My old computer, which was more or less a bargain machine 4-5 years ago, began rebooting randomly a few weeks back. If you know anything about computers, you know troubleshooting an issue such as this can cause more heartache, time, and money than just building a completely new system. After a couple of nights trying various things (checking fan speeds, checking voltages, checking temperatures), I came to a point at which I’d have to start replacing parts one at a time with no guarantee.<br/><br/>Sooo I built a completely new rig. Unfortunately, video cards, hard drives, and memory have all gone to new technologies since my last build so there wasn’t much I was able to reuse. On the plus side, that leaves my old machine pretty intact so I can use it as a Linux toy system or something along those lines since it ran fine until you actually started crunching data (Photoshop batch processing, gaming, etc).<br/><br/>I didn’t really need anything superfast, but as is typical with my builds, I went with the best stuff that didn’t still carry a premium AND I wanted it to be as quiet as possible, which required a good deal of research. In the end, it was all very much worth it. The machine came in just a touch under $900, performs at 90% of the level of the best machines out there (priced thousands more), has better components than you’ll ever find in a Dell for twice the price, and it makes less noise than I even thought possible (seriously, it’s eerily quiet). I’m very, very happy.<br/><br/><span style=”font-weight: bold;”>Case | </span><a href=”http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129017″ target=”_blank”>Antec P180B</a><br/>This is my first build with a really nice case. It didn’t come with a power supply so it was rather pricey, but it did come with three very large fans (the larger the fan, the slower it can spin to move the same air, the quieter it runs) and a host of nifty features that I didn’t even know existed like rubber mounts to reduce hard drive vibration, removal bays, and all those fans have adjustable speeds.<br/><br/><span style=”font-weight: bold;”>Power Supply | </span><a href=”http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817151033″ target=”_blank”>Seasonic S12 II 430w</a><br/>Read great things about this power supply, from a company that I had never even heard of (yes, I’ve been out of this stuff for that long), and it certainly lives up to the hype. It’s so quiet that I can’t even tell if the fan is running or not. I *think* it only runs when it needs to and my current monitoring apps say this thing is running uber-cool.<br/><br/><span style=”font-weight: bold;”>Motherboard | </span><a href=”http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813128059″ target=”_blank”>Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L</a><br/>When I first spec’d out the system, I had a much more expensive motherboard listed, but didn’t know why other than a friend had recommended it. At purchase time, I looked around on <a href=”http://www.newegg.com/” target=”_blank”>Newegg</a> and found this gem rated as the highest “cheap” board by a large margin. I was in… My only regret here is it doesn’t have a firewire header so I’ve got a front-panel port that is not usable. No big deal as I don’t own anything that uses it, but had I thought about it, I would have gotten something different just for completenesses sake.<br/><br/><span style=”font-weight: bold;”>Processor | </span><a href=”http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16819115029″ target=”_blank”>Intel Core 2 Duo E6750, 2.67GHz</a><br/>My first Intel CPU in three builds! That goes back to 2000! They’re finally back on top and it feels good for some odd reason. They always strike me as the “pure guys” in the CPU war. Why? I have no idea. This guy is currently at a great price point and has uber overlcocking powers. For now, I’m happy at the stock speeds, but it’s nice to know I’ve got plenty of performance room to work with.<br/><br/><span style=”font-weight: bold;”>Memory | </span><a href=”http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4354017&cmp=AFC-CJ_CBIT” target=”_blank”>2x1GB Patriot Extreme Performance DDR2-800 Dual Channel Kit</a><br/>Memory is all the same to me. I saw a nuts deal on this stuff for $35 via <a href=”http://www.slickdeals.net/” target=”_blank”>Slickdeals</a> two weeks ago and bought it, which sparked me to purchase all the other stuff. Originally, I planned to only getting stuff at crazy deals, but after sitting on this case for a few months now and not seeing great deals on anything else, I got tired of waiting.<br/><br/><span style=”font-weight: bold;”>Video Card | </span><a href=”http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=190170498360&ssPageName=STRK:MEBI:IT&ih=009″ target=”_blank”>Asus EN8600GTS Silent, 256MB</a><br/>Video cards make the most noise in a machine… by far. My goal here was to get good performance, fanless operation, and a good price. At $170, sure I could have bumped performance a bit with another card (I’m talking MAYBE 10% faster cutting-edge gaming, which I don’t plan on doing), but the sacrifice would be sound… the machine would sound like a jet fighter. I almost won one on <a href=”http://www.ebay.com/” target=”_blank”>eBay</a>, but some silly person bid it up to like $140 shipped when you can get a brand new one for $170 shipped. Stupids…<br/><br/><span style=”font-weight: bold;”>Hard Drive | </span><a href=”http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148151″ target=”_blank”>Seagate Barracuda ES, 500GB</a><br/>Other option would have been two smaller drives for slightly quicker speeds, but I’d get the same space at four times the price? No thanks. The 500GB is at a great price point right now, I don’t need more space than that, and I like the idea of powering one less component. Yay green!<br/><br/>Again, I reused my wireless card and optical drive. Had I not, I would have likely bought a motherboard with wireless built-in (I love built-in features like LAN, sound, etc) and a DVD-RW would have run me another what? $35? Someone building this system from absolute scratch can do it for less than a grand with ease.<br/><br/>I easily see this bad boy lasting me a good number of years (5+) as I doubt my needs will grow with video game consoles doing the things they’re doing. My next upgrade will likely be a 24″ monitor. I don’t need it, but I have one at work and I find it unacceptable to come home to a dinky little monitor on a blazingly fast machine. If anyone sees a deal on a 24″ Dell, let me know!<br/>
Hello from my new computer!
Comments
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I think your hard drive is too small……….
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Your dad is talkin’ smack about your HD… there’s a joke in there somewhere.
Those are the pretty much the specs on my machine. The Core 2 Duo really does make a difference. Now buy some C&C3!
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Forgot to add… The nice thing about a 500gb is you can keep all your unedited photographs and the edited versions without worry about multiple copies of the same picture. I have ~30 photography sets, all the family pictures, a half dozen website images and 80k songs and I’ve only used half my hard drive. Oh and don’t forget the insane amount of space required for video editing, if you’re into that sorta thing.
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1. I have no plans to buy any new games for this thing… I have a backlog of about 5 games for the 360 right now.
2. I was a dolt and forgot to partition before installing… Caught up in the excitement! So I had a bit of a struggle redoing everything since my keyboard wasn’t being recognized at the “press key to boot to disc” time. I finally worked around that w/ BJ’s ?serial? (w/ PS2 adapter) keyboard that he had lying around for god knows what reason. It smelled funny.
3. I think I had this much space on my last machine. I don’t think I’ll get anywhere close to using it all.
4. I don’t have a video camera so I won’t be doing any editing [smiley] -
Built the same machine on Dell’s site with likely a crappier case, surely a crappier power supply, surely a worse motherboard, and not a silent video card. Price? $1600.
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