Category: hardware

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).

Would anyone happen to have a spare video card that he or she could sell to me? I’m still pondering whether I may be able to complete my PC-upgrade project, and a video card is one of the few remaining pieces.

I’ve already bought the RAM (1 GB PC2700), though it arrived on the day I was laid-off ;). And, the motherboard/chip combo is just $100, which I can probably scrounge together.

So, that leaves the case and video card. I doubt that anyone has a spare ATX case, but I figured I’d ask about the video card. Something made within the last couple years would be great (TNT2 and forward).

[Part three in a series. See also parts one and two.]

Last I wrote, I was trying to figure out an intermediary upgrade plan for my PC. My box is just an Athlon 700, so I’ve been contemplating whether I should upgrade for about a year now. My first thoughts were to go for an Athlon SMP system.

Other priorities interrupted my PC-upgrade plans and, by the point I could consider it again, it looked like Hammer might be on the horizon soon. So, I was going to wait for that, but now it looks like Hammer might be delayed until early next year.

Jason has an old Abit KT7A-RAID motherboard that I was thinking about buying. I was estimating that I could buy the motherboard for maybe $50, and a 1.2 GHz chip to go with it would be about another $50. Really, $100 isn’t bad for an upgrade of that nature.

In response to my last entry, Jon Chan was quick thinking to comment that apparently Fry’s stores had the MSI K7T266 motherboard with Athlon XP 1700+ bundle for just $99!

I was excited to hear that, since the MSI K7T266 sells for about $80 alone at Fry’s. So, this evening I drove off to Fry’s to see what I could find. Sure enough, that deal was listed in their newspaper ad that was posted at the entrance to the store. However, upon asking, they had run out of Athlon 1700+ processors (though they had the mobos in stock). So, I just got a rain check. No big deal.

So, my plan now is to buy that motherboard/processor combo at Fry’s as soon as they get the processors back in stock (which could be next week). Of course, I still need the case, a KVM, and a video card.

Jon mentioned that he may have a KVM lying around, so that certainly makes things easier. The video card is also easy, as I’ll just go for NVidia’s latest.

I’m mostly decided on the case as well. As mentioned in my previous entry, I was rather impressed with the TurboServer case that I saw at Fry’s.

Of course, unlike if I were to buy Jason’s old motherboard, I'll have to buy new (DDR) RAM this time around (in contrast, I could have used some spare PC150 RAM with the Abit). I don't trust generic RAM, and I haven't had any problems buying from either Crucial or Mushkin in the past. For 512 MB PC2100, Crucial is just a touch cheaper than Mushkin ($127 vs $145). And, Crucial has free shipping, so that doesn’t hurt either.

There’s one part that I’m confused about, however. MSI’s website says that the K7T266 supports “up to 3 GB RAM” through“six memory banks using three 184-pin DDR DIMMs”. So… what’s going on there? Does it have six RAM slots or only three? If I were to use (say) 512 MB sticks, three slots vs six slots would mean the difference between 1.5 GB total and 3 GB total RAM.

Then again, I’ll probably just put 1 GB in there to start. So, the total-RAM capabilities issue probably won’t affect me much in the near-term.

(Be sure to read the previous entry before this one; otherwise this might not make much sense)

Last I wrote about my Plextor drive, I was about to head off to Fry’s to pick up a new IDE controller card. I went to Fry’s and, sure enough, they had a couple IDE cards to choose from.

One that looked promising was an IO Flex card that actually included RAID capabilities as well. It was $40 and I was about to bring it to the cash registers and pay for it. I was concerned about its Linux-compatibility, so I asked one of the sales-droids.

He looked over the box, just as I had done, noticing that the card advertised its compatibility with just about any Windows OS (though no mention of Linux, one way or the other). He then remarked, “Well, Linux has a Windows-emulation mode, right? That should allow it to work”. I muttered something along the lines of “Erm, sure…” and quietly put the card back on the shelf.

At that point, I began thinking more and more about my “other avenue” (that I could just upgrade my box instead of buying a replacement IDE card). Strictly speaking, I could just buy a new motherboard (such as from Jason) and a processor to go with it, and then use the rest of the existing components from my current box.

However, it occured to me that I could just build a whole new box for a bit more. I already have a brand new hard drive, the Plextor CDR drive, and 768 MB spare RAM. So, were I to build a new box, I’d just need the aforementioned motherboard and processor, plus a case and a video card. I would also probably need a KVM to make life easier.

And, that’s kinda tempting. My original upgrade plan for this box was to get a dual processor Athlon MP solution. But, then Hammer started appearing on the horizon and that caught my eye. So, I was going to wait for Hammer. But, Hammer has recently been delayed to 1Q 2003, so maybe a 1.2 GHz Athlon wouldn’t be so bad in the meantime.

So, I’m about 90% decided on building this new box. As a side advantage of having a second box, I’d be able to install Linux on it without worry as Win2k would still be around on my old box as a just-in-case measure.

As far as new box-bits, I’d need to choose a KVM, a case, a video card, and a cooling fan for the new Athlon chip (even if I were to buy a retail-box chip that came with a fan, I’m not sure if I would trust that).

The video card is easy enough: NVidia’s GeForce 4600 is the king of video cards at the moment. So, that’s one decision I don’t have to make.

Choosing a KVM is not so easy, as I haven’t bought one before. I suppose they’re all fairly similar, but there are still so many to choose from. One that caught my attention at Fry’s was the Miniview Micro KVM from IO Gear. It’s a minimalist solution, as the KVM electronics are built right into the (included) KVM cables. So, for $50, it does switching for PS/2 mice and keyboards, and even includes support for hotkey-based switching. As KVMs go, that one may be at the top of my list so far.

That leaves the CPU-fan and the case. I haven’t bought a fan in years, so I’m open to suggestions on this one (or links to fan-reviews). On the other hand I see that Anand has a couple Socket A cooling comparisons, so I’ll be sure to check those out.

That leaves the case. Ah, I see that AnandTech has case reviews as well. Howerver, unlike the Socket A cooling articles, the case reviews are all one-by-one reviews (not comparisons). So, with what looks to be 80 case reviews at Anand (yikes), I’m open to suggestions that might narrow down the list.

Fry’s had some nifty TurboServer Aluminum cases. For an after-rebate price of $144 (at Fry’s), they included a glass window and came in 5 different colors. They also included tool-free releases on the drive bays, which impressed me (just pull a lever on the drive bay, and it’s released from the case). But, that’s just one possibility; I’m open to others as well.

I had some free time yesterday, so I decided to install my new Plextor CDR drive (20x write / 10x rewrite / 40x read / 12x DVD-read). Installation was fairly simple, especially since my on-board second IDE controller was yet unused. So, I just left the drive jumpers at the default “Master”, and connected the data and power cables.

I booted the box, and the drive showed up in the BIOS’s drive report. My OS booted and it saw the drive. However, I couldn't get it to read any discs — it just kept saying “Insert disc into drive G:”.

At first I was frustrated, but then I remembered that I had run into this problem before. Back when I was adding a second hard drive, a whopping (at the time) 4.3 GB Seagate, I couldn't get it to work either on the second IDE channel. I ended up setting it up as a Slave on the primary IDE channel, and that worked out fine.

So, I’m thinking that my on-board second IDE channel may be bad (since it’s now been two drives that haven't worked there). So, I’m about to head off to Fry’s to pick up a PCI IDE controller (Promise, likely). They’re only about $30, so I can live with that (and, with any luck, Fry's won’t have too much of a markup).

Part of me is thinking of another avenue. Jason has an old Abit KT7A-RAID that he’s offered to sell to me in the past. I had declined, primarily because I had planned on building a dual Athlon MP box (and that motherboard only supports up to 1.2 GHz chips anyhow). But I’m now realizing that for a bit more than the price of replacing the IDE controller (about $30), I might be able to get a significant upgrade instead…

I can get a 1.2 GHz Athlon for about $50, and an Abit KT7A-RAID sells for about $80, so maybe Jason would be willing to sell me his Abit for $50. If that were to work out, I’d just about have a new machine for about $100! And, as I currently run at 700 MHz (Athlon), the jump to 1.2 GHz would not be insignificant. Hmm <evil grin>.