Building a New PC for My Mom

I’m in the process of building a new box for my mom, as it’s both cheaper and more future-proof for her than buying a preconfigured PC. I’ve ordered the parts so far and they should arrive soon:

• Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (review). Pricing on chips tends to follow a J-curve as processor speeds increase — I found that the 2100+ is is at the base of the curve, just before the sharp incline.

• Motherboard: Asus A7N8X Deluxe (review). This board won AnandTech’s Editor’s Choice Silver Award for best high-end motherboard for the Athlon XP platform:

  “With features like USB 2.0, FireWire, Serial ATA RAID and dual LAN (and all for a very reasonable price), we feel the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe is worthy of this award.” […]

  I almost went with the Epox 8RDA+ (as it won AnandTech’s Editor’s Choice Gold Award for best value motherboard), but I just could get past its poor board layout (to install more RAM, you have to remove the video card, bleh).

• Memory: 512 MB PC2700 from Crucial. This was an easy decision. Crucial’s RAM has consistent reliability, and they guarantee compatability if you go through their RAM Wizard. The free FedEx 2-day shipping didn’t hurt, either ;).

• Hard Drive: Western Digital Special Edition 80 GB WD800JB (review). This drive is currently atop the Leaderboard at StorageReview.com in the 7200 RPM ATA category. And, with their 8 MB cache, these drives really perform.

• Video Card: Leadtek GeForce 4 MX4200. Sure, it’s a crippled GeForce4 (as are all MX*.* video cards), but I doubt my mom will be playing 3D games anyhow. And, at $50, the price was right.

• CDR drive: Plextor Plexwriter 48/24/48A - 48x read & write, 24x CDRW (review). Yeah, it’s IDE, but Plextor’s Burn-Proof technology should nix any buffer-underruns. This drive also won the Adrenaline Vault Seal of Excellence earlier this month.

• Floppy: This is just an 1.44 MB OEM Panasonic drive. Move along, nothing to see here ;). And, yes, I condidered just not buying a floppy drive, but those things can come in handy especially during emergencies.

• Case: Antec SOHO Performance II (review). This fared well in a recent comparison of 15 cases at Tom’s Hardware. With rounded edges, front-mounted USB & Firewire ports, and quick-release drive bays, this case should last through a few upgrades. Sure, it doesn’t include a motherboard tray, but I can live with that.

  The 1080’s quality of construction is excellent, with rounded edges and heavy duty rivets that secure the case. You will find no twist or flex within the 1080, as it is build like a tank. The door of the case can be locked, and even though it is made of plastic, it secures well when locked. […]

• OS: Windows XP Pro OEM. My Mom’s not quite ready for Linux (or perhaps that’s the other way around?), so I’ll be installing Windows on her box. I could have gone with Win2k, but WinXP was the same price and it includes extra goodies such as built-in CDR support. And, were it $3 more, this would have been the single most expensive component in the system (the Asus motherboard edges it out at $146). Not to worry — she’ll be getting some open source goodness from OpenOffice.org :).

I enjoy selecting components and assembling PCs, so I look forward to putting her box together. More than that, the exercise of selecting her components allowed me to get up to speed on today’s latest components — which should come in handy for when I build my next PC (which I plan to do perhaps in the spring, assuming my employment situation has improved).