Kit This

Allen M. · Post by **Allen M.** » Sun Nov 12, 2000 1:09 pm

This time of the year is often accompanied by thoughts of replacing the old computer system with a new one.

I wonder if anyone else out there, shy of Tony, Scott, Chuck, and myself, Scott and have considered actually building one. Big $$$ can be saved by careful selection of new, and reuse of parts from your already again PC.

Maybe if there is interest, someone could hold a cyber-clinic on just that. Just a passing thought.

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Allen, Home: http://www.ury2k.com/pulse mirror: http://home.ici.net/~uechi/

Post by **gmattson** » Sun Nov 12, 2000 2:39 pm

I'd be surprised if anyone could beat the deal Susan found for me on Homeshopping Network last month!

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GEM

Allen M. · Post by **Allen M.** » Sun Nov 12, 2000 3:01 pm

I'm all ears, rather eyes, George....

Please, quench my curiosity.

Valkenar · Post by **Valkenar** » Wed Nov 15, 2000 8:24 pm

You can get a HP Pavilion for around $700, but out of the 7 that I've known people to buy, not one of them has worked without some serious error (bad memory in one, consistant winit crash leading to necesarry reformat in others) and persistant crashes in excess of what I consider reasonable.

A lot of deals can be had by purchasing a Intel Celeron chip, but they're rarely worth the price you pay in reliability. I was thinking of buying a new computer recently, and was considering a k-6 Athlon, which goes very cheaply. Does anyone know how the AMD processors actually fare in terms of correct behavior under windows? I know they actually tend to be faster than Intel p3s as well as being cheaper, so if they're reliable that would be excellent.

I checked around a week ago, and put together a very nice system (sans monitor) for about $900, by pricing various places online for independant parts.

Allen M. · Post by **Allen M.** » Wed Nov 15, 2000 10:28 pm

Fly With the Thunderbird

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

You can get a HP Pavilion for around $700, but out of the 7 that I've known people to buy, not one of them has worked without some serious error (bad memory in one, consistant winit crash leading to necesarry reformat in others) and persistant crashes in excess of what I consider reasonable.

That’s a surprise! HP is a good name, but I’ve seen the same thing happen with all major PC brands at one time or another. My favorite commercial PCs are DELL and Gateway.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

A lot of deals can be had by purchasing a Intel Celeron chip, but they're rarely worth the price you pay in reliability.

I am not a fan [no pun] of Celerons. I have always considered them crippled Pentiums, and when they first came out there were problems with them.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

I was thinking of buying a new computer recently, and was considering a k-6 Athlon … know how the AMD processors actually fare in terms of correct behavior under windows? I know they actually tend to be faster than Intel p3s … so if they're reliable that would be excellent.

Way to go. I build about one pc a year for myself, and recently built an AMD pc. It runs circles around the fastest Pentium; it screams! I selected the Thunderbird 1.1 GHz chip plus an ABIT RAID motherboard. Last year it was a P-III, next year it could be a P-IV. But right now, and for the foreseeable future AMD’s the chip for this speed demon. Clock tick vs. Clock tick, AMD has always been faster, and at a better price.

Check out http://www.pcsforeveryone.com
They are reputable, prices are GOOD, and they have a complete selection of whatever your heart desires.

Valkenar · Post by **Valkenar** » Fri Nov 17, 2000 4:21 am

Re: HP. HP is a good name? I usually hear it referred to as Hewlet Crapard. But I don't really much evidence otherwise (even anecdotal)
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>
I build about one pc a year for myself
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Heh, I wish I had enough money to buy a new computer with reasonable frequency. I'm using what was orignally a p1 200 that I built 3 years ago. I've thrown in a couple extra things cheap (actually I've replaced almost everything now I guess) but it's still behind (celeron 330, 64mb ram/3gb hd)

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

recently built an AMD pc. It runs circles around the fastest Pentium;

Yeah, I knew AMD was faster, but I wasn't sure about how fully I could trust it's compatability. Specifically, I'm trying to write an MMORG (First person graphics engine basically, if you didn't know) and I need for the multimedia CPU extensions to be A> reliable B> cross-platform (in so far as Intel and AMD are different platforms)

[This message has been edited by Valkenar (edited November 16, 2000).]

Tony-San · Post by **Tony-San** » Fri Nov 17, 2000 4:34 am

I had so many problems with a Pavilion that they gave me at 95% refund after 6 months of use! That machine was the biggest piece of crap in the world! Well, next to my first home made PC. Allen, get a new machine with 3 year onsite maintenance and you'll be happy as a bug in a rug!

Allen M. · Post by **Allen M.** » Fri Nov 17, 2000 7:58 am

Being PC about PC

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

Re: HP. HP is a good name? I usually hear it referred to as Hewlet Crapard. But I don't really much evidence otherwise (even anecdotal)

They may have gained a lousy reputation in the PC industry, but they make the best and most sophisticated electronic test equipment in the world, alongside Tektronix. At least they did when I was an electronic engineer some 30 years ago.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

Heh, I wish I had enough money to buy a new computer with reasonable frequency.

I write free-lance software for a living, and I often have to push the envelope, not an option.

Besides, building a PC is inexpensive, esp when you can recycle parts from the older monster. For $600 or less, you can build a real bad-ass machine.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

Yeah, I knew AMD was faster, but I wasn't sure about how fully I could trust it's compatability. … MMORG … multimedia …cross-platform (in so far as Intel and AMD are different platforms)

Here comes some compatibility empirical results, a little serendipity, from current experience… Had a lot of problems with the new AMD system. Turns out these chips gobble more current than the 300 watt power supplies can deliver – to everyone’s surprise. Not the chip, nor the mother board, rather they need a minimum of a 350 watt supply.

My Intel Coppermine (733 Pentium III), which I gutted-out for this new baby, is mounted on a slide-in tray, identical to the slide-in tray of the case for the AMD. I Slid the Coppermine into the back of the AMD case, plugged in all the connectors and headers, and EVERYTHING runs IDENTICALLY to the AMD without a hitch, even software I’m writing that talks directly to the chip on a low-level basis.

AMD is famous for “gamers” or those who must have the fastest and best for developing and running the latest games. They DEMAND the best in reliability and compatibility.
<hr>
Tony, I bought a DELL 500 when they first came on the market. WAS happy with it – for a while. I just like building things. When I was a kid, my bedroom was full of model ships and planes. When I was a teen, I build transmitters and receivers, then cars, then I was getting ready to build a 32-foot sailboat once.. Now, it’s PCs. I’m often not happy with something unless I put it together and make it work.

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Allen, Home: http://www.ury2k.com/pulse mirror: http://home.ici.net/~uechi/

Valkenar · Post by **Valkenar** » Mon Nov 20, 2000 9:06 pm

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

I write free-lance software for a living, and I often have to push the envelope, not an option.

What do you write? You've mentioned code for you website, which happened to be one of the first Uechi-related sites I visited. I found it to be quite a good one by the way, and the only thing I don't like about it is not being able to open links in a new window by right clicking.

For a long time I thought that I would make a modest living writing shareware games, but that doesn't really seem like a doable option anymore.

Allen M. · Post by **Allen M.** » Tue Nov 21, 2000 3:47 am

Subway Shopper

Hello Valkenar,

By “free-lance” means I have a network of contacts across the U.S. who know who I am and what I can do for them. I get calls all the time, sometimes in the middle of the night, asking what it would take to get me to go to anywhere USA to work on their hot project for a specified length of time; kind of like pinning the tail on the donkey with the donkey being a map of the U.S. Due to family issues, mainly for my aging mom in ill health, I have chosen to stay here for a while [the ancient terminology for my profession is “Subway Shopper.” For the past 7 years, I find contract work primarily writing industrial, medical, and business software. My main bag of tools are Ada, Assembly, ATLAS, C,C++,FORTRAN, and VB on UNIX and NT. Depending on how I write the contract, I either work at home, do a home/on-site split, or do all at the client’s site. Pretty simple, really.

Now, the right-click issue.... Looks like I'll have to do something about that as soon as I can get some spare time.

Panther · Post by **Panther** » Tue Nov 21, 2000 10:09 pm

With the current pricing of PCs, I don't see any reason for anyone to build their own! I've got an MSEE (with honors even), worked in the industry for years, build my own electronic gadgets all the time, and have a close friend who (last year) went through building his own just for the heck of it. He already had a system and only needed to purchase things like the motherboard... but there are so many neat new things on the market. In the end, he had a very nice system with many bells & whistles and had saved himself a whopping $200 over the cost of the system built to his specs by some place like PC connection or Circuit City! $200 dollars AND since he built it himself there is no warranty.

Right now, for ~$1200, you can get an 800 MHz P-III machine with gobs of RAM, loads of harddrive space, a DVD or CD-RW, a decent sound-card, EVEN a monitor and printer! And that's not even the top-o-the-line anymore! If you want something cheaper, you can get a machine just like that, but with a 500MHz "Celeron" for ~$800. If you're willing to spend ~$2k, you can get the 1.1Ghz processor (either P-III or Athlon) machine that has both the DVD and the CD-RW! And here's the best part... Those all come with a full warranty! If you want it for a business use, pay a little extra and get the "in-house" warranty where if it breaks, you just pick up the phone and dial 1-800-PCbroke and they come and either fix it or replace it.

Don't get me wrong... If you want to build your own "for $hits & giggles", by all means have a blast... but if you want to have some technical help, a warranty, and some "insurance", then for what you'll save, it's just not worth it to build your own. The days where a half-decent PC costs $3500+ are long gone.

BTW, MNSHO, stay away from the Rambus technology stuff... it's going nowhere fast. The double-data-rate RAMs are cheaper and actually operate faster than the Rambus. Even Intel has admitted what those of us in the industry knew already... that the Rambus technology can't keep up with the higher data-rate demands.

Good Luck.

Allen M. · Post by **Allen M.** » Wed Nov 22, 2000 8:31 am

Hello Panther

Bear in mind that I’m not contradicting you, Panther. You have a valid post and what you say is oh so true. While building a PC these days is as simple as plugging the wires into the back of your VCR, TV, Stereo, etc. to orchestrate them, and the most difficult part is loading software, which we all do anyway, it is definitely NOT for most people [Do you feel lucky today?].

I’m going to take each of your paragraphs and show a “counter-point” for those who may be adventurous and feel inclined to do so.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

With the current pricing of PCs, I don't see any reason for anyone to build their own!

It’s fun, can save money, and the feeling of accomplishment is there for those who like to roll their shirtsleeves up.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

I've got an MSEE (with honors even), worked in the industry for years, build my own electronic gadgets all the time,

I’ve been building radio transmitters and superhets from schematics since I was fourteen, designed, built and tested a lot of electronics before the world ever knew it existed at Lincoln Lab in my younger day so we have similar backgrounds. I aced FORTRAN in college with a 4.0 without even studying, otherwise we deviate in the honors region; I just wanted to get it over with.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

and have a close friend who (last year) went through building his own just for the heck of it. He already had a system and only needed to purchase things like the motherboard... but there are so many neat new things on the market. In the end, he had a very nice system with many bells & whistles and had saved himself a whopping $200 over the cost of the system built to his specs by some place like PC connection or Circuit City! $200 dollars AND since he built it himself there is no warranty.

He screwed up without a warranty on parts…

Personal, Me: Last PC I built, check the prices, not the cheapest, either:
1.1G AMD=$408 //Fastest thing on the market
ABIT KT7 Raid=$180 //built for the future
Premium case=$66 //Not the one I bought
PC133 SDIMM=$96 // fast memory

These all are the MOST PREMIUM fail-free parts you can get.
Total about $750 for the fastest thing going.
I cannibalized the rest of what I needed from what I replaced.

To have to purchase decent [good, but not the largest] hard drive, video, sound card, and modem [they’re cheap] and were talking about one thousand, plus or minus small change. I know everything about what I have and know it is top equipment.

Compared to a similar commercial unit which uses proprietary everything for $2,200+, and becomes a throw-away computer after a few short years. I’ve seen some of these thin commercial motherboards that look like logarithmic bacon when they overheat once or twice. What you have and what you can do with it is anybody’s guest.

Let’s take an “average” speedy user home-grown system. Gut feel says divide the $750 price by two and add the same $250 to it

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

Right now, for ~$1200, you can get an 800 MHz P-III machine with gobs of RAM, loads of harddrive space, a DVD or CD-RW, a decent sound-card, EVEN a monitor and printer! And that's not even the top-o-the-line anymore! If you want something cheaper, you can get a machine just like that, but with a 500MHz "Celeron" for ~$800. If you're willing to spend ~$2k, you can get the 1.1Ghz processor (either P-III or Athlon) machine that has both the DVD and the CD-RW!

A few years ago you could get a bargain basement PC for $500 before they came out with ISP discounts which are another rip-off. You can even get an e-machine for something like $99.

Missing from the above are several things most important to me: reliability, reusability, upgrade-ability. To me, 1.1GHz commercial stuff can be slow. That 1.1 number doesn’t mean fast unless everything else is playing in harmony. Celerons? Not my idea of a CPU, rather a crippled processor. “I want a Pentium!” Athlons are much faster Hz vs Hz. You have to watch the cache sizes or any CPU can be a dog. Are you going to get PC133 memory with your 1Gig Pentium? I doubt it and I watch all the ads in the Sunday papers. Pentium bus speed vs Athlon bus speed? We’re talking proprietary motherboard and you could get stuck with a 66Mhz bus. To me, you get what you pay for, and you go cheap, you get cheap, and you can get screwed. Ignorance is bliss. Are ads in the papers going to tell you what you need to know to make an intelligent decision on a PC? No! They are going to bait you with numbers so they can sell to the sheep and watch them all walk over the cliff.

ON THE PLUS SIDE for store-bought PCs… Maybe a year or so ago, I selected a PC for my favorite cousin at Comp USA. I selected the exact one for his needs and future needs for a cost-effective price. It took a month of scanning the Sunday paper ads, all of them, reading each and every single word and digesting it before I compared it with something similar on another ad. It’s a real jungle out there, and the average person can’t tell the difference between a pussycat and a tiger. The salesman is going to direct the potential buyer to the PC most advantageous to sell, or maybe doesn’t even know himself.

For Mail order PCs, I’ll go with DELL or Gateway. Those two PCs are used industry-wide, are reputable, and you can build your own right on the internet. However, you still cannot choose what KINDS of peripheral equipment or WHO MAKES IT to go into your PC, and for the same PC specs manufactured a week later the innards could be completely different; both mail and store-bought PCs.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

And here's the best part... Those all come with a full warranty! If you want it for a business use, pay a little extra and get the "in-house" warranty where if it breaks, you just pick up the phone and dial 1-800-PCbroke and they come and either fix it or replace it.

Yeah, right! Two things here. 1) I’ve had my experiences with receiving broken PCs and also warranties. It’s not always cut and dried, and you can get burnt there.
2) All my stuff has a warranty – and I’ve flexed my warranty muscles with good luck. Most failures are infant mortality. Either it works or it will fail sooner than later. You don’t need to spend $300 for a warranty for a computer. That’s absolute onsense. What happened to the days when they came with decent warranties all on their own?
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

Don't get me wrong... If you want to build your own "for $hits & giggles", by all means have a blast... but if you want to have some technical help, a warranty, and some "insurance", then for what you'll save, it's just not worth it to build your own.

You and I differ big time on this, Panther, a very subjective paragraph. This is not a flame post, therefore no road rage here. What one man's poison ....
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

The days where a half-decent PC costs $3500+ are long gone.

Damn right! Been gone for a long time. Forget about the nostalgia until an appropriate post heading comes up.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote

BTW, MNSHO, stay away from the Rambus technology stuff... it's going nowhere fast. The double-data-rate RAMs are cheaper and actually operate faster than the Rambus. Even Intel has admitted what those of us in the industry knew already... that the Rambus technology can't keep up with the higher data-rate demands.

Keep away from that Rambus stuff. To me, the Rambus is like a fart in a scuba tank.

I just built a PC for one of my students for ½ what it would cost him at Comp USA, and he knows every single part inside [So do I

]. There is a certain confidence and good feeling some of us have to know what kinds of peripherals we have, and have complete control over the destiny of our PC [kind of we own it instead of it owning our soul].

For the two people mentioned above it was a different solution tailored to the individual.

Building a PC today is so easy. A spintite, phillips, long-nose pliers, and common sense are pretty much the toolset required because all you have to do is plug a few cables in, turn a few screws, set the BIOS [almost all you have to do is set the hard disk senser to autopiolot and you are done], load the OS [Many have already loaded a windows flavor or a UNIX variant], and the rest is load whatever software you have kicking around on CD.

Panther · Post by **Panther** » Wed Nov 22, 2000 2:15 pm

Allen-san,

In my defense...

For you, me or my friend... for those who know that purchasing one motherboard over another is a major factor... for those who realize that buying a new floppy-drive isn't going to "break the bank" (at $10-20)... for those who realize that reusing an older 200W or 250W power supply might be way more trouble than picking up a newer one... For those that have done the "scan every word of every Sunday paper ad for weeks on end to understand what's available for how much"...

Well, IOW, I completely understand and agree with your post. If you understand the components and spend the extra few dollars (and it's only a few) to get the good stuff AND if you know what you want for upgradability/expansion, then by all means build it. I just don't think the savings is worth it to the average (read 90+%) person. I didn't mean to suggest buying any additional warranty for just anyone... only for someone who's using it for their business. (Meaning which is more important? Teaching a class at the dojo while the computer company sends out a repairperson OR taking the PC apart yourself to figure out what just toasted?) Certainly the components have their own warranties, but that presupposes the builder knows and understands the interaction of the various components and can troubleshoot the problems when something goes wrong. For most people, they wouldn't know or have the equipment to narrow down a problem... is it the motherboard, the disk-controller, or the disk-drive that is the reason data isn't getting to/from the hard-drive? Is it a SW problem or a HW problem? Is the disk-controller integrated as part of the motherboard or is it a separate daughter card? Maybe it's just a bad connection? Hey, let's bang on it a lot like my Grandaddy used to do with the TV!

Yeah, yeah... you and I know all that stuff, but my post was more aimed at the novice who, while handy and intelligent, isn't really knowledgable about all those aspects. I don't think (and certainly didn't mean to suggest) anyone buy a proprietary bus machine! While they're good products, the proprietary busses and interfaces are the main reasons I don't buy and don't care for the Dell, Compaq, and Gateway systems. That's why I suggested doing a little homework and then having the system put together by someplace like Comp USA, PC Connection, or perhaps even Circuit City. The only reason that I generally stay away from the "mom 'n pop" outfits are that I've seen too many of them go under over the years...

As far as the SW is concerned, many places have deals with MicroSoft and will load the SW for very cheap... Going out and buying all the MS Office, Access, Outlook, Netscape/Opera, etc SW can get pretty expensive.

I really think we agree more on this than disagree... I'm just trying to point out the reasons why someone might not want to "DIY" and you're pointing out the reasons why they might want to. No big deal, just different angles of attack.

Allen M. · Post by **Allen M.** » Wed Nov 22, 2000 3:09 pm

I'm having fun, Panther. Hope you are too. We've hit most all the bases on whether to buy or to cry, Panther. Maybe the both of us have succeeded in scaring everyone off from doing either.

But Wait!

You can't build an Apple yet, and the toughest choice of their equipment is the color.

Panther · Post by **Panther** » Mon Nov 27, 2000 4:01 pm

Allen-san,

I guess we really did scare everyone off!