Brian K said:
This is what I've got: SuperMicro P6SBA Motherboard, 2x AGP, P-III 450
cpu, 320 m ram, 80 g WD IDE. Peripherals: HP USB Photosmart printer,
Microtek Slimscan USB, External HDD WD 80g.
I know this is a relic and probably only the printer, scanner and HDD
can be used in the next computer. I've decided to go the bare bones
route. Which is better Intel or AMD for my needs? I've found a few
sellers but am not sure about them. I've been looking at products at:
http://www.googlebb.magicmicro.com/pricelist.asp?cid=88 KC Computers
http://www.kc-computers.com/motherboards.shtml
Global
http://www.globalcomputer.com/applications/category/category_tlc.asp?CatId=31
and Tiger Direct
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_tlc.asp?CatId=31
Is Biostar a good motherboard. I have experience with SuperMicro but
can't find any bare bones other than servers.
Have you got any recommendations?
My personal opinion, is "barebones" or "bundles" are sucker plays.
With a barebones, you could end up with a "throw-away" power supply.
With a "bundle", you could end up with a good CPU and a bad motherboard.
There are some motherboards, for example, that are being virtually
given away with a processor, but at least some of these motherboards
are DOA or die soon after being built. Such a "bundle" is more
hassle than it is worth.
One consideration for me, is how much heat does the computer throw out.
If you are in an air conditioned environment, you probably
do not care about this too much. With the previous generation gear
I own, my AMD box is cooler running than my Intel box, for what that
is worth. I think AMD is still doing pretty well on that front.
Benchmarking these systems is pretty tricky. For example, in
Photoshop, you may find one platform is better than another, for
a particular filter. Would you shop for a processor type, by
benchmarking at that level of detail ? If I were you, I would
search for some Photoshop benchmarks first, to see which platform is
faster.
You can find dual core processors from either AMD or Intel, and
build a box around one of them.
For AMD, it is still possible to find motherboards with an AGP
slot on them. On Intel, to use a current technology processor,
you are more likely to be using a motherboard with a PCI Express
video slot. If you aren't gaming, this is probably not a big
concern either way, as a new low end PCI Express video card
does not have to be expensive.
So, your first task, is to gather up some benchmarks, and make
a decision on which direction to go - Intel or AMD. Once that
decision is made, perhaps someone can recommend a good motherboard
to use, a good brand of power supply, and so on. The amount of
RAM you want to use, will play some part in the selection
process, and AMD S939 boards tend to have four memory slots,
as do the Intel desktop boards. (Up to 4x1GB is possible, and
2x1GB might be a good place to start.) An AMD S754 is a bit more
restrictive in terms of the total memory it can handle at
a decent memory clock speed.
My own personal wish list would be:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (two 2GHz cores, 512KB cache each) $295
(the 4400+ is $458, and is two 2.2GHz cores, 1MB cache each)
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard ($150 today at Newegg)
2x1GB DDR Ram
Seasonic S12 series power supply (80% efficient, cool running)
PCI Express video card ~$100 level
Your favorite computer case etc.
On the Intel side, one of the problems is that the chipset
requirement keeps changing as new processors are introduced.
Thus, I'm selecting the most recent motherboards here, to try
to "keep up". Intel seems to think that people like buying
motherboards over and over again. The first two boards handle
one of the Extreme Edition processors, that the third board
does not (not a big deal). You can find out more using the
"Search CPU Using" menu here:
http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us
Asus P5WDG2-WS (has PCI-X slots, handy for RAID cards) $350+ or
Asus P5WD2-E Deluxe (desktop board 975X chipset) $218 or
Asus P5WD2 premium (desktop board 955X chipset) $187
Intel Pentium D 930 Presler (two 3Ghz cores, 2MB cache each) $330
2x1GB DDR2 Ram
Seasonic S12 series power supply (80% efficient, cool running)
PCI Express video card ~$100 level
Your favorite computer case etc.
I selected the 930 instead of the 920 processor, as there is
at least one chipset that has the odd problem with 2.8GHz
processors (runs it in single core mode), and for resale
purposes, you'd be better off owning a 930.
You can learn more about the above motherboard choices here:
http://usa.asus.com/products2.aspx?l1=3&l2=-1
Always check the CPU support, download a user manual and read
it before buying, so there won't be any surprises. It really
doesn't matter which of several brands of motherboards you
use - there are some I would stay away from, like Jetway
or ECS, just on principle. On some brands, it will become
obvious from examining their manual, or their lack of driver
or BIOS support, or reading one of their horrible support
stories, that you should stay away from them.
I'm not really comfortable specifying brands, as I feel there
is plenty of evidence in Google or on the private web
sites, as to what is good and what is not. Once you identify
components that meet your budget, run the model numbers
and brand names through your favorite private web site
search engine, to see if there are any gotchas.
The actual construction part is not that difficult, but if you
are on a tight budget, the selection process can be
painful (cost vs perceived qualities). I spent about a
month mulling over a gift build for a relative, with a
spread sheet comparing all the options. Not an exercise
I want to repeat.
For the sellers, you can try resellerratings.com (use the
"enter store name" box). While you cannot guarantee that the
data in resellerratings is not cooked, at least for some of
the "small fry" operations, you might get some idea just
how crooked or uncooperative they are. If a company is
so small, that there are only a few ratings in the database,
that should be a danger sign right there. Plenty of
ratings (like thousands) makes it harder to cook the
results.
Good luck,
Paul
