Re: New parts for new PC (need help - little knowledge of hardware)

From: Dan Strick (strick_at_covad.net)
Date: 11/19/03

  • Next message: David Fleck: "Re: grep & ls question" 
    Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 17:58:23 -0800 (PST)
To: b_cassidy@bellsouth.net, judmarc@fastmail.fm

    On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Bryan Cassidy wrote:
    >>
    > I suck when it comes to hardware. I know so little about hardware. My
    > dad said he is gonna get me about $400.00 worth of computer parts for
    > Christmas/Birthday sence they are so close so I can start building a new
    > custom PC. I have already picked out the case I want. I found a Antec
    > ...
    > sure I can get a case that's $80.00, a mother board around $100 or so, a
    > power supply, *maybe* a video card and a hard drive for around $400.
    > What else can you tell me to help out? I appreciate any responses I get.
    > He wants me to hurry up and tell him what I want so he can go on and
    > order it for me.
    >>

    On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, judmarc@fastmail.fm responded:
    >>
    > You can probably give yourself a bit of a crash course by looking at <URL:
    > http://www.anandtech.com; and <URL: http://www.tomshardware.com, then
    > take a look through <URL: http://www.newegg.com; to see what you can get
    > for your money. Don't forget memory, for which you may want to look at
    > <URL: http://www.crucial.com; as well as NewEgg. PC Power and Cooling has
    > high quality stuff, but they may be a bit over your budget.

    > Regarding motherboards and CPUs, AMDs are cheaper than Pentiums for
    > equivalent performance, but AMDs run hotter, meaning the CPU fan must move
    > more air, meaning more noise.
    >>

    AMD Athlon cpus seem to be more cost effective at the low end, but just
    below the high end the new Intel P4s may offer a bigger bang per buck.
    Tom's Hardware did a bunch of articles on this and on recent motherboards
    earlier this year. There is also a Tom's Hardware article on rolling your
    own PC from component parts.

    Tom's Hardware and Anand Tech are excellent sources of reviews of new
    hardware components. I used them extensively when recently building my
    new custom PC. Some of the components I chose were:
                                                                    approximate
            component price ($)
            ---------------------------------------------------- -----------
            Lian-Li PC-60 aluminum case 105
            ProSilence-420 (~420 watt) PS from Silent Maxx 100
            Pentium-4 2.8 GHz cpu 275
            Gigabyte GA-8KNXP motherboard 220
            two Kingston 512MB DDR400 dimms (with parity/ECC) 230
            ATi Radeon 9500 PRO video card 205
            two Seagate 120GB serial ATA disk drives 250
            Samsung combo 52x CD-writer / DVD-reader 70
            Zalman CNPS700 AlCu cpu cooler 40
            Enermax fan controller / temperature monitor / i/o panel 40
            Microsoft Windows XP Professional 135

    I am generally pleased with the result, but I did have (and still have)
    some serious problems, mainly with the motherboard.

    The Lian-Li case is solid and has lots of room inside without being too
    tall for the space in which it is installed. It has a motherboard
    mounting tray that slides out the back. This can be really convenient
    but given the complexity of cabling that connects the motherboard to the
    power supply, fans, peripheral devices and case connectors, you won't
    slide the mother board out very often. The power supply seems to be
    rather quiet and more than adequate for its load. I still have a lot of
    capacity for expansion: 5 empty 3.5" bays and 2 empty 5.25" bays.

    The 2.8 GHz cpu with dual channel DDR400 memory on the so called "800 MHz"
    front side bus) is rather fast, about 10 times as fast as my old machine.
    I have already become addicted to it and feel considerable impatience
    when I use my old machine. A 2.6 GHz or even 2.4 GHz cpu would probably
    run only imperceptibly slower and would have saved a little pocket change,
    but what the heck: "you only live once." I didn't really need a whole GB
    of main memory, but the 512 MB dimms were not terribly expensive and dual
    channel memory systems need dimms installed in pairs and there are memory
    configuration restrictions that would discourage buying small capacity
    dimms now and larger dimms later. So I splurged.

    My video card choice was a compromise. I wanted something new enough to
    have hardware support for recent DirectX features, old enough to be well
    supported by XFree86 and cheap enough to be justifiable. The Radeon
    9500/9700 families of cards are the newest for which XFree86 claims
    substantial support and yet are long out of production and the ATi web
    site even categorizes the 9500 as "discontinued". The 9000/9500/9700
    seem to have been replaced with the 9200/9600/9800. The need for reliable
    XFree86 support trumped other considerations because I spend virtually all
    of my time running XFree86 on FreeBSD and very little time running
    feature hungry whizbang graphics applications.

    Microsoft OS is almost an unavoidable occupational hazard. I pretty much
    have to have one because I have peripheral devices for which there are no
    FreeBSD drivers (a scanner and a label writer) and I like being able to
    launch a whizbang graphics application (i.e. game) on occasion. I first
    attempted to use Windows-98SE since I had no use for modern MS OS
    features, but vendor claims to the contrary notwithstanding the video and
    motherboard device drivers just didn't work reliably with the old MS OS.
    I wanted to get Win2K but a friend convinced me to buy WinXP Professional.
    He said it supported more devices and that the "Professional Edition" was
    much better than the "Home Edition". I wasn't too sure about that, but
    I decided that MS and the Windows marketplace manufacturers would drop
    support (such as it is) for Win2K before WinXP. The WinXP Pro list price
    is about $300 (a rip-off). The "street price" is about $200. The
    "upgrade" version is available for about $170, but installation can be a
    real mess. The "OEM" version, consisting basically of a CD-ROM and a
    software-license/product-key, is available under $140 but there is no
    Microsoft user's manual (nearly useless anyway) and you may have to buy
    it with some hardware. WPA (Windows Product Activation) is a monumental
    pain. My installation is tied up in knots because I won't activate it
    until I resolve my bootstrap disk problems (which might force me to
    change my main disk controller and disk drives, possibly triggering a
    reactivation). Some people say you only have to call an 800 number to
    arrange a reactivation. Most people say you have to call an expensive
    900 number and that MS puts you on hold for a long time. I would prefer
    not to find out the hard way.

    My only unexpected disappointment was the Gigabyte motherboard. It was
    highly rated in a Tom's Hardware review. They did not mention that he
    optional 8KNXP secondary cpu voltage regulator would not fit if you also
    used the Zalman CNPS7000 cpu cooler (which they also praised in the same
    article). The workaround is to not install the secondary voltage
    regulator which the review article said was very nice to have but not
    necessary with current cpus. (Side issue: the Zalman CNPS7000 cpu cooler
    comes in two models, Aluminum/Copper and pure Copper. The Cu model cools
    a little better than the AlCu model but is much heavier than permitted by
    Intel cpu specifications.)

    I anticipated some difficulty getting FreeBSD to support all the nice
    motherboard devices, but I was prepared to do without the more exotic
    ones. It turns out that FreeBSD 4.9 supports all the essential devices.
    I did not expect massive BIOS brain damage. The BIOS passes a wrong
    disk number to the master bootstrap program. This can have some really
    nasty consequences and there is no complete workaround. The BIOS does
    not support booting through one of the primary motherboard disk
    controllers (the SATA controller in native mode). FreeBSD 5.1 sometimes
    has problems reading from the PS2 mouse port, allegedly caused by some
    BIOS ACPI confusion. Gigabyte technical support is almost totally
    unresponsive. If I could do it over again, I would very seriously
    consider alternative motherboard brands.

    One final comment: if you want to limit system noise, be careful of fans
    on motherboard devices. You can replace case fans or slow them down with
    various fan controllers but fans mounted on motherboards and controller
    cards are not easily managed. If you do reduce fan speeds, get something
    to monitor internal case temperatures. You don't want to deal with the
    consequnces of overheating. I don't know of any video cards for which
    decibel levels are specified. Disk drive and case fan manufacturers do
    typically specify noise levels. Modern medium speed ATA disk drives with
    "fluid dynamic bearings" may be very quiet. Slower cpu/memory/motherboard
    devices tend to consume less power, require less fan and are cheaper.
    You can't avoid tradeoffs.

    Dan Strick
    strick@covad.net
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