[narlus]

ok you geeks...i want a PC built. i figure that someone who knows what they are doing will get the system i want cheaper than the pre-packaged stuff out there, and have what i want on it. my current PC has this annoying habit of shutting down on itself periodically, and as it was a 2nd hand PC already i think i'm ready to jettison it.

User Requirements Spec:

- decently fast (but not blazingly so) CPU
- should have ample slots for SCSI and firewire cards
- BIG hard drives (could be persuaded to go w/ a RAID setup).
- no peripherals (keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc) required

i've got some stuff i could re-use too (DVD R internal drive, and DVD-ROM/CDRW internal drive), and the SCSI card (for external Plextor cdrom/cdr drives) and firewire card (for digicam d/l and external hard drive). would need USB connections for printer, mouse, scanner, etc. i've also got the xp home disks which came w/ my laptop.

let me know if you are interested in taking on this project w/ me. i am sure we can negotiate a good builder's fee.

 

[Jayridesacove]

what do you plan on using said pc for?

 

[Ciaran]

I'll send you a copy of XP pro. (Yes, it's legit.)

 

[Crazy Sweeper]

I'd need to know what you use it for.

 

[DHracer1067]

I'll send you a copy of XP pro. (Yes, it's legit.)

any chance you could send me a copy of XP pro too.

 

[H8R]

ok you geeks...i want a PC built. i figure that someone who knows what they are doing will get the system i want cheaper than the pre-packaged stuff out there, and have what i want on it. my current PC has this annoying habit of shutting down on itself periodically, and as it was a 2nd hand PC already i think i'm ready to jettison it.

User Requirements Spec:

- decently fast (but not blazingly so) CPU
- should have ample slots for SCSI and firewire cards
- BIG hard drives (could be persuaded to go w/ a RAID setup).
- no peripherals (keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc) required

i've got some stuff i could re-use too (DVD R internal drive, and DVD-ROM/CDRW internal drive), and the SCSI card (for external Plextor cdrom/cdr drives) and firewire card (for digicam d/l and external hard drive). would need USB connections for printer, mouse, scanner, etc. i've also got the xp home disks which came w/ my laptop.

let me know if you are interested in taking on this project w/ me. i am sure we can negotiate a good builder's fee.

I'd recommend a motherbord w/ firewire and SATA built in.
Any SCSI card is easy to add.
Decently fast? Athlon 64
Graphics? How important is this to you?
Size? Do you have limits, or can it be a monster?
Noise? Do you want silent, or super-cooled and overclocked?
Power - how much do you plan to add to this machine in the future?

 

[Jayridesacove]

just for kicks...

motherboard$49.99
ram 1Gb ddr400$49.99 x 2
cpu athlon xp 3000+ @ 2.16Ghz/400MHz FSB$139.99
video card$89.99
case$53.99
cpu fan$24.99
hard drive$99.99

$558.92 before shipping

 

[narlus]

it's not a game machine...but i will do some basic audio (Cooledit) and photo (photoshop) editing, so i don't want a dog...i want a ton of storage for my music collection, which is just about at 250GB and growing (hence the RAID comment). graphics aren't a real concern; i don't need a big flashy card.

right now i've got the desktop connected to my peripherals (wireless access point, scanner, printer, external drives) and it's basically used for email/above-mentioned audio/photo editing/some xls/doc type stuff. the laptop i'm typing on now is on the wireless network and is downstairs, so is used for casual browsing etc. the desktop is where i've got my connection to DC++ and where i do my cd ripping/encoding. being quiet isn't a huge consideration, but it'd be nice to not hear fans whirring away all the time (my external plextor cd burner is the worst culprit in this regard right now).

hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions.

 

[H8R]

How bout:

Proc: Athlon 64 3000 "Winchester" Socket 939

MOBO: ASUS A8N-SLI
Supported CPU: Socket 939 for AMD Athlon 64FX/Athlon 64
Chipset: NVIDIA nForce4 SLI
FSB: 2000 MT/s, 1600MT/s
RAM: 4x 184-pin DIMM for Dual-Channel DDR 400/333/266 (Max. 4GB)
IDE: 1x Ultra ATA 133 up to 2 Devices, support RAID 0/1/0+1/JBOD
Slots: 2x PCI-E x16, 2x PCI-E x1, 3x PCI
Ports: 2x PS/2, 1x LPT, Coaxial/Optical S/PDIF out, 10x USB2.0(Rear 4), 2x IEEE1394(Rear 1), 1x LAN, Audio Ports
Onboard Audio: Realtek ALC850, 8-channel CODEC
Onboard LAN: Gigabit Ethernet
Onboard SATA/RAID: 4x SATA2,RAID 0/1/0+1/JBOD

2X Western Digital 250GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive

Kingston ValueRAM Dual Channel Kit 184 Pin 1G(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200

Info-Tek ATI RADEON X600 XT Video Card

ANTEC SLK3700-BQE Black Mid-Tower Case with 350W Power Supply

Thermalright XP-90C All Copper Heatsink



You can hook all this up for about 1k plus shipping.

 

[H8R]

BTW the above will scream.

Much of that can be trimmed down.

 

[narlus]

ok, now since i have no idea how to put tab A into slot B, who's gonna assemble, load software, test and send it to me? like i said, i will definitely compensate who wants to take this on. let's talk!

 

[H8R]

I may be up for it. You're on the east coast, where?

A few tips either way:

Don't worry about RAID unless you need redundancy and transfer speed. Like a server. Just add more SATA drives to increase your storage.

Building a comp yourself is really easy. If the mobo and proc are correct, everything else is kinda no-brainer. A proc and the socket it installs in are matched by type, and they are easy to put together.

The case I listed above will hold like four hard drives (including your existing ones) It's very quiet too.

Firewire can come stright off a good mobo. One less card.

Get the best and most recent MOBO and proc you can afford. This will allow you the longest window of time for future upgrades. The ASUS A8N-SLI is a fine board, and an Athlon 64 is good for the newer 64 bit OS's that are on the horizon.

I'll look at what I have ahead here and see if I am a candidate for building.

When you want this done?

 

[Pau11y]

Hehehe...kinda spam-ish.
I've got a silly lill box for you. It's in one of those cases w/ casters and about 30" tall, 20" deep, and 14" wide. Main feature is RAID 5 w/ Promise Supertrak & 128mb of cache using 6x80 gigger 7200 rpm Maxtors. Unformatted space is 450GB w/ 80GB parity. Onboard 10/100 and U160 LSI SCSI controler (Serverworks ServerSet III chipset) No AGP, but has a 128mb PCI ATI Radeon 7800. 1024mb of ECC ram. Processors are dual PIII 1ghz 133mhz, not the quickest, but very stable & w/ copper based heat sinks. It has 5 5.25 slots, plus an additional 8 in the lower half. OS is installed on a 9.1 U160 HDD. There's a second 9.1 U160 which isn't used so you could have an OS backup drive using Ghost. Beside the 450 GB in RAID 5, there's also another 6 80 GB Maxtor HDDs, of which any 2 can be cabled up and run along w/ the optical drives (52x cdrw and Kenwood 72x CD-Rom) on the onboard IDE controller with a quick recabling. I think this board has like 6 PCI slots, 2 of them 64 bit. 3 are taken up by vid, RAID and sound. You wanted storage… I’ll even leave my 270 GB of mp3s on the 450 GB for you as a bonus.
Want to make an offer?

Edit: I almost forgot. It uses a 300w AT psu to drive the RAID HDDs, and a 450w ATX for everything else. It's capable of holding 10+ case fans to keep everything kewl.

That Dell has the same 6x80 GB RAID 5 setup. I'm going to fire up Cluster service on Win2K Advanced Server soon for redundancy.

 

[Echo]

I always figured you for a Mac guy.

 

[stevew]

It sounds like you should contact syadasti. In the PC/Apple pissing contests I always remembered him to be a PC guy. He is on the East coast to isn't he?

 

[binary visions]

Hey Narlus... I'm a little cramped for time to be researching components to pick you out a build, but I'm not too far from you (you're right near/in Boston, right?) so if the 's help you out picking your stuff, I'm sure we could work something out with the assembly/installation... There are a few options I could think of for how to do it to save everyone travel time and hassle.

PM me if you are interested. Would be happy to answer tech questions, too.

 

[narlus]

pau11y, i cringe to think of the shipping charges for that beast.

 

[MMike]

Take a box, fill it with extra lumpy oatmeal, pudding, a magic marker, 3 shoe-laces,and a 6 inch strip of duct tape. Staple a live mouse to it and voila!

...but I don't know much about computers.

 

[binary visions]

Take a box, fill it with extra lumpy oatmeal, pudding, a magic marker, 3 shoe-laces,and a 6 inch strip of duct tape. Staple a live mouse to it and voila!

...but I don't know much about computers.

You could just buy a P-P-P-Powerbook!

 

[BigMike]

You could just buy a P-P-P-Powerbook!

BWAHAHAHA!!!!





Hey Pau11y, I'll make you an offer......... $200


Thats all I have

 

[SkaredShtles]

Hehehe...kinda spam-ish.
I've got a silly lill box for you.

You need bigger Ultra-160 drives...........

-S.S.-

 

[stinkyboy]

ok you geeks...i want a PC built. i figure that someone who knows what they are doing will get the system i want cheaper than the pre-packaged stuff out there, and have what i want on it. my current PC has this annoying habit of shutting down on itself periodically, and as it was a 2nd hand PC already i think i'm ready to jettison it.

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/72701/wo/RL6Mh5J9b62p3P9SSVI1R682uXR/0.0.11.1.0.6.21.1.3.1.3.0.0.1.0

 

[H8R]

Hey Narlus... I'm a little cramped for time to be researching components to pick you out a build, but I'm not too far from you (you're right near/in Boston, right?) so if the 's help you out picking your stuff, I'm sure we could work something out with the assembly/installation... There are a few options I could think of for how to do it to save everyone travel time and hassle.

PM me if you are interested. Would be happy to answer tech questions, too.

Howz about I spec it, and youz guys build it?

Narlus, how much can you drop on this? I'll spec a mid range machine w/ maximum storage based on a dollar figure.

 

[binary visions]

Howz about I spec it, and youz guys build it?

Narlus, how much can you drop on this? I'll spec a mid range machine w/ maximum storage based on a dollar figure.

Actually, we've been discussing this in PMs based on the spec you listed above, which I told him I approved of

More of an Intel guy myself but Athlon is slightly cheaper and for this purpose won't make a difference in performance.

The only major change to your spec that I suggested was a 80gb main drive and a 400gb "media" drive. The smaller main drive gives improved access time, and an easy drive to wipe out and re-install without having to move a lot of files around. Since he indicated that he probably wasn't going with a RAID setup, that seemed like a good option.

 

[Pau11y]

pau11y, i cringe to think of the shipping charges for that beast.

FWAHAHA... When I got that case, it was 80#s dry. With all those HDDs in there... hum... I think it'd be like boxing me up and throwing myself in the mail...lol!

You need bigger Ultra-160 drives

They were too expensive back then which was why I went w/ IDE. Plus, I can't afford a U160 RAID 5 card no matter how inexpensive the HDDs are. That SuperTrak was only $325.00 or so + $25.00 for a stick of 128mb SDRAM. The cables were kinda expensive tho $11.00 ea/ for 36" rounds (no data corruption w/ it being that long - has some sort of metalic weaving covering it).

 

[SkaredShtles]

FWAHAHA... When I got that case, it was 80#s dry. With all those HDDs in there... hum... I think it'd be like boxing me up and throwing myself in the mail...lol!


They were too expensive back then which was why I went w/ IDE. Plus, I can't afford a U160 RAID 5 card no matter how inexpensive the HDDs are. That SuperTrak was only $325.00 or so + $25.00 for a stick of 128mb SDRAM. The cables were kinda expensive tho $11.00 ea/ for 36" rounds (no data corruption w/ it being that long - has some sort of metalic weaving covering it).

The big ones are still expensive. I have a little gateway server as my "desktop" with a dual U160 SCSI controller. I have 6 disks in it right now. An 18GB, 4-9GB, and a 36GB. I will start slowly replacing the 9s with 36s as I get 'em.

Nice thing about SCSI is that I can attach 16 devices to each channel. (Not that I'd ever have the money or power to attach that many)

-S.S.-

 

[Pau11y]

Actually, we've been discussing this in PMs based on the spec you listed above, which I told him I approved of

More of an Intel guy myself but Athlon is slightly cheaper and for this purpose won't make a difference in performance.

The only major change to your spec that I suggested was a 80gb main drive and a 400gb "media" drive.

Just a heads up for ya. Most vid and audio proggies are multi-threaded. So, if you spec a lower level processor, say a 2.8 ghz, but a board that can handle 2 physical processors (HT or not, no big - look at I7505 MoBos), he'll see some speed benefits. 2 physical processors = 2 memory bus, unlike HT processors where the memory bandwidth is 1/2 by sharing of the memory bus by 2 cores on one proc.

And I totally agree w/ BV on splitting the OS HDD w/ the media HDD. And, I would maybe even consider a SCSI OS HDD w/ the media drive using SATA or ATA133.

 

[DHS]

http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?t=115051

got mine all built up. it rocks!

 

[Pau11y]

The big ones are still expensive. I have a little gateway server as my "desktop" with a dual U160 SCSI controller. I have 6 disks in it right now. An 18GB, 4-9GB, and a 36GB. I will start slowly replacing the 9s with 36s as I get 'em.

Nice thing about SCSI is that I can attach 16 devices to each channel. (Not that I'd ever have the money or power to attach that many)

-S.S.-

Yeah, but you're a full blown geek. I just play in that sandbox, but can just as easily step out of it....hehehe (no I don't eat cat cookies I find in there)

 

[H8R]

The only major change to your spec that I suggested was a 80gb main drive and a 400gb "media" drive. The smaller main drive gives improved access time, and an easy drive to wipe out and re-install without having to move a lot of files around. Since he indicated that he probably wasn't going with a RAID setup, that seemed like a good option.

I concur, heartily.

As far as the rest of that spec goes, I can tweak it a bit further. That was a rough draft.

That case is a good contender, I have a smaller version of it, and it's very quiet, and most importantly, very cool. Runs at least 10-15 degrees cooler than most other cases I've tried. Only drawback is no sound in front...hmm...

I'll dive deeper...

 

[Pau11y]

I concur, heartily.

As far as the rest of that spec goes, I can tweak it a bit further. That was a rough draft.

That case is a good contender, I have a smaller version of it, and it's very quiet, and most importantly, very cool. Runs at least 10-15 degrees cooler than most other cases I've tried. Only drawback is no sound in front...hmm...

I'll dive deeper...

Lack of bezel outputs can be remedied w/ a Dremel tool and epoxy

 

[BigMike]

Lack of bezel outputs can be remedied w/ a Dremel tool and epoxy

How very very true!

 

[BigMike]

Screw this "lets build it" crap, and just spend 14Gs and get one of These!

 

[H8R]

Lack of bezel outputs can be remedied w/ a Dremel tool and epoxy

Yes, but Narlus deserves a clean look. Maybe I'll just stab a hole w/ a soldering iron?

 

[DHS]

Screw this "lets build it" crap, and just spend 14Gs and get one of These!

yea thats my next computer, just maybe only 4gigs of ram and 1 30inch screen

 

[BigMike]

yea thats my next computer, just maybe only 4gigs of ram and 1 30inch screen

They are just insane, but I want one SO bad!

I guess I *could* get by with only 4 gigs of ram.........

 

[Pau11y]

Yes, but Narlus deserves a clean look. Maybe I'll just stab a hole w/ a soldering iron?

Nah, then it'll look like melted plastic. Dremel is a wonderful tool. If you build your epoxy up on the inside of the bezel, then it'll be clean on the outside. Plus audio fitting can be easily had from Radio Hack for nofin and you can get 'em in gold Bling Bling...lol!

 

[hans2]

I just saw a 200 GB Seagate Serial ATA drive for $80 on Amazon. I vaguely remember seeing it as low as $50 on some deal site. Both prices are great. Seagate rebates are reliable enough as long as you are careful and keep copies.

Asus motherboards have done me well but they're a little more expensive than others. Tomshardware.com has reviews for dozens of motherboards for every platform.

I just picked up an NEC 3520A DVD burner for $50 from the egg. It burns dual layer, great reviews, firmware hacks available.

 

[narlus]

Screw this "lets build it" crap, and just spend 14Gs and get one of These!

yeah, it might be $14K but free shipping!

 

[H8R]

Nah, then it'll look like melted plastic. Dremel is a wonderful tool. If you build your epoxy up on the inside of the bezel, then it'll be clean on the outside. Plus audio fitting can be easily had from Radio Hack for nofin and you can get 'em in gold Bling Bling...lol!

I was kidding. But you knew that.




Here is THE case.
Antec 400w ATX 2.0 power supply included. Firewire, USB 2.0 and sound ports out the front. 95mm proc fan port and 80mm card fan port. 120mm three speed fan in back w/ a high airflow grill.

Sweet.

Narlus, what do you think?