RE: [TOOLS] Motherboard and CPU

["Poshedly, Ken" <PoshedlyK -at- polysius -dot- com>]

Hi Keven,

I did this (build a component-based system) several years ago, and so
far, I've never looked back. At the time, I had a Windows 98 system
which took a major virus hit. I was a day late and a dollar short in
manually updating my "free" McAfee antivirus software. I remember it
well; the system would hang mid-way through the boot cycle. The computer
tech I took it to said that worm chewed through about 500 files, etc.
Since Windows 98 was already a bit out of date, I consulted with the IT
guy at my wife's engineering company, a real computer guru. He
recommended doing mail order purchase for individual components to build
a Windows XP system. He put together a list of items (case, power
supply, hard drive, CD drive, motherboard, memory, etc. - everything)
and provided brand names and model names, too.

I did what he said, and had it assembled for me at a local shop that I
also frequented, and in my situation, it worked out beautifully. Off the
top of my head, I recall that the motherboard is an ASUS, and it's doing
just fine, thank you.

And I bought the Norton Internet Security package with Live Update, and
it's saved my system numerous times. Whether or not you're a fan of
Norton, just get SOMETHING legitimate.

Now I'm sure lots of folks say this isn't cost effective and offers no
support, etc., but that's not so true. For one thing, any tech support I
need I can get virtually anywhere, and so can you. Thus, I'm not locked
into calling a Dell or Gateway tech support person in India who will
argue with me about my system being out of warranty (happened to a
former coworker whose system was STILL under warranty, and he says he'll
NEVER buy namebrand again). 

I get a fully responsive desktop in less than a minute (which may or may
not be too slow for some of you) and all the power I need to do my
desktop publishing stuff, as well as the Autocad and Microstation things
my wife needs for her transportation engineering projects.

We did make a mistake, however - really my wife, the engineer did - and
bought an HP Pavilion system for our school-age kids. The big-box store
my wife used loaded that sucker with every piece of marketing and other
you-know-what they could find, so even after a good three or four
minutes or even five minutes, the desktop was ALMOST ready to respond to
a left-click on an icon. I called the tech support folks (yep, got
transferred to India) and they couldn't help speed things up. After
talking with all the IT people I knew to make sure I did it correctly, I
unchecked all except the most basic things in  Start > Run > msconfig >
startup and it sped things up only marginally. I even brought it in for
the IT folks at my own firm to play with, let them adjust this and
adjust that setting and even upgraded the memory, but to no real avail.

All in all, the "homebuilt" system is far superior, costing less in
money and aggravation in the long run.

Is my situation like everybody else's? Probably not, but I'll do a
homebuilt system next time without a second thought.

So, what to get? I'd say you're on the right road. Talk to the IT folks
who you already know, and determine if they know their stuff and keep
your company's system running well. (If you're not happy with them, talk
to friends who ARE happy with their own IT departments.)

Or just put together a list of what you want your system to do,
including the software packages that you run or plan to run and check
with various SMALL computer shops for a custom system from one of them.
The small shops have less overhead and are usually more willing to work
with you in times of trouble so as to make sure you remain a loyal
customer. Do small shops fade away faster than the big-box stores? Yep,
but the tradeoff of getting better service from the small shop is worth
it to me.

-- Ken in Atlanta


 

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+poshedlyk=polysius -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+poshedlyk=polysius -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Kevin McLauchlan
Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2007 12:32 PM
To: 'techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com'
Subject: [TOOLS] Motherboard and CPU

Hey all.  Any hardware mavens out there?

The company just got rid of some ancient PC carcasses. I snagged a tower
that (apparently nobody else noticed) had had its power-supply upgraded
sometime during its life. The motherboard, and any remaining drives were
junk, but they weren't what interested me. A reasonably spacious tower
with a 450W PS is what I wanted and got.

I thought I'd get a modern MB-and-CPU combo, a middlin'-good video card,
a couple of SATA drives, and have myself a useful system for home.

Here's the thing. I haven't bought a motherboard this century...
meaning, I'm out of practice and out-of-the-loop regarding what's good,
bad, or indifferent. There are SO many standards now, types of memory,
processor variants, buses, that I don't have a feel for what's
old-and-soon-to-fade away, what's current and likely to remain so for a
few years, and what's bleeding edge and might not gather sufficient
following to be around for a few years (think Beta-vs-VHS if you're old
enough).
So, for example, between Intel and AMD, there are various approaches to
64-bit processors, multi-processor, multi-core,
multi-core-multi-processor... egad.
Motherboards tend to support just one flavor (possibly family) of
memory, but (from my reading so far) it seems that a given processor
might mate satisfactorily with several motherboards (socket-this,
socket-that,
socket-the-other) that support very different memory variants.

What I want out of this exercise is a good, beefy home system on which
to run (mostly Linux with Beryl (http://www.beryl-project.org), some
office apps (OpenOffice, Scribus, inkscape, dia, GIMP), maybe view the
odd video - nothing fancy. There's no such thing as "future-proof", but
I'd like to be "future-resistant" for (say) the next five years, able to
buy more memory without needing to seek out antique dealers, able to
upgrade a video card (by the way, what's the likeliest card bus to keep
its feet under it for the
next few years?).   Um, what I want to avoid is "I remember those - no,
nobody makes parts for those anymore; shoulda gone with the Mumbo-jumbo
motherboard and Intel Quad-diddly processor when you had the chance -
everything uses the DSRIbbit memory and the Serial-extra-squinchy
expansion-card bus nowadays."

For what it's worth, I've been to some distributor sites (like
TigerDirect, and followed links to vendor sites, and read reviews on
Tom's Hardware and other sites, but it all feels like gobs of info with
not much perspective.
I'd really hate to misunderstand the implications and buy a crippled
variant (remember the old Intel Celery... er Celeron), or get a
bleedin'-edge thing that would never have Linux drivers.

So you with perspective, and recent experience, speak up!    :-)
Talk to me off-line if you figure other techwriters wouldn't be
interested.

Thanks,

Kevin in Ottawa, Canada

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