Help me build a new PC! (Full Version)

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figmentPez -> Help me build a new PC! (5/22/2008 4:34:38 PM)

If you've seen my other thread, you know my current computer is dying. It was a good 6˝ years, but I'm probably going to have to build a new PC soon. (Darn, one month until AMD releases their new graphics cards! Not sure I can make it that long.)

Currently I'm thinking about this:

Reuse: Monitors, Mouse, Keyboard, Case, Optical Drive, Speakers

New Parts:
  • Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 (2.53Ghz, maybe OC to 3.1Ghz) - $132
  • Heatsink: Coolermaster Hyper TX2 - $26
  • Mobo: Gibabyte GA-EP35-DS3P - $150
  • RAM: 4GB (2x 2GB) DDR2800 -$80
  • Video Card: HIS Radeon 3870 512MB - $160 (minus $25MIR)
  • Hard drive: 500GB - $90
  • Power Supply: Corsair 520HX - $120 (minus $20MIR)
  • Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit - $100
  • Misc. Fans, Cables, thermal paste, etc. ~ $20
  • Audio: onboard or reuse CL Audigy or buy something spiffy later

    Total: ~$877 (Before Main-in-rebates, I prefer not to trust those.)

    To answer a few questions I'm sure will come up:

    1. No, I'm not positive I'm going with 64-bit Vista, but you can't convince me to go with Linux. This PC is going to be used for gaming that can't be done on Linux. However, I'm not sure about 64-bit Vista because there isn't support for my Palm Tungsten E in 64-bit (There is no 64-bit support for syncing any Palm device over USB, and there may never be). I might just try and transfer my current XP license.

    2. No, I'm not buying a lesser PSU. I want something really solid. Not just because I might try overclocking, but because when I built my current PC I had to replace several parts because of a bad PSU. Let me have this indulgence. (Plus, modular cabling... *drool*)

    3. Please don't suggest parts that throw my budget out of whack. I know there are faster processors out there with more cache and more cores. They also cost more than $130. Without a very good reason, consider $900 to be my budget. If I had money to burn, I wouldn't have as old a PC as I do.

    4. Yes, I know the nVidia 9600GT is faster than the 3870 in many tests. I like ATI. My last two cards have been ATI and they've worked very well for me. It's one of the few brands I feel any sort of loyalty for (Logitech being one of the few others). Also, I like that AMD/ATI seem to be supporting open source drivers for their cards (even if I'm not going to run Linux right away). I'd be going with AMD for my processor, if I felt they had a stronger offering. I am open to being persuaded with a solid AMD mobo/CPU combo of comparable price and features.

    So, any suggestions, comments, criticisms?



    • SavedToo -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/22/2008 5:06:13 PM)

    Need to add a DVD Burner, $30.

    Do you really need a Quad core CPU? I have yet to see any software recommend even a dual core CPU. Why not spend more on the Video Card and less on the CPU if it's main purpose is to play games?

    Make sure you HD is serial ATA.

    Make sure your MB has onboard CPU temperature monitoring that you can access from Vista.



    JonCo54 -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/22/2008 5:25:46 PM)

    Looks like you are building a pretty a good machine. I prefer Asus MBs you can get an Asus P5K-C Socket 775 Intel P35 ICH9 Chipset Dual-Channel DDR2 1066/800/667Mhz & DDR3 1333/1066/800 eSATA/SATA 3.0Gb/s Firewire 12x USB 2.0 for +- $140. here are the specs on it.

    CPU LGA775 socket for Intel� Core�2 Quad / Core�2 Extreme / Core�2 Duo / Pentium� Extreme / Pentium� D / Pentium� 4 Processors
    Compatible with Intel� 05B/05A/06 processors
    Support Intel� next generation 45nm Multi-Core CPU
    *This motherboard supports FSB 1333/1066/800
    Chipset Intel� P35 / ICH9 with Intel� Fast Memory Access Technology
    Front Side Bus 1333 / 1066 / 800 MHz
    Memory 2 x DIMM, max. 4GB, DDR3 1333*/1066 / 800 MHz, non-ECC, un-buffered memory, dual-channel memory architecture
    4 x DIMM, max. 8GB, DDR2 1066*/800 / 667 MHz, non-ECC, un-buffered memory
    Dual channel memory architecture
    * The chipset officially supports the memory frequency up to DDR3 1066MHz/DDR2 800. Due to the tuning by ASUS exclusive technology, this motherboard natively supports up to DDR3 1333/DDR2 1066MHz. Please refer to www.asus.com or user manual for Memory QVL
    Expansion Slots 2 x PCI-E x16 (blue @ x16 mode, black @ x4 or x1 mode)
    Supports CrossFire Technology
    1 x PCI-E x1
    3 x PCI
    Storage Southbridge
    - 4 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports
    JMicron� JMB363 PATA and SATA controller
    - 1 x UltraDMA 133/100/66 for up to 2 PATA devices
    - 1 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports
    - 1 x External SATA 3.0 Gb/s port (SATA On-the-Go)
    - Supports SATA RAID 0,1 and JBOD
    LAN PCIe Gb LAN controller
    Audio Realtek ALC 883, 8-channel High-Definition Audio CODEC
    - Support Jack-Sensing, Enumeration, Multi-streaming
    - Coaxial / Optical S/PDIF out ports at back I/O
    IEEE 1394 VIA VT6308P controller supports 2 x IEEE 1394a ports
    (one at midboard; one at back panel)
    USB 12 x USB 2.0 ports (6 ports at mid-board, 6ports at back panel)
    ASUS AI Lifestyle Features ASUS Quiet Thermal Solution:
    - ASUS AI Gear2
    - ASUS AI Nap
    - ASUS Fanless Design: Heat-pipe solution
    - ASUS Fanless Design: Stack Cool 2
    - ASUS Q-Fan 2
    ASUS Crystal Sound:
    - ASUS Noise Filter
    ASUS EZ DIY:
    - ASUS Q-Connector
    - ASUS O.C. Profile
    - ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3
    - ASUS EZ Flash 2
    - ASUS AI Slot Detector
    Other Features ASUS MyLogo 2
    Overclocking Features Intelligent overclocking tools:
    - AI NOS�
    - ASUS AI Booster utility
    Precision Tweaker:
    - vCore: Adjustable CPU voltage at 0.0125V increment
    - vDIMM: 8-step DRAM voltage control
    - vChipset: 4-step Chipset voltage control
    SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection)
    - FSB tuning from 200MHz up to 800MHz at 1MHz increment
    - Memory tunning from 667MHz up to 1333MHz for DDR2
    - Memory tunning from 800MHz up to 1333MHz for DDR3
    - PCI Express frequency tuning from 100MHz up to150MHz at 1MHz increment
    Overclocking Protection:
    - ASUS C.P.R.(CPU Parameter Recall)
    Back Panel I/O Ports 1 x PS/2 Keyboard
    1 x S/PDIF Out (Coaxial + Optical)
    1x External SATA
    1 x IEEE1394a
    1 x RJ45 port
    6x USB 2.0/1.1
    8-channel Audio I/O
    Internal I/O Connectors 3 x USB connectors support additional 6 USB ports
    1 x Floppy disk drive connector
    1 x IDE connector
    1 x COM connector
    5x SATA connectors
    1 x CPU Fan connector
    2 x Chassis Fan connector
    1 x Power Fan connector
    1 x IEEE1394a connector
    Front panel audio connector
    1 x S/PDIF Out Header
    Chassis Intrusion connector
    CD audio in
    24-pin ATX Power connector
    1x 4-pin ATX 12V Power connector
    System Panel(Q-Connector)
    BIOS 8 Mb Flash ROM, AMI BIOS, PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.3, ACPI 2.0a
    Manageability WfM 2.0, DMI 2.0, WOL by PME, WOR by PME, PXE
    O/S Compatibility Windows Vista/XP
    Accessories UltraDMA 133/100/66 cable
    FDD cable
    Serial ATA signal cables
    Serial ATA power cable
    I/O Shield
    User's manual
    3 in 1 Q-connector
    Support CD Drivers
    ASUS PC Probe II
    ASUS Update
    ASUS AI Suite
    Anti-virus software (OEM version)
    Form Factor ATX Form Factor, 12"x 9.6" (30.5cm x 24.4cm)



    figmentPez -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/22/2008 5:34:46 PM)

    quote:

    ORIGINAL: SavedToo

    Need to add a DVD Burner, $30.


    I'm reusing my Lite-On DH-20A4H-06. Just bought it earlier this year. (I love LightScribe labelling.)

    quote:

    Do you really need a Quad core CPU? I have yet to see any software recommend even a dual core CPU. Why not spend more on the
    Video Card and less on the CPU if it's main purpose is to play games?


    The E7200 is a dual core chip, not quad. A lot of games released in the past two years do take advantage of a second core (UT3, Crysis, even the Source engine is getting multi-core support). There are even a few titles, like Supreme Commander, that benefit from quad, though not many. I could spend less on the processor, but I think I'd give up more than I'd save by going with an E4500 or something with even less cache. I could spend more on the graphics card, but not without making a huge jump to a 3870X2 or switching to nVidia for an 8800GT, both of which are likely to be eclipsed in a month or so by new releases. The 3870 should be more than enough for what I want to play most right now (Team Fortress 2, plus replaying the rest of the Orange Box, various older games on Gametap, Bioshock). Hopefully it will be up to whatever game I want to when I finally finish that list (Fallout 3?).

    quote:

    Make sure you HD is serial ATA.


    Yes, I certainly will. I'd be going with an SATA optical drive as well, if I were going to leave my current DVD+/-RW with my current system (as I had originally hoped to.)

    quote:

    Make sure your MB has onboard CPU temperature monitoring that you can access from Vista.


    Are there motherboards that don't these days? How would I know?



    figmentPez -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/22/2008 6:10:29 PM)

    quote:

    ORIGINAL: JonCo54

    I prefer Asus MBs you can get an Asus P5K-C Socket...


    Looks like that one is currently out of stock at Newegg (my preferred vendor), but I'll look at Asus' other offerings. However, I'm not inclined to buy Asus right now. I bought a TV-tuner from them several years back, and I'm still feeling burned by the lack of support. I realize that Asus does have solid support for their MoBos, but that doesn't make me feel any better about a card that's never worked like it should. I'll try and put aside my prejudice and examine the options, though. (Good grief, there are a lot of different P35 boards from Asus. One model at every $5 increment from $125 - $140, plus quite a few above and below! The Asus site lists 17 different P35 motherboards.)

    The P5K-EPU looks fairly nice, but compared to the Gigabyte it's got fewer USB ports, fewer cables (not that I'll be using eSATA right away), no optical audio out, one less PCIe x1 slots (I've got four PCI devices in my current box, I'm surprised how many add-in cards I've used) and looks to have it's ATX power connector in a less convenient spot.



    JonCo54 -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/22/2008 6:55:53 PM)

    Years ago Asus was having trouble with drivers but that seems to be a thing of the past. GigaByte makes good products as well.



    PolarBear -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/22/2008 8:52:34 PM)

    Glad to see that you see the value in AMD releasing programming information for their video processors. That's really key, and will benefit more than Linux users in the long run. It should also open the possibility for better Windows drivers. I strongly recommend that everyone buy ATi for that, and hopefully it will force nVidia to follow suit.

    AMD CPUs ... I don't know, the Phenom chips seem tempting at this point, though I've heard there's a bug in the current version that can cause lockups. It should be fixed with the next stepping, which could be released any time now. Overall I agree Intel probably has the strongest offering, but if AMD disappeared, we would all be worse off in the long run. I see an AMD CPU as an investment in progress and competition.

    It's good to see this discussion -- I am planning a major computer build too, but it probably won't happen for another year or so.



    iluvatar -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/23/2008 1:30:33 AM)

    I'm too lazy to look up your mobo and see if it has onboard RAID support. If it does, you could do like I did and reuse an older HD for Windows & various office apps, then install a pair of 500GB drives as a RAID 0 array for any stuff that needs a bit more speed. If those 500GB drives are only $90, that shouldn't mess up your budget too badly. If you reuse your XP license, you'd be ahead by $10. :-)

    -Dan.



    figmentPez -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/23/2008 3:43:07 PM)

    quote:

    ORIGINAL: PolarBear

    AMD CPUs ... I don't know, the Phenom chips seem tempting at this point, though I've heard there's a bug in the current version that can cause lockups. It should be fixed with the next stepping, which could be released any time now. Overall I agree Intel probably has the strongest offering, but if AMD disappeared, we would all be worse off in the long run. I see an AMD CPU as an investment in progress and competition.


    I'm pretty sure the latest stepping (B3?) fixed that already, and that all Phenom X3s are the new stepping.

    Anway, I did some pricing of AMD chips and MoBos. I'm not nearly as up on MoBo chipsets as I was the last time I build a PC (man, I did my research back then), but so far I'd focused on Intel chips. (I'd missed out on the days of 50% overclocks on the Celeron 300A because I didn't build my own systems at that point, and for a while I was dreaming of a 50% overclock on an E4x00). So I did a quick look on AMD chips and picked a Mobo that was reccomended in a building guide by Sharkey Extreme.

    Gigabyte GA-MA790X-DS4 - $135

    That's cheaper than my Intel choice, and does have PCIe v2.0 (not sure if that would actually benefit anything, since I'm not likely to do Crossfire). Since Phenom chips are pretty expensive, I figured I'd have to go with the cheapest X3 or go with an Athlon 64 X2:

    PhenomX3 8450 (2.1Ghz) - $149
    Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (3.0Ghz) - $153
    Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (2.9Ghz) - $124

    The first two are within a few bucks of my Intel E7200 configuration, but they aren't very close in performance. However, where they really fall behind is power consumption. Not just in their specs (125W for the 6000+ vs 65W for the E7200, I think 95W for the Phenom) but in real world testing as well. I don't think I've seen a single review that puts the Phenoms or high-end A64X2s anywhere near the low-mid-range Core 2 Duos, especially the E7200, when it comes to power consumption.

    However, I just checked, and the 5600+ is saying that it's a 65W part. I might just give up any ideas of overclocking (which I may have never done anyway) and decide to support AMD again. (I've had no reason to be displeased with my current chip.) I'd save about $23, though at the cost of some performance. I could also look at going with the stock heatsink, and save another $26.

    Oh man, this is going to be a tough choice. Do you think God gives guidance on choosing computer parts?



    figmentPez -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/23/2008 4:02:01 PM)

    quote:

    ORIGINAL: iluvatar

    I'm too lazy to look up your mobo and see if it has onboard RAID support. If it does, you could do like I did and reuse an older HD for Windows & various office apps, then install a pair of 500GB drives as a RAID 0 array for any stuff that needs a bit more speed. If those 500GB drives are only $90, that shouldn't mess up your budget too badly. If you reuse your XP license, you'd be ahead by $10. :-)


    My two hard drives are both IDE, and the newer of the two is more than 3 years old. Not a dinosaur, but I'd rather not build a system around it, both for reliability and performance reasons. Add to that, most motherboards these days only have one IDE channel.

    I'm not convinced AID 0 (no Redundancy) is that much of a performance benefit, anyway. The benchmarks I've seen show it improves load times, and that's about it. I got 4GB of RAM to help with that, without increased chances of lost data. I don't feel a need to shave another few seconds off of loading Windows or game levels.

    Thanks for the suggestion.



    figmentPez -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/26/2008 5:58:27 PM)

    I placed my order at Newegg last night, forgetting that today is a holiday and it won't ship until tomorrow. That means it won't come until Friday or later (I'm not paying another $35 in shipping for one day, not even if it means waiting until sometime next week). We have relatives coming on Friday (My older sister is virtually bed-bound due to complications from surviving cancer, so her favorite cousin is coming to visit), so that might mean I'll have little time to assemble it when it comes... Oh well... I've been itching for a new system for years, I can wait a few more days.

    Anyway, thanks for all your suggestions and comments... I ignored them all. (Isn't that the way these threads are supposed to go? [;)] [:D])

    I ended up getting the Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L instead of the DS3P. It doesn't have firewire, and the cooling isn't as fancy, and it's got a PCI slot instead of a second PCIex16 (which is only x4 electrical anyway), etc. but it's $60 cheaper and it's got a parallel port. Not that my parallel scanner has support for Vista 64-bit, but I think I'm going to try dual-booting with Linux so I can finally get some experience with that OS. Maybe I'll be able to get my TV-tuner and scanner to work there.

    I also picked up a IDE/SATA to USB adapter to make it, hopefully, easier to transfer all the data from my old HDDs to the new PC. (I could have just swapped out drives on the single IDE bus on the new mobo, but I figured $13 ain't bad for a toy that might come in handy at some undetermined point in the future.)

    If anyone is interested in my exact choices in HDD, video card, RAM, etc. I can post them.

    Until all this stuff comes and I have time to install and test everything, I'm a mix of equal parts excitement and nervous energy. I'm going to have to work on just relaxing.



    JonCo54 -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/26/2008 6:50:46 PM)

    Congrats on your new computer figmentPez. If you are looking for a newbie friendly Linux OS I suggest PCLinusOS. So far it has found and configured all my hardware. Link here. http://www.pclinuxos.com/

    Enjoy,
    Jon



    figmentPez -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/26/2008 7:14:21 PM)

    quote:

    ORIGINAL: JonCo54

    Congrats on your new computer figmentPez. If you are looking for a newbie friendly Linux OS I suggest PCLinusOS. So far it has found and configured all my hardware. Link here. http://www.pclinuxos.com/


    I'll keep that in mind. Right now I'm thinking I'll wait until try the newly released 8.04 version of Mythbuntu, because I've always wondered if my TV-tuner card would work better in Linux than it does in Windows. If that proves too complicated for me, I'll try another distro.

    One quick question, if any of the Linux users know, there are two different builds available to download: i386 or amd64. Now, are these just terms for 32-bit versus 64-bit*, with Intel Core 2 Duos being compatible with the amd64 build? Or would there be some incompatibility if I tried to use the amd64 build on an Intel based system?

    *(Yes, I'm aware there are non-386 32-bit processors, as well as various 64-bit processors that aren't x64 like SPARC and whatnot. Sorry for not being geekishly accurate in my question phrasing [;)])



    PolarBear -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/26/2008 10:51:25 PM)

    My understanding is that AMD64 works with both Intel and AMD chips.

    With 4GB memory you will probably want that. *Unless* you need to view Flash websites in Linux, in which case it will be somewhat less of a pain with the 32 bit version. With 32 bits though, it will only see a little over 3GB, and any single process will use 2GB max. Maybe not a problem on your desktop, but not good for a high volume database server ...

    And no firewire? I can't imagine getting a system without that, but then I'm a big DV user.



    JonCo54 -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/26/2008 11:29:51 PM)

    quote:

    ORIGINAL: figmentPez

    quote:

    ORIGINAL: JonCo54

    Congrats on your new computer figmentPez. If you are looking for a newbie friendly Linux OS I suggest PCLinusOS. So far it has found and configured all my hardware. Link here. http://www.pclinuxos.com/


    I'll keep that in mind. Right now I'm thinking I'll wait until try the newly released 8.04 version of Mythbuntu, because I've always wondered if my TV-tuner card would work better in Linux than it does in Windows. If that proves too complicated for me, I'll try another distro.

    One quick question, if any of the Linux users know, there are two different builds available to download: i386 or amd64. Now, are these just terms for 32-bit versus 64-bit*, with Intel Core 2 Duos being compatible with the amd64 build? Or would there be some incompatibility if I tried to use the amd64 build on an Intel based system?

    *(Yes, I'm aware there are non-386 32-bit processors, as well as various 64-bit processors that aren't x64 like SPARC and whatnot. Sorry for not being geekishly accurate in my question phrasing [;)])

    if you are looking for something that really works with tuner cards here is a link.

    http://www.mypclinuxos.com/doku.php/mythtvos

    Here is part of the intro.

    ntroduction

    MythTVOS 2008 is based on MiniMe 2008 and has MythTV and all plugins installed and (pre)configured.
    Just boot from the livecd, select your TV / SAT / CABLE card and scan for channels…
    In the future, its developement is targetted to provide both a remaster download and a metapackage distribution to allow the creation of a full MythTV setup from a regular PCLinuxOS installed system.



    JonCo54 -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/26/2008 11:42:41 PM)

    Qoute

    One quick question, if any of the Linux users know, there are two different builds available to download: i386 or amd64. Now, are these just terms for 32-bit versus 64-bit*, with Intel Core 2 Duos being compatible with the amd64 build? Or would there be some incompatibility if I tried to use the amd64 build on an Intel based system?

    PCLinuxOS works on AMD and Intel. Although true dual core processing is still in its infancy for any operating system. I know from the users comments that PCLinuxOS works well on just about any processor including PIII's.



    Lurker -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/27/2008 12:17:32 PM)

    Don't use the Audigy on Vista. Use the onboard. The Audigy drivers for Vista are sub par and tend to cause crashes.

    As far as getting i386 or x64 linux, you can use either one. Core2duos are fully X64 compatible as well. :)


    I just upgraded my machine to a Core2duo e8400. Have you checked the prices on Newegg.com for all your parts?


    *edit* as a matter of fact, I got the same motherboard only with the Raid option for $119. The raid option is nice because it had 4 extra SATA ports. That motherboard is particularly nice because it's got a breakout connector to let you hook up eSata devices. :) I ended up using that to hook up my 1TB media drive to it. :D



    figmentPez -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/29/2008 5:40:39 PM)

    quote:

    ORIGINAL: PolarBear

    And no firewire? I can't imagine getting a system without that, but then I'm a big DV user.


    Yeah, I kind of agonized over not having firewire. However, I've have firewire on my current box (through my Audigy) and I've never used it. I figure if I ever do need firewire I can put in a PCI card.

    quote:

    ORIGINAL: Lurker

    Don't use the Audigy on Vista. Use the onboard. The Audigy drivers for Vista are sub par and tend to cause crashes.


    Thanks for the warning. I'd heard that Creative support for Vista was lousy, but I didn't realize crashing was part of the problem. I thought it was just because they were charing for Alchemy or something.

    quote:

    I just upgraded my machine to a Core2duo e8400. Have you checked the prices on Newegg.com for all your parts?


    I didn't check anywhere else. [:D] When I bought my current box, I shopped around and ordered parts from 3 different online shops, and did the shipping shuffle, finding out if a cheaper price was offset by the costs of shipping (complicated by shipping being variable depending on other parts). This time I didn't want to have to deal with all that. Newegg has been good to me (I probably order from them at least once a year) and they always have a good price, if not the best. They also have some of the best product pictures and spec listings out there, so it's easy to shop there. With all that going for it, and wanting my parts quickly, I didn't feel like wasting hours and hours comparison shopping. If I'm ordering one or two things (or just one type of item, like all books or all DVDs) I'll shop around, but for a 12 item list, it's just too complicated to try and save a few bucks here and there.

    ---

    Anyway, I was reading a news blurb about Deus Ex being free on GameTap starting Thursday (great game) and someone commented that Vista 64-bit users shouldn't bother (or something similar). I knew that some games on GameTap wouldn't work on 64-bit OSes, but apparently it's most games that won't work, because GameTap's DRM software isn't compatible with 64-bit. Grrr! I'm not sure that would have kept me from going with Vista 64-bit, but I certainly wish I'd bothered to check more closely.

    So, I think I'm going to triple-boot Vista, XP and Mythbuntu/Linux. I found what seems like complete step-by-step instructions HERE. They're from back when Vista was in Beta, but I'm hoping they're still applicable. Hopefully MS won't give me too many troubles with switching over my OEM license of XP over to a new computer. Not sure what I'd do then.

    I'm thinking 200GB NTFS for Vista (I'm still assuming this will be my primary OS), 100GB NTFS for XP, 100GB EXT3 for Linux, 1GB for Linux swap file (multiple links have said one is needed/desired) and the remaining as shared storage (NTFS? FAT-32?). Any suggestions?



    JonCo54 -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/29/2008 5:57:20 PM)

    That setup looks just right. For extra storage Fat 32 would probably be best because it is recognized by most devices like PVR's, STB's, and multimedia systems. It is also compatible with the OSes you chose.



    Lurker -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/29/2008 10:00:49 PM)

    If you have trouble with the XP license, let me know. I did some contracts at MS and still know a few people there. I can see about pulling a favor and getting one of them to run to the company store.
    It's how I scored my copy of Vista Ultimate. :)



    PolarBear -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/30/2008 11:18:07 AM)

    That partitioning scheme looks good. In the past it was usually recommended to have your swap to be 1.5 or so times your memory. However I believe that is not necessary now. The kernel just wants to have a bit of something to play with if it wants to do major memory shuffling.

    I didn't realize they even made boards without Firewire ...



    psaulm119 -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/31/2008 12:44:06 PM)

    More current versions of Ubunto have NTFS support capabilities (not sure what version of Ubuntu mythbuntu is based on)--so I'd make my storage partition ntfs for sure. Not sure if this is by default or not, but folks are saying that it can be done easily.



    PolarBear -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/31/2008 8:34:49 PM)

    NTFS has actually worked since Feisty (7.04) IIRC. I have my XP partition mounted and it seems fine, though I virtually never accesses it. It uses some kind of FUSE driver (Filesystem in User Space).



    JonCo54 -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (5/31/2008 8:56:29 PM)

    Yes you can read/write to NTFS partitions with this driver.

    Read-write NTFS driver for Linux
    The ntfs-3g driver is an open source, freely available read/write NTFS
    driver, which provides safe and fast handling of the Windows XP, Windows
    Server 2003, Windows 2000 and Windows Vista filesystems. Almost the full
    POSIX filesystem functionality is supported, the major exceptions are
    changing the file ownerships and the access rights.

    The purpose of the project is to develop, continuously quality test and
    support a trustable, featureful and high performance solution for hardware
    platforms and operating systems whose users need to reliably interoperate
    with NTFS. Besides this practical goal, the project also aims to explore
    the limits of the hybrid, kernel/user space filesystem driver approach,
    performance, reliability and feature richness per invested effort wise.

    The driver is in STABLE status. The test methods, the test suites used and
    testimonials can be found on:

    http://www.ntfs-3g.org/quality.html

    News, support answers, problem submission instructions, support and discussion
    forums, performance numbers and other information are available on the project
    web site at:

    http://www.ntfs-3g.org

    If you use PCLinuxOS this is down loadable from the repository

    Cheers,
    Jon



    figmentPez -> RE: Help me build a new PC! (6/3/2008 10:46:59 PM)

    Parts arrived Friday afternoon. Worked on and off from about 6pm until after 10pm, disassembling my old PC and getting the new parts put together. Got all the essentials plugged in, pressed the power switch and....
    ...
    ...
    nothing. Not a beep. Not a fan spinning. Not a light. Nothing.
    ...
    Checked all the cables, made sure everything was seated properly. Double checked the power switch on the PSU. Tried flipping around the connector between the power button and the mobo. Plugged into the wall instead of my UPS. Tried disconnecting the drives, using just one stick of memory, without the video card.

    Eventually I just gave up for the night, I was so exhausted. I'd forgotten just how much work it can be to work on a computer.

    Next morning I found the problem. My new mobo is not only smaller than my old one, but it uses fewer screws to connect to the case. I missed removing one of the brass stand-offs, and it was shorting the mobo. After removing that stand-off, and reconnecting everything, my new PC (I'll call it Pezzle) boot just fine.

    To my surprise WinXP activated without so much as a call to Microsoft. [sm=sadquestion.gif] Huh? Guess I won't question success.

    Got a scare when my screen went back and my computer became unresponsive a couple of times, but I reinstalled video card drivers and I haven't had a single issue in that area since.

    Vista installed fine, and I've enjoyed playing around with it. So far it seems like there are some good improvements (I like being able to search the Start menu, it's a lot quicker for me than scanning all the folders for the program I want). However, overall it feels like a room that's been redecorated... and then they realized that there's all this stuff in the hallway, and stuffed in the closet, and sitting on the porch, that really needs to be part of the room, but wasn't made part of the new layout. Of course, in the design shows, they often take out the ceiling fan... big mistake! Don't you dare touch my ceiling fan!!! I live in SE Texas! Time will tell if something so essential is missing from Vista, or if it's just lesser annoyances.

    Gaming performance is nice. I'm replaying Half Life 2 at the moment. At first it didn't feel much different, but then I hit the airboat section... and it was smacked in the face with the difference. Not only are the visuals reallly different (not least because I can turn on water reflections), but with a smooth framerate (even at 1600x1200 4xAA 16xAF) I don't have to save and reload all the time. Somehow I still had fun driving the airboat last time, but this time it feels so much smoother.

    That's all for now.



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