Re: Recommended hardware
On Tue, 2003-07-01 at 17:11, DGLUser wrote:
> Hi all, I need to buy a new computer, w/o monitor my budget is about $1000 usd, and I need to have a decent system. I cheked the ones being sold by Walmart online (microtel), but I didn't see any dvd/cd burner/drive capability. I wasn't sure either about their integrated sound/video memory, which has been a pain in the past for me at least.
> I would appreciate any recommendations or pointers. I would even buy parts and try to put them together (far from expert, but willing to try if I know that the parts will work with debian).
> Basically that's all.
> Thanks to all for any ideas forthcoming.
>
I recommend the following components for a trouble free Debian
experience:
Video Card: ATI radeon 7500 AGP ($50-$60). Works well with X, just
select ati driver during install and you're set.
Sound Card: SB Live Value or OEM, or 5.1 ($25-$35). Works with the
emu10k1 driver. Allows you to play many sound streams at the same time.
Nice quality, etc.
Hard Disk: Western Digital 120GB with or without 8 meg cache
($110,$130). I get a transfer rate of just under 50 Megs/second. After
installing debian, make sure to install hdparm and run: hdparm -d1X69
/dev/hda to actually get this performance.
Ram: 512 megs ($60). You can live comfortably with anything more than
256, but with ram as cheap as it is, go for more.
CPU: P4 2.4 ($170). This is a very decent processor at a good price. You
can always spend more, but performance won't really improve. You'd be
better off spending the money getting a raid controller or scsi disks or
more ram.
Motherboard: I don't really know ($100). Get a basic motherboard with
lots of pci slots. Don't depend on anything onboard (especially video
cards).
DVD Reader: Take your pick ($30-$40). I like pioneer, but they're all
pretty much the same.
CD-R: Plextor 48/24/48 ($90-$100): I like plextor. But any drive with
burnproof will do.
Total:
minimum: $635
maximum: $695
This leaves out the monitor. However for $200 you can get a REALLY NICE
21" Sun monitor off of ebay. The thing goes up to 1600x1200, which is
pretty reasonable. That's what I'm using right now.
So that brings the total to about $900.
If you don't want to go with that, just get a 17 inch monitor for about
the same price.
This system should happily last you for at least 3 years. I could live
with it for longer.
As for where you should get this system, I recommend you go to a local
computer store and have them build you a system. I don't know where you
live so I can't recommend anything, but around here (Montreal, Canada) I
would recommend microbytes (www.microbytes.com).
If you go to a brand-name PC dealer you are either going to get
overcharged, or get bad hardware (possibly both). A good example is disk
space. You can get an excellent 200 Gig drive for $220, but right now
dell charges $190 to upgrade their $1900 system from a 120 gig to a 200
gig! (Same thing with ram: $60 of ram for $190!, $180 of ram for $660!!,
etc.).
Also if you buy from a local store, you can always return a defective
part. This has saved me many times.
If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
Hope that helps,
Bijan
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