Building a dual core box for less than $500

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: hurtstotalktoyou
1) What's wrong with the Western Digital Caviar SE?

WD's tend to be louder and hotter than Seagates. And I prefer a 5-year warranty. Performance differences are going to be pretty marginal in this bracket and for this type of usage.

2) What's wrong with the Lite-on burner?

Nothing, I just grabbed the NEC without looking. It's kind of the standby burner these days. Lite-On's are fine if it saves a few dollars.

3) Don't you think an X2 w/ 512MB would out-perform an A64 w/ 1GB?

Unless your Dad is single-task encoding all day, absolutely not. You don't really notice when all of your processes are a fraction of a millisecond slower. But you sure as hell notice when you have to swap out because you're out of RAM.

Also, the configuration you gave only leaves room for a $27 case, which as far as I know would not get me anything better than the $22 Coolmax I had initially picked out.

Counting $13 for shipping, I guess? Yeah, I didn't account for that. You can live with the Coolmax I guess.

$500 is a tough price point for a machine that will use "real" applications (as opposed to just web/email/office). There's no way to put something together without significant compromises somewhere. In my experience with these kind of builds, the "feel" of the machine (relatively quiet, plenty of RAM to avoid swapping, aesthetics) ends up meaning more than raw CPU power.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: Trinitron
You can spend the extra money on a copy of Windows XP Pro which is the only OS you should be using from MS.

Oh, do go on... I can't wait to hear why the OP's dad needs to spend another $60 on top the $90 he's already spending for an OS.

 

[Blain]

Exactly how does dad use a PC now?
What applications does he work with?
If he's not used to anything yet... get him on a Linux distro.

 

[HannibalX]

Originally posted by: cleverhandle

Originally posted by: Trinitron
You can spend the extra money on a copy of Windows XP Pro which is the only OS you should be using from MS.

Oh, do go on... I can't wait to hear why the OP's dad needs to spend another $60 on top the $90 he's already spending for an OS.

Networking.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: Trinitron
Networking.

You mean for the Windows domain support he's going to be using at home? Do you have any clue what you're talking about?

 

[HannibalX]

Does it make you feel like a man when you try to put people down? LOL.

You never know when the machine may need to attach to a domain. Better safe than sorry IMO. Sure he can still hit machines in a domain even if he isn't connected but who knows, there may come a time when he wants that connectivity.

 

[hurtstotalktoyou]

Okay, just to clear something up...

While I do know significantly more than him when it comes to PCs, my Dad is not tech-challenged. He knows his way around Windows, and, if I had to guess, uses his PC about an hour each day--give or take, of course. He's not going to come crying to me every time a program freezes.

He uses Cool Edit Pro for audio editing, MS Office and WP Suite 8 for word processing and such, and Netscape for web browsing. He runs regular malware sweeps through Ad-aware, Spybot S&D and MS Anti-spyware beta (or whatever it's called nowadays). He has Norton, but I'd like him to ditch that ASAP. I forget what he uses for CD burning... Easy CD Creator, I think. When he finally gets rid of that nightmarish PII, I'd like to turn him on to OpenOffice.org, TMPGEnc Plus & DVD Author, DVDShrink, DVD Decrypter, DMC 10, EAC, CD Wave, WinRAR and WinAmp 5.09.

 

[spike spiegal]

You never know when the machine may need to attach to a domain.

...Or needs gigabit ethernet, or needs to mount his PC in a rack due to space requirements.

XP Pro is a waste of money over XP home for home users not remotely attaching to a Windows 2000 Terminal Server.

I agree with the single core A64, a gig of RAM, and Asus over Biostar.

 

[GrammatonJP]

Wanna save 89.99 ? want a free XP Pro ? its not XP Home... but still... original from Microsoft, never used. PM Me... I never opened it.. I have corp edition so I never used the one I bought...

 

[razor2025]

I think OP needs to realize that RAM > CPU based on what he's going to be using. Sure, X2 is nice, but the usage projected doesn't even come close to requiring such hardware.

Here's what you should do. Follow Trinitron's post. Change the X2 to cheapest Socket 939 you can get. It's probably 3000+. That's more than enough of a CPU to run anything your dad may run in a year or two at least. You don't need premium motherboard if you're not overclocking. Overclocking family computer is just wishing for problems later. That Asus Vintage is a good combo for $100. Just add another 80mm fan for the front intake, but the lack of cooling for HDD might give me some concern. Use the savings from CPU to buy at least 1GB. It looks like your dad will definitely benefit from the 1 GB more so than the X2. Remember XP's memory footprint is already ~200-300mb, with only 512, you can only spare 100-200mb for all his apps. XP Pro is overkill for most pople, so XP Home is more than enough.

On last note, make sure you create a separate user accuont from the admin account. On daily usage, your dad should be using the regular account instead of the admin account. He only needs admin account if he's installing programs he trusts. This setup will save you TONS of headache by preventing crap from being installed on the machines.