Making your own

[mad_jock]

Right for the first time in years I am in the position of wanting a desktop.

Quite frankly its boring buying one out of a box.

Its been years since I have bought individual hardware.

What would people be looking at these days for a dual boot linux/windows machine.

Games for the windows but that's about it.

Linux for multimedia and all the other bits and bobs.

[Sprogget]

Built me own for years - always had a view towards media applications (posh way of saying sat on my ar$e watching telly).

Current box is: Antec Fusion black, Innards:

Asus P5kl-vm 1394 mobo
2 gb ddr ram (could be four I suppose, but really don't need it)
Intel dual core E300 cpu - bit long in the tooth by todays standards, but fine
2 x wd Caviar 500gb hdds - more or less 1 TB storage
1 x Hauppauge Nova-t 500 dual dvb-t tuner for Freeview
1 x Hauppauge HVR 1700 analogue tuner for Sky
1 x Nvidia 9600gt passive cooled gpu
1 x Creative xtreme music 5.1 soundcard feeding cambridge surround system
1 x LG Blu ray drive - forget which model
1 x powerline network adapter feeding 1x Linksys DMA2100 media centre extender in the kitchen - the best bit of all - 1 tiny box into the 2nd telly for the full media experience. Love it.

For gaming, definitely a decent gpu, definitely a fast processor & definitely a decent cooling strategy - my Antec box was specifically deigned to compartmentalise the bits that get warm, so the psu lives in it's own chamber with it's own air supply, as does the optical drive & the main board area is served separately by two six inch fans that spin slowly & therefore quietly - important for a media box.

What it amounts to imho is that if you are after a machine for a specific purpose, choose two things wisely - the case & the motherboard. The case determines how much room for cooling the system & the motherboard will shape the ability to expand the system as your needs change - the bits on my box are not at all what was on it when I built it - as time has moved on, I have changed the cards & drives to suit my needs - lucky for me that mu mobo has let me do that.

[Saab Dastard]

It does depend a lot on what your detailed requirements are.

Do you need particularly quiet, or does a sound like a hoover not bother you? Do you want to re-use disks? i.e. is IDE support important?

What form-factor do you want? Tower, mini-tower, desktop, micro desktop? How many HDDs to you want? RAID? How many CD / DVD / front-panel devices do you want?

I can certainly recommend a dedicated sound card - integrated sound is invariably crap. But you don't need the latest 7-1 thing from Creative - pick an older 5.1 one up off ebay for peanuts, and add a Creative front panel, very handy.

As a balance between performance / future-proofing / cost, I generally pick the 2nd or 3rd fastest currently available AMD CPU, then select mobo depending on the CPU selection and how many PCI / PCI-Express slots I need.

The number of PCI slots is usually important for me - so many things to fit, when you include sound and wifi (although that can be USB).

Don't skimp on the PSU - 500W min these days.

End of random musings :O

SD

[mad_jock]

Its all going to be new parts.

3 disks

1 for the OS's/program files and 2 mirror raid for data (prefer hardware raid not soft)

Don't care what size of box as long as you don't need to rack it.

1 DVD/CD RW and all that stuff.

Decent sound card external prefer with fibre optic out.

Decent graphics external.

WIFI

a few USB ports.

**** loads of ram.

No telly or any of that crap.

Just running through all the reviews on PCPRO.

Think first stop is going to have to be go down the local computer bits and pieces shop and see what they have about and the price. Its the number of Mobo / processor options you have which does my head in.

[Sprogget]

Decent graphics external.

Why external?

no telly or any of that crap.
Charmed I'm sure;)

[mad_jock]

wrong use of word not external more not on the mobo.

I don't know if they have got better but in the past 50% of mobo's problems I have had to fix are because something has gone wrong with the built in graphics card. Anyway it gets the heat away from the mobo which can only be a good thing.

And hacking sky was a past time of ones youth. I am sure the redhot channels are just as crap as they were 10 years ago. ;)

[Saab Dastard]

Its the number of Mobo / processor options you have which does my head in.
I recommend that you choose the CPU first, that then dictates the mobo by socket type. Then choose the mobo by form factor, expansion slots, features, reviews, manfr.

I would want to buy a quad-core CPU at this point, AMD Phenom for example (I like to support AMD to preserve some intel competition).

Look at ebuyer and lambdatek websites.

If you want 3 or more HDDs, you'll need at least a midi-tower case, plus a good big PSU. So an ATX FF.

SD

[mad_jock]

Not in UK so will have to do a tour of the local shops to see what they have got.

Stuffs about 20% cheaper than the UK before VAT and there is no VAT here so quids in.

Planning for the box to be disposable and ship the components back in a flight bag when the contract is finished.

What do you reckon on my disk solution? trying not to get a server head on.

last machine I spec'd had quad pentium pros and a veritas 10 disk raid hanging off it and 4 network cards for winterm server

[mad_jock]

Right someone explain to me what cross fire is.

[Saab Dastard]

The only things you would have a problem with shipping back from a size and weight POV would be the case, PSU and possibly mobo. And screen, of course. Case & PSU could be bought as totally disposable items, then get a better one later.

Everything else would be really easy to strip out, re-pack and carry. And that's most of the high-value stuff - CPU, RAM & disks.

I agree with 1 disk for system, and other disks for data - if you can afford RAID then why not, although if cost is a concern (doesn't sound like it), then 1 big data disk in the PC and another for backup via network / USB is an option. And I agree about hardware RAID - SW RAID is dubious for several reasons.

If you have multiple disks, then you've lots of choice for dual-booting and setting up both OS's nicely.

As you say, for a server disk spindle layout is often important for performance, but for a home PC, it barely matters.

what cross fire is

Best avoided.

It's to link two (or more?) graphics cards together for ultimate performance, but generally is far more hassle than it's worth. See Keygrip's problems with SLI.

SD

[mad_jock]

Its 35quid for TB of external drive eSATA over here.

Looking at MSI 790FX-GD70 AM3 Review - Page 1 - Introduction (http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/msi_790fx_am3/)

It appears to have hardware raid built in.

[Sprogget]

Cross fire is a technology whereby up to four (I think) ATI graphics cards can be linked in one system to give super duper graphics processing - it's ati's version of Nvidia's SLI technology.

Not an expert on graphicd, but I think SLI wasn't especially popular with gamers based on taking up all your expansion slots. Would guess cross fire suffers the same shortcoming.