Help: Best system ever for college student

[ACWingit]

Looking for advice.
I'm building a system for my son to take to college. Here's what my requirements are. Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Keep in mind: The kid is clueless when it comes to maintenance and hardware. He plays lots of games and downloads movies and music but he's not likely to ever open the box or do any modifications to the system. His priorities are:

1. DVD burner
2. Play awesome video games
3. Store lots of movies and music
4. Work perfectly and never give him any problems.

My priorities are:

1. Stablility (want to minimize the "MOM! The computer is broken" phone calls)
2. Longevity (good enough system that I don't have to replace it in a couple of years. i.e. let him buy his own computer next time!)
3. Automatic backup of important files ("automatic" is the key here as he'll never remember to do it manually)
4. Stability (I gotta say this again!!!!!)
5. Ability to have the monitor double as a TV (so that he doesn't have to have a TV and a monitor too).
5. DVD burner
6. Great video for games
7. Portability (not sure how important this is. Maybe he'll do LAN parties??? Maybe he'll bring the computer home on weekends for mom to fix when he breaks it?)
7. Anticipation of new technology (i.e. lots of usb, firewire? bluetooth? whatever else you think might be coming within the next few years that he'll desperately have to have. In other words this ties into item 2 (longevity)).

I posted this on the motherboard forum thinking that I should start with the right motherboard and then build the rest on to it.

Specific questions I have include:

Where can I learn more about current technology? I've been reading the mobo reviews and have to admit that I don't understand most of the terms any more - the technology has changed so much over the past few years. Is there an "idiots guide to understanding computers"? Which bus speeds are really important? What's SATA mean to me? Do I care? What's the latest on the Intel vs AMD issue? Is one "better" than the other? Does it matter? Does processor speed mean anything any more? Which type of RAM is the "right" one to use right now?

To RAID or not to RAID? Shoud I use RAID to mirror drives in order to get the automatic backup? And do they really do the backup automatically? Is there any manual intervention to get the mirror created (on at least a daily basis)? Or should I just use XP's backup software and schedule it to run? If I use RAID, where do I learn about how to do it? There seem to be different kinds (i.e. 0, 1, whatever). Anyone know a good site to read up on this?

How in the world do you get stability? I have 3 computers at home and have had continuous problems with disk drive failures (yes I have them all on UPS's), memory failures, lockups, crashes, blue screens of death etc. I would dearly love to go for a few weeks without some sort of failure! :disgust: What am I doing wrong? And how can I prevent this (HAH!) on my son's computer.

My thanks in advance for your opinions. I have enjoyed reading all the posts in these forums - it's fascinating!

 

[wicktron]

Learn more about technology here at your friendly Anandtech forums. Browse, read, see what's going on. Observe the scene and be one with it. Watch TechTV or something. Those guys are very newbie friendly and answer questions dealing with novice users.

Regarding Intel vs AMD, it comes down to software used, price, and preference. Take a look at the benchmarks across all the review sites. Find out what software your son will be using and pick the right CPU/motherboard/RAM combo from that. If anything, use DDR RAM!

SATA is Serial ATA. It is the new storage interface that is designed to replace current PATA (Parallel) ATA. It will be faster, and the cables are much smaller. RAID is really not that important in a gaming system. RAID comes into play when HUGE files are transferred between drives, not when doing day-to-day tasks. Also, if one of the drives were to fail in the common RAID0 array, all the data across the drives would be lost.

Your last question regarding stability. 95% of it deals with the thing that's between the monitor and the chair. That's right, the user. If the computer user is careful and meticulous, there should be no problems with viruses and the sort. There are softwares for a lot of this sort (e.g: antivirus, firewall), but are really not that necessary if the user knows exactly what they're doing.

Hope this helps!

 

[ACWingit]

Learn more about technology here at your friendly Anandtech forums. Browse, read, see what's going on. Observe the scene and be one with it. Watch TechTV or something. Those guys are very newbie friendly and answer questions dealing with novice users.

--> I have been reading all sorts of stuff on this site but I haven't found much that gives overview information. Much of the stuff is very technical and if you don't already know the terminology it's hard to follow. So, rather than continuously posting stupid questions I was wondering if people had some sites / articles to recommend which I could get up to date on the current technology so that I would understand better what I was reading. I'll have to find out if I have TechTV. That sounds interesting.

Regarding Intel vs AMD, it comes down to software used, price, and preference. Take a look at the benchmarks across all the review sites. Find out what software your son will be using and pick the right CPU/motherboard/RAM combo from that. If anything, use DDR RAM!

--> yes benchmarks would be good to read about. Is there a good way to find them on this site? I tried searching and came up with nothing. I could use google but wondered if some of you know some reputable sites for this kind of info. And there's no really good way to finding out which software he'll be using. It will depend on the classes he takes. As far as games go, they change rather rapidly so that's a bit difficult to predict as well.

SATA is Serial ATA. It is the new storage interface that is designed to replace current PATA (Parallel) ATA. It will be faster, and the cables are much smaller. RAID is really not that important in a gaming system. RAID comes into play when HUGE files are transferred between drives, not when doing day-to-day tasks. Also, if one of the drives were to fail in the common RAID0 array, all the data across the drives would be lost.

-->I was thinking of using the RAID for mirroring. In that configuration, if a drive fails, the other one still has all the data. The advantage to mirroring of course, is that there's no "downtime" when a drive fails. But I don't know whether it's overkill to put that in a simple single user system when xp has schedulable backup capability.

Your last question regarding stability. 95% of it deals with the thing that's between the monitor and the chair. That's right, the user. If the computer user is careful and meticulous, there should be no problems with viruses and the sort. There are softwares for a lot of this sort (e.g: antivirus, firewall), but are really not that necessary if the user knows exactly what they're doing.

-->I somewhat disagree with this. I have been pretty careful with my systems. I have norton system works and run virus scan every night. Both incoming and outgoing email are scanned. I have scan disk and defrag running on a scheduled basis. I have a router which acts as a hardware firewall. I will admit I do not have software firewall. I also have each of my computers on it's own UPS (surge suppressed and battery backed up). I do not use Kaza or any similar programs. I play video games and I do occasionally download utilities off the web.

In the recent few months i have had memory fail in one computer and then a couple weeks later the hard drive died. My "computer repair guy" ran into yet another memory failure when trying to replace the drive (the memory that was just replaced).

Prior to that I had another hard drive failure promptly followed by a mother board failure on a different computer.

While this was going on, another computer suddenly freaked out - lost internet connect, lost WINSOCK, can't find WORDPAD etc. Had to reinstall Win98. This solved the WINSOCK problem but WORDPAD is still missing and now my add/remove programs list is complete out of sych with what is actually on the machine so I have programs listed as installed which aren't there and programs which are there but I can't uninstall them. Plus all my email disappeared and had to be restored from backup. I figured this sounded like a virus so I ran a virus scan from 3 different companies (norton, mcaffee and panda). None of them found anything at all.

All of this has happened within the last few months (and I left alot out). While I'll admit that I'm not the perfect PC user I really don't think I can say that 95% of this is my fault.

Hope this helps!

-->Well....yes and no....

 

[Vette73]

I have a Abit NF7-S and a athlon 1700+ running at 2000+ level and it is 100% stable and will do everythin gyou need and some.

 

[wicktron]

Anandtech.com; Check out the CPU/Motherboard tabs up top. Read reviews, soak it in. If not, keep asking questions here.

RAID1 is nice, but as you said, it's overkill. Data backup is the best way to prevent untimely drive crashes. The reason I think RAID1 is overkill is because if you want 120GB of drive space, you would need two 120GB drives just to be able to have 120GB. I'd much rather have the extra 120GB.

High quality parts will help prevent memory and hard drive failures. It's usually better to spend the extra coin first for peace of mind. Let the warranties and customer service take over from there. An updated operating system would probably help. Looks like you use Win98, and while it was great at its time, the stability of the NT platform (Win2k, WinXP) is FAR superior to that of the 9x platform.

 

[beatle]

Antivirus software is important in a college environment, especially when using disks (floppy, zip, usb) to take projects to different places. You never know how "dirty" the computer you're putting your disk into is until you find out that you have a virus. This is how I've gotten my viruses. I never ran antivirus software until I was hit by a virus brought in via floppy from a lab on campus.

Grisoft AVG works great, it's free, and doesn't take much many resources.

I would recommend RAID 1 as a solution if you don't mind paying double for your storage. I was awful with backups too, despite having a zip drive.

An alternative is to get a system from Dell, since they're sometimes cheaper than what you can build yourself, and while your son is @ college, he can call them, not you in the middle of the night asking why his monitor suddenly went blank.

I could never go more than 2 years without upgrading my PC, so thinking a big expenditure will hold him over that much longer might not work out as expected. Besides, upgrading was the best way for me to learn about computers.

EDIT: Just saw that you run 98. After the user (seems you're taking care of your PCs well) the OS is the next culprit, IMO. Win2k or WinXP should provide a stable enough platform - they have both been nearly bulletproof for me.

 

[ACWingit]

Marlin: What do you mean by the phrase "running at 2000+"? Are you talking about overclocking?

Wix: I'll check out the reviews. Thanks. And I agree with what you said about RAID.
As far as quality parts goes, I thought I had done that. I've had an IBM drive die and a Western Dig. The mobo that died was an ABIT (but I can't remember the model number). I can't recall about the memory - perhaps Kingston or Muskin. I do not buy "unnamed" parts. Most of it has been replaced under warranty but the fact is, it still all died. I'm beginning to think my house is possessed. :frown:

Re: Virus software - you can be sure he's not leaving the house without virus software. I already bought him his very own copy of norton system works (which I find to be more stable than McAfee). I'll set up the virus scan schedule (and automatic live update download) before he leaves along with the defrag and scan. Chances are he'll never mess with the settings so it should run every night.

That actually brings to mind firewall software. He won't have a router so I should probably put on a firewall. Not sure what to put on tho. I need one that's easy to use by the cluelessly uninformed.

Re: the OS.
The system with the drive failure (and the memory failures) was running XP . The only reason the others (both running 98) aren't XP is because it isn't worth spending the $$ for XP on them. It infuriates me that I have to spend $100+ per computer to upgrade them when they probably aren't even worth that much. :disgust: So they still have win 98 (which I dislike). Yes the system with the WINSOCK prob is win 98 but I'm stuck with it.

Re: DELL - yes I've considered that option. They are rather pricey. I can get a better system for the same money if I build it myself. You've got a very good point tho. Maybe the customer support would be worth the extra $$. I'll have to think about it.

 

[Link19]

I think you would prevent a lot of your system lockups if you ran Windows 2000 or Windows XP as the NT based OS platform is much more stable as wixt0r and beatle said.

As for the computer your going to build for your son to take to college, I would reccomend:

*Motherboard with Intel 875P chipset: Asus, Abit, and Gigabyte are all very reliable brand motherboards
*Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz CPU with 800 MHz FSB speed
*ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Video Card w/256 MB of memory
*2 512MB DDR SDRAM PC3200 DIMMs of system RAM in dual channel configuration for a total of 1 GB of system RAM
*Pioneer DVD-R/RW DVR-A05 DVD burner drive
*2 250 GB hard drives with 8MB cache each and 7200 RPM speed
*High quality sound card and sound system
*19 inch or bigger flat screen monitor with very high dots per inch and a very high resolution capability
*Operating System: Windows XP Professional

As for the size of the hard drives, those are the largest their is right now. That should be plenty to store lots of music and movies. You can add more hard drives if you want with a IDE controller card that plugs into a PCI slot on the motherboard or if the motherboard comes with IDE RAID, it will have the extra IDE controllers integrated on the motherboard. To give you an idea on how much hard drive space you will need to store music and movies: Each movie file downloaded is usually 600-800 MB in size when it is in DivX or AVI format. Each music file downloaded in MP3 format is usually 2-6 MB in size. If you want to be able to burn DVDs that will work in a standard DVD player, you will need to convert the AVI or DivX file into MPEG 2 format and then burn it onto the DVD as a video disc format. You can do this using certain DVD burning programs.

Hope this gives you some help

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: ACWingit
Marlin: What do you mean by the phrase "running at 2000+"? Are you talking about overclocking?

Wix: I'll check out the reviews. Thanks. And I agree with what you said about RAID.
As far as quality parts goes, I thought I had done that. I've had an IBM drive die and a Western Dig. The mobo that died was an ABIT (but I can't remember the model number). I can't recall about the memory - perhaps Kingston or Muskin. I do not buy "unnamed" parts. Most of it has been replaced under warranty but the fact is, it still all died. I'm beginning to think my house is possessed. :frown:

Re: Virus software - you can be sure he's not leaving the house without virus software. I already bought him his very own copy of norton system works (which I find to be more stable than McAfee). I'll set up the virus scan schedule (and automatic live update download) before he leaves along with the defrag and scan. Chances are he'll never mess with the settings so it should run every night.

That actually brings to mind firewall software. He won't have a router so I should probably put on a firewall. Not sure what to put on tho. I need one that's easy to use by the cluelessly uninformed.

Re: the OS.
The system with the drive failure (and the memory failures) was running XP . The only reason the others (both running 98) aren't XP is because it isn't worth spending the $$ for XP on them. It infuriates me that I have to spend $100+ per computer to upgrade them when they probably aren't even worth that much. :disgust: So they still have win 98 (which I dislike). Yes the system with the WINSOCK prob is win 98 but I'm stuck with it.

Re: DELL - yes I've considered that option. They are rather pricey. I can get a better system for the same money if I build it myself. You've got a very good point tho. Maybe the customer support would be worth the extra $$. I'll have to think about it.

Yea a Athlon 1700+ will run at 166Mhz FSB EASY. it will run cool and have no problems. I know this as I am running my 1700+ at 2600+ - 2700+ levels right now and the temp is under 50 and it is 100% stable. So 2000+ levels is a walk in the park for it. Just get some PC3200 ram to go with it. I am running cheap Geil and it is stable and fast.

Go to newegg.com and you can get a Athlon XP 1700+ for less than $45 shipped. Addd that to a nForce2 board with the CP-T southbridge and you will have a great system that is stable and has onboard sound, ethernet, Firewire, and support for up to a Athlon 3200+ if not higher.


And Windows XP I think has a basic built in forewall. Just get Norton Antivirus and that should keep the computer clean.

 

[pspada]

"Windows XP has a built in firewall". And Microsloth is so well know for it's security? If you put your trust in Windows XP to firewall your machine, you will be sorely disappointed. Preferably you want a hardware device like one of these firewall router devices, or if cost is an issue, try Zonealarm, which I believe is free.

I've seen numerous clients with the same types of problems you are having with your home machines. usually there are parasites and spyware causing many of the problems, but there can be many other issues too. You are welcome to PM me with specific issues and I'll see what I can do to help.

There's no doubt that AMD will provide a more cost effective machine, and it should provide all of the utility that it appears he requires. Why a DVD burner instead of a CD-RW? As a college student he's going to be constantly short of money, and DVD discs cost quite a bit. Whereas you can give him 100 pack of CD-Rs for 10-20 bucks or less with a coupon or sale. Don't skimp on the video card as he wants to play "awesome" games, and get a big hard drive, 120 minimum, or perhaps even a 200 if there is a deal to be had, and perhaps a retail boxed one with a 3 year warrenty is worth the extra bux?

Raid is problematic as a backup. It certainly does not help in the case of catastrophic failure of the machine. Perhaps a flash usb drive to copy important files to, as the coolness factor might make him do the backups? Worse, in a college enviroment, the machine is likely to get virii and parasites and other baddies, just from sharing music if nothing else. Maybe the best idea is a 2nd hard drive that is connected, but disabled in the bios. Once a week he could enable it, and ghost his entire drive to this one, and then disable it again. Then if the main drive does dead, he can just enable the backup drive and boot from it until the main one can be replaced and the data ghosted back? Not completely painless, but it should be quick and effective.

I would not suggest overclocking for this machine. After all, you indicated that Stability is a big factor. Why induce possible problems, or possibly shorten the life of the machine. And when you consider that you can get a good motherboard and retail barton 2500+ for around $200, it does not make alot of sense for the paltry few dollars in savings.