Re: buy or build computer?
On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 01:55:32PM -0500, Peter Christensen wrote:
> My five-year-old Gateway Pentium 200 MHz died recently. (It won't boot from
> the hard drive or a rescue disk, and it won't go into bios-setup mode.) I
> don't think it's fixable, and anyway, it was so slow that it's probably time
> to replace it. Temporarily I'm using a borrowed computer with Win95. Yuck!
>
> For my next computer I want to make sure that everything is compatible with
> Linux. I searched this list and found a few posts about buying computers.
> They were a little old (one or two years), so I'm wondering if the situation
> has changed. A few people recommended the AMD Athlon processor over
> Pentiums. And Matrox for video, Soundblaster or Ensoniq for sound. Any
> thoughts on this?
>
> I've heard that computers nowadays are built with the cheapest possible
> components, so I was wondering if building it myself would be a good idea.
> It might not be much cheaper than buying one from Dell or Gateway, but if
> the result was a better quality machine it might be worthwhile. So far I've
> only had to replace broken components in my Gateway, such as the hard drive
> and CDrom, also added memory. Building a computer would be a challenge, but
> I think I'd enjoy doing it...
Local authorities will be pissed at me, but I can't recommend Gateway.
They tend to use a lot of "win-only" components, the7y cheapest crap
they can find. They seem to always have one-off video chipsets that
never quite work with XFree86. It's not the company it was back in
1995.
My sister bought a Dell; it seemed well constructed. I loved the case
and it was _quiet_. After listening to the Sun on my desk scream all
day long I wish I had a PC I couldn't hear.
Anyway, I tend to build my own systems (or buy old Suns on ebay :-)
For most work I think the 30-40% savings on an AMD processor and
system board far outweighs the 10-15% speed penalty. Buy all the RAM
you can afford. Get a fast drive. I like SCSI because I think IDE is
still too hard on the CPU. Others will disagree ...
Buy a good case and power supply. Make sure your PS can handle the
load. It used to be that a 250W PS was more than enough ... the new
Athlons and P4s will drop a 250W PS like a bad habit. 300W is the
minimum; I'd go for 400W. Find a _quiet_ case; noisy fans can damage
your hearing (ask me; I'll tell you. I've been around loud
electronics for about 6 years now, servers and routers, and my ears
ring all the time).
Get a CD-ROM from a company you've heard of (and if you've heard of
Lite-On, don't buy that). It's better to spend 10% more if it'll last
twice as long. Buy a decent NIC if you use ethernet; I think people
waste too much time trying to get a $13 PCI NIC to work.
I've had good luck with ATI video cards, though Matrox is good too. I
avoid Nvidia since their good drivers are always non-free. I have a
Creative Soundblaster PCI512 that I bought a few years ago; it works
great. I find that most of the advanced features of the new
soundcards are not supported by the linux drivers; perhaps this is
changing.
Regarding I/O; I think an IBM keyboard and Logitech's optical USB
mouse are absolutely the way to go :-) This is all personal
preference of course. Skip buying a floppy unless you really need it;
any decent BIOS can boot from a CD-ROM these days.
Finally, stay grounded. It sucks to fry your new component because
you didn't think about ESD issues when you started. Also, realise
that the new ATX power supplies can give you a shock when they are
pluuged in even if the system is "off"; it's not the same as the old
AT power supplies where the main power is actually cut. Some ATX
power supplies have a real on/off switch on the back to solve this
problem.
Best of luck,
--
Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:nnorman@incanus.net
Q: What's tiny and yellow and very, very, dangerous?
A: A canary with the super-user password.
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