I *hate* buying pc components...

[lnr]

Does this lot for approx 230 quid inc vat sound sensible?

• Abit UL8 939 5.1 Sound/LAN onboard
• AMD Athlon64 3000 Venice Retail Socket 939
• Kingston 512MB DDR PC3200 Non-ECC DIMM
• Microsoft Windows XP Home OEM SP2
• 80GB Maxtor DiamondMAX+10 133/7200
• 200GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 8MB

(My motherboard died, if I'm replacing it should do memory/cpu at same time, and I'd quite like a working Windows at not *too* expensive and am thinking of switching to Ubuntu to give it a try and don't have a huge amount of disk so....)

Edit: Perhaps bigger disk, brings price up a little to 250 quid, and at least one person recommends avoiding Maxtor.

NB: Windows is *not* going to be my day-to-day OS, this machine will be running either Debian or Ubuntu 95% of the time or more.

Comments

[xanna.livejournal.com]

New Ubuntu out in June, if you're not in any hurry. I'm waiting till then for my delicious Kubuntu.

[lnr]

I think having no current working computer doesn't count as not in a hurry :-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

You could go outside in the fresh air in the evenings for two months instead :) No, being without my email for an hour is weird enough :)

[entropyjim.livejournal.com]

Doesn't sound outrageous. Does that include CPU fan? PSU? Some of the new mobo's have 24 pin PSU slots instead of 20 pin ones we've been using for ages.

[lnr]

fan/heatsink are included. I'll risk it on the PSU. Need to check what sort of graphics card I have at home and if that will need replacing too. At this rate we're getting close to just buying a complete machine territory!

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

There's no case, so I presume that's intended to go into a pre-existing case; power supplies changed a lot when the P4 came out, so if the pre-existing case is from before 2001 I'd recommend getting a case.

The CPU fan comes in the AMD Athlon retail box.

Price seems quite reasonable, 200G disc probably sufficient, would it be sensible to spend another £30 to get DVD-writing capability for backups?

The reviews for this particular motherboard at Dabs are dreadful, and I'd be slightly wary about using a ULI chipset rather than the more usual nvidia; I'd be happier with something like Dabs'

ASRock Socket 939 GeForce 6100 PCI-E MATX A V L

[from the low-price range of the well-reputed Asus] at about a fiver more than the one you'd intended.

Before buying, I'd be tempted to check that there isn't an off-the-shelf box at Staples for comparable price after their discounts; I don't believe it's any longer always cheaper to build yourself.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

the ASRock has PCI Express if you want to fit a graphics card, and on-board graphics if you don't.

[lnr]

NB I've been looking at http://www.aria.co.uk/ simply because that was where Mobbsy started, they do seem very cheap in places, but there's quite a jump between their low-end socket 939 motherboards.

*sighs* I just want to get it bought and working to be honest, already tired of trying to make decisions.

[bonyandidle.livejournal.com]

Aria are quite good, though their service can be a bit random. I've used them for years now as their prices are usually about as good as you can get, and even when they cock things up they do sort it out in the end. Plus they once sent me an extra motherboard by accident, which I got 30 quid for, so I was happy.

[lnr]

Oh and Staples only have one desktop PC online at around 450 quid, so unless they usually have a lot of stuff in-store that's not online that's a non-starter.

[caramel-betty.livejournal.com]

A lot, I don't know, but they do have stuff in store that they don't have online. My experience is that it tends to be a bit cheaper than the stuff online.

[lnr]

That's worth knowing. Though I don't know if I want to risk buying a random machine which might not be linux compatible since Windows is not intended to be my main OS. I'd leave it off entirely if it wasn't occasionally useful and if buying new hardware like this is the only way to get a legit copy at a sensible price.

[bonyandidle.livejournal.com]

I've had a Maxtor die on me after 2/3 months; they replaced it with a refurbished drive through their warranty scheme, which I thought was a bit lame, but there you go.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

We have a rule in our household - no XP home.

(Pro instead.)

Video?
Power supply? (Your old one may be underpowered.)
That CPU comes with a fan? (OK, so it's retail, so I hope so.)
I'd personally also go for a GB of RAM - XP is pretty hungry for memory.

[lnr]

I don't think I can justify an extra 35 quid for an operating system I intend to use only rarely. I'd much rather not be spending this money at all. And I don't expect to need to worry about memory in it. My machine at work it perfectly happy with XP and half a gig anyway.

Yes the CPU comes with a fan. Going to check current video card for compatibility when I get home, and ditto on the PSU I guess.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Ah, OK. If you don't run into any memory hogs, then 512MB may be fine.

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

Er, why?

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

You should probably get a pair of 256MB DIMMS rather than one 512MB one. That allows the dual-channel memory access that I mentioned.

[lnr]

Yeah, I just worked that out, I was wondering what "dual channel" meant when looking at the specs :-)

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

Dual-channel makes a huge difference on our machines at work. Your new system will be nice and very fast, easily capable of games.

[(Anonymous)]

Babes, JSUK, I've not had any trouble with Maxtor drives... well, I killed one when I had a PSU explode, but I don't think that counts... nothing much else in that box survived that incident...!

I've got 5, of varying vintages (7Gb (probably 6 or 7 year sold), 8.4Gb (slightly newer), 80Gb, 120Gb (those two are the same age, about 3.5 years) and 300Gb (1 year or so old)) all in current use and I *think* I've got a 15Gb knocking about in storage somewhere too...

If I had to make a drive company recommendation it would be between Seagate, Fujitsu and Maxtor.... or rather, it would be "avoid Western Digital..." as I've had various WD drives fail.

[littlemissgoth.livejournal.com]

Oops... forgot to check I was logged in... must pay more attention when doing things at this time in the morning!

JoJo
-xx-

[womble2.livejournal.com]

You can check hard drive reliability at StorageReview (http://www.storagereview.com) though you need to register and submit one data point first. They reckon the Barracuda 7200.7 series is good, and I just ordered one myself as it happens.