordinary people do their taxes with this type of software.
LOL - been doing my Turbox Tax on the web under fedora and ubuntu for years. Cheaper than buying the CD's at the store. I have access to all of the forms and everything. Plus I dont have to waste space on my machine with software I only use once.
3) Miscellaneous Toys - from the child friendly Barbie photo manipulation software that came with the Barbie camera to setting up your new Logitech universal remote to an AppleTV to programming a Lego Mindstorms creation with LabView. This affects far more people than you might think.
Dont use any of those. Dont have any need, so I cant say if this is true or not.
4) Video games - Believe it or not, lots of perfectly normal people play everything from World of Warcraft,to Left4Dead, to the copy of Bejeweled or Riven they picked up at Walmart for $7 as an impulse buy.
I run 3d games all the time under Fedora. I used to use Ubuntu for games, but recently changed to gaming under Fedora. I run imprudence as well as others.
5) Peripherals - Printer fax scanner copier combination devices in particular still suck with linux. Getting printing going is usually relatively straightforward, but anything else is a complicated crapshoot.
I have an HP8180C. It prints, copies, scans. Never had any issue under Fedora or Ubuntu. I have a wireless Logitec mouse and keyboard connected to my Ubuntu machine. Never had any problem, Anything I connect to these machines works just fine. I also burn DVD movies under Ubuntu. Hook up my digital camcorder to my firewire port on my laptop running Ubuntu. Copy off all of my daughters high school events and burn them to cd's or DVD's for her and my wife.
I really wish people would stop with these old worn out generalizations. If you dont like Linux, fine dont use it. But please dont tell people that it wont work for anyone. It works fine for my family and many of my neighbours and friends.
Power factor has nothing to do with power consumption.
I'm not sure that we should be focusing on the sub-200 spot at all. The greatest gains are in the 250-550 range; exponential power increases over something at the extreme low-end and newer tech too. I am assuming this is "building an inexpensive PC for anyone" focused more than "building for the extremely impoverished" which really shouldn't even be thought of in terms of retail - either donated/refurbished foundation hardware, and laptops at best, provide for that resource.
As others have shown, the article's box is really not that great and for the same or a little more you can do a lot better. Just buying bundles and sale items from Newegg, Microcenter/Fry's can do MUCH better. Also, its important to note that bargain basement is not always the best way to go, especially with components like PSUs. I also believe we need to start defining what "The Computer" requires. There's been more debate than ever on the nature of including an optical drive or not in this thread, and clearly including a modern LCD monitor (20", widescreen) is going to easily put a few hundred more dollars to the cost of the build. Finally, I think we need to start taking second-hand components into consideration. Here are my opinions on the "questionables"
1. Keyboard and Mouse - Depends. If a first-time buyer or intended as an "always on" PC (no switching existing inputs for maintenance) these are necessary. Thankfully, they're also inexpensive. A cheap optical mouse can be had for as little as $5-10 today. Likewise, keyboards. Spending a little more on each will provide powerful 5-7 button mice and ergonomic keyboards. This should probably be considered after the system is otherwise built and if necessary, equipped with the leftover money and to the user's specs (ie. if this is going to be a HTPC, then wireless may be a good option if available)
2. Optical and/or USB storage - One or the other is mandatory, but it really depends on again the user's situation. Where are they getting their OS? If this is their first PC they have no way to write a Linux distro to a USBkey, but they CAN get a free or ultra low cost disc from one of the linux burning programs. Internal are cheaper, but external are far more flexible - these days I have a single, external DVD SuperMulti DL (Which doesn't require an AC adapter) drive that I use whenever I need to install something from disc (save for the one that came in my laptop). There's also the consideration that typically discs "Just Work" even in Linux, but there can be some annoyances getting a USB drive or SD card flagged, formatted, and mounted properly to replicate a disc. Is there an equivalent of something as easy as "Linux Live USB Creator" on Linux itself? If you opt to go without optical, there needs to be a software way to ensure that USB or cards can replicate optical in every meaningful way. Of course, this may become impossible if you have a user that often buys media on disc, unless they wish to start getting said media from elsewhere.
3. Monitor - Its hard to justify that a monitor is absolutely required in this day and age, when most households have one or more "monitors" of their own - TVs I see monitors as separate component and for most users it works out this way. Sure, its nice to be able to give your desktop PC its own discrete monitor, and you can do it at a relatively affordable price, but it isn't necessary at time of build for MOST users. Some will already have another monitor from an older PC and many who are not technically inclined think you "have" to upgrade the monitor - that's how big box stores tend to sell PCs. Learning that they can use the perfectly fine on they already have usually makes many users happy. In the case of those that don't have a discrete PC monitor yet, but have relatively modern TVs in the house, this is an easy issue to solve. This group makes up a larger percentage of users than one would think - there are homes with 1990s PCs w/14" CRTs or no PC at all, but equipped with one or more 480p compli
The pitfall is things like memory bus speeds and does it have SATA, USB3, PCIe, etc. I like me some used shit, but for performance, it is rarely worth it.
Although, I was just working on a Compaq Professional Workstation 8000. 1500mb of RDRAM and dual Xeons of some kind, with 15k rpm SCSI 160 (or 320?) drives. Thing is nearly 10 years old, and runs Windows 7 with no static at all. Of course, it was a $10,000 computer when it was new.
Acer Aspire 4743Z-4861 at costco on sale for under $350 (including an add-on cheapo mouse).
P6200, $GB RAM, 500GB HDD, DVD burner, 14" HD LED, Win 7 standard.
Removed bloatware, added productivity software, and it's the perfect gift for the mother in law.
Desktops are great for serial system builders (like me) because a few key components can be reused (case, monitor, drives, etc), but commodity machines are the way to go if you're starting from scratch.
I ignore the potential for this as a home server as most who have home servers recycle old parts/systems to make them.
Instead, I have to consider for whom this $200 computer would be made... and that is typically someone who doesn't already have a computer. That said, this is not a "computer" as most people know it.
There's no keyboard, no mouse, and no monitor. And without an optical drive, there's no ability to watch DVD movies, install software (questionable need with Ubuntu, though), or rip music CDs to MP3s. You may say, "But you can stream the movies you want from Netflix!" And you would be right... but if the person's in need of a $200 budget PC, would the person be paying for cable/dsl internet AND a Netflix subscription? Or would s/he be more immediately concerned with watching the DVDs on hand already?
It's all based on opinion and experience, yes, but my experience says that anyone who needs a budget PC needs the entire system, not just the tower. Instead of setting an artificial budget and then bending the rules, why not just make the best full system you can with as little money as possible? Because that would be useful. (Tom's Hardware does this from time to time.)
I am pretty sure that if you paid $500 for a desktop computer at a major retailer, then the manufacturer probably built it for less than $200. With retail markup and Windows 7, the thing gets sold for $500 off the shelf. So, this op is basically drawing attention to the fact that if there is little or no retail markup and no Windows 7 cost, the parts of a crappy desktop computer can be bought for $200 or less. Yes. OK.
Find an single-core AMD cpu on sale somewhere
track down a refurbished 20 GB pata hard drive or boot from USB stick
Get the oldest AM2 motherboard, preferably out of the "returns/incomplete" bin from a major retailer
Go buy practically any broken computer from the Salvation Army and plunder its case and powersupply and optical drive
Install Linux
In short, the op is narrowly focused on WHERE you can shop for cheap computer parts. Of course you can build computers for MUCH less than $200 if you extend your search for parts to thrift stores, refurbished parts tables, etc. The convenience factor of just buying a Major Manufacturer's Pre-Built Computer is worth something, though.
Newegg always has a bunch of monitors on sale, I just looked and there's a 23" 1920x1080 Acer for $139.99 with free shipping. http://www.newegg.com/emailpromo/
Where do you buy this mythical $230 dual core 15.4" eMachines laptop? Used on eBay or Craigslist? Their current model eME443-BZ602, is $329.99.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I know I'm late to the party but I'll play this game too. Mine meets to sub-$200 challenge and it has discrete video, HDMI out, optical audio out, 4 GB RAM, SATA 6.0GB/s and will play 1080p video without a hiccup. Throw XBMC on there and you have really nice HTPC.
Part list permalink: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/14YG
Part price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/14YG/by_merchant
CPU: Integrated with Motherboard
Motherboard: ASRock E350M1 Mini ITX E-350 Motherboard ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($18.99 @ Newegg)
Hard Drive: Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($39.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Apex MI-008 Mini ITX Tower Case w/250W Power Supply ($39.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $198.96
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated 2011-09-03 17:30 EDT-0400)
Compact Disc Digital Audio is like FLAC torrents on The Pirate Bay, except with no risk of becoming the next Jammie Thomas.
And where do they go for help? Let me guess: you are the center of your own little linux universe??
Its not a bad thing, I am the center of one too... but remove yourself from the universe and one by one your family, friends, and neighbors will run into problems they can't fix, unless one of them happens to have the nerd-gene too. But "normal people" tm don't... to use linux they need someone like us in their sphere of friends.
Umm - my daughter uses I-Tunes on her Ubuntu machine. She's 17, and had no problem installing it and getting her ipod working.
Really? Just downloaded and installed right? Everything works perfect...
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=21302
The "what doesn't work" is pretty substantial... iphones "ETC"? preferences? Podcast? Yeah, that sounds terrific. And the additional comments to the effect that the program stops responding repeatedly, and reports application crash errors... yeah.
All followed by a page of comments complaining of all kinds of problems.
Linux is great at things its great at. Running windows applications is not one of those things. It ranges from usable to useful.
And stay away from the cheap media (paying a few extra pennies per disk goes a long way).
Where should I learn which brands are good? I'd try Google, but I haven't found a way to use Google to gauge reliability of a review; it's likely to turn up reviews that smack of undue influence from advertisers.
I got to agree the first advice to anybody who building a rig should always be "Don't cheap out on the PSU!" and if you did use a cheap PSU put getting a good PSU on top of your upgrade priority.
With Nvidia and other players getting in on the CPU market I predict a serious price war. The CPU market could look a lot like the Ram market soon. Lots of players = very small price.
The no-names like that are a gamble. Some of them are perfectly fine - I've had some that have run no problems for years, and others of them are garbage. And you really don't have any way to know without buying and seeing what happens. Generally I don't want to gamble with my power supplies, so I'm willing to spend a few extra bucks to get a decent one.
Try do do a very similar build and see the pricing in other currency....
Is it like my Iphone.
I also asked her if she gets her system issues taken care of via you tube, and I got another exasperated teen response and eye roll - " Ahh Dad, Google is your friend... DUH".
I laughed and went back to my daily routine. She wants to be a teacher when she gets out of school. I hope her attitude improves before then - LOL.
Since when is "follow a youtube video tutorial" that you presumably have to locate yourself the definition of "no trouble at all"?
To me that sounds more like "I didn't work, so I had to go look for a solution..." worse the solution was involved enough that someone made a video tutorial out of it..."
She is happy. It works for her.
Lets see, it runs pretty mediocre and several features simply don't work. She's happy and it meets here expectations... thing is though... her expectations are pretty low. When she can accept without blinking that having to watch a video tutorial just to get it working poorly that's a pretty clear indicator of where her expectations are.
Furthermore she sounds pretty tech savvy to me though, ... "normal people" tm? Not so much.
99 Bux
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor
Cheapass power supplies with crappy PF are putting a higher load on the utility company for no purpose. The power factor is basically how far out of phase the return power is from the grid's phase.
Your actual drain is your current * voltage divided by the power factor.
180W (1.5A @120V) with a 0.67 power factor is 269W of loss at the plug.
180W (1.5A @120V) with a 0.98 power factor is 184W of loss at the plug.
Why would companies spend thousands just to correct the power factor if it had nothing to do with actual load?
The figures I used previously were for real life systems measured directly at the plug with a kill-a-watt meter.
There are other factors involved that aren't measured there (like the efficiency during transformation and rectification), but there's no way the Athlon XP 2500 is a higher power consumer than an i7 920. Also, the high end PSU is rated at over 80% efficient in those jobs too.