…for another computer upgrade (that title, complete with “…”, is for you, Kai…). I’ve had my Shuttle motherboard running since late-Sophomore year when I started running Linux and Windows on separate systems…and I maxed out the processor to an Athlon XP 1900+ early in my Junior year… So yeah, essentially, I’ve been using the same hardware (with minor upgrades/replacements) for about 5 years. That’s an eternity in computer time, so I’m ready for an upgrade. Recently, I’ve noticed the system slowing down with every reformat and I’ve had yet another Maxtor hard drive go out, so I’m ready to make the jump.
Here are the specs I’ve been looking at, using Mwave‘s pricing for a barebones system:
- Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (Manchester) — $297.00
- MSI K8N NEO4-F — $73.50
- 1 GB DDR400 RAM (dual-channel 512 MB) — $83.00
- NEC 16x DVD+/-RW — $38.90
- Black Apex SQ-328 case (350W PS) — $41.00
- Seagate 160 GB SATA 7200 RPM hard drive — $69.00
- Gigabyte GeForce 7300GT PCIe 128 MB — $63.00
Total cost for the specs listed above comes out to a grand total of $665.40 using Mwave’s pricing and as of May 15, 2006. I’m assuming that the price will come down overall by the time I can buy this thing sometime mid- to late-summer. The processor, especially, should drop in price by the time I can afford this…and things like the motherboard, hard drive and video card probably will change. Honestly, I don’t really need much so far as video cards go, but I’d like to have something cheap yet capable for whatever I want to do with it in the coming years. I’d really like to get 2 GB of RAM in there running dual-channel ’cause I think the 64-bit dual core system would really like to use it, but that’ll depend on RAM prices… I’ll also have to figure out Linux drivers. This is an nForce4 chipset and I think it’s support is somewhat limited under Linux…
Anyway…suggestions? While I like Ubuntu a lot, I’d probably try Gentoo again initially so I’m sure that the 64-bit and dual core shenanigans are being used to their full potential, just to see how blazing fast I can run it…may switch back eventually…who knows…
Umm….how ’bout you screw the stupid computer stuff that you don’t need and buy your little sis something really nice?? hehe….. No, seriously, I have NO MONEY! ….I’m gonna have to start whoring my teddy bear out to people for spare change pretty soon….
…um…that’s amongst the more disturbing things I’ve heard recently…
I’ve got friends on Gentoo, but why bother – you probably don’t get back in performance the hours (days?) it takes to compile everything (try emerge openoffice sometime!).
Ubuntu Dapper Beta is running smooth as silk for me.
Yeah, dude, I read an article on Newsforge a few days back about how the Web (and streaming audio/video, etc.) is all written in 32-bit…so even if I have 64-bit stuff working, I can’t use most of the internet…which probably means that I’d have to serve this very website in 32-bit…so, I’ll probably just end up running an Ubuntu server anyway in a “mixed” sort of mode…
For the record, I had Ubuntu running on my laptop (Centrino chipset…) and it did very well at detecting wireless networks and such, much like WinXP…but then I got a more recent set of updates and it broke X Windows… Maybe once they’ve got it set and stable, I’ll get that working again… đŸ˜›
What are you using this thing for? Your main desktop? I can’t remember.
Well, I’m using that 1900+ Athlon XP now, so I’ll probably use that system as a backup and put Windoze on it (so I can play “AoE III”) and I’ll use the new system primarily as a server, but also for my other use…you know…ripping DVDs…stuff like that…
I dunno what your prefered backup strategy is, but you might consider slapping two hard drives in there and doing a simple RAID mirror of one drive to the other.
Well, in the past, all I’ve done is set up a series of partitions on the larger drive and keep a second hard drive in there…so yeah, I may just get a second hard drive, rather than set it up in RAID… Personally, I don’t see much of a reason to mess with RAID ’cause I really only want to save .mp3s and such…I can reinstall Linux and have the website up again within a matter of minutes if I need to simply by exporting the MYSQL file (as I try to do weekly on multiple different computers). But yeah, you’re right, I’ll probably have a second hard drive going in there eventually…just in case…