Hardware recommendations, please

[Mark Lane]

That's not bad and a solid basic system. I would want more specs though
before buying a system. You will want to start with a good case, power and
motherboard and work from there.

Currently one of the nicer motherboards out there for AMD would be ASUS
M4A78 PLUS. It comes with like 6 SATA ports and an eSATA port on the back
plane. It has 8 CH HD Audio (RealTek), 10 USB 2 Ports, GigE, 2x16 PCIe,
Cross Fire Support. It will support AM2/3 processors.

Any of the AMD processors should be good here. The 5200+ would be the base
model here. If you want to go with 4 Cores, skip the Phenom and go with the
Phenom II. If they suggest a black box that just means the processor doesn't
have it's multiplier locked and is easier to over clock.

For a case the Antec Sonata III 500 is a really nice case and can be had for
$140. It comes with an Antec Earth Watts 500Watt Power Supply. Watch the
package deals like the quote included. They tend to come with really cheap
cases and no name power. A cheap case isn't much of an issue other than they
tend to have sharp corners so you are more likely to cut yourself on them.
The power on the other hand is an issue. So if you go with a 30 or 40 dollar
case, I would recommend replacing the power supply with something better.

For memory, I would get a minimum of 2GB of DDR2. Remember the AMD
processors do not support dual channel 1066 memory so you probably don't
need more that 800MHz memory as dual channel 800 should be faster than
running 1066 in single channel.

For video, since you are not into gaming pretty much any thing will work.
Personally I would go with something like a Radeon HD 4670 though even a
4350 would be fine for what you are doing. You could also switch to a
motherboard with video onboard to save money here. I would stick with the
AMD chipset though on the motherboard.

For a DVD burner, I like the pioneer more that LG or Liteon. It will run you
about 5 dollars more and might be only 20x instead of 22x. I had an LG and
it sounded like a plane taking off.

For that 1 GB Hard Disk, WD or Seagate Sata II drive should work well for
you.



On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 3:57 AM, Chris F.A. Johnson <cfaj-uVmiyxGBW52XDw4h08c5KA at public.gmane.org>wrote:

>
>   I am in the market for a new desktop system, but my knowledge of PC
>   hardware is very limited. I have only bought one X86 system in my
>   life (described below) though I had inherited a couple previously.
>
>   Can you make any suggestions about what to get, what to avoid,
>   where to buy, where not to buy, etc.?
>
>   I am considering something like this, with an added 1TB HD:
>   <http://www.sonnam.com/system.asp?prod_ID=SYS-SN-CLE-0005>
>
>   I am not a gamer; the most taxing use I have for the video card is
>   probably playing DVDs and YouTube downloads.
>
>   I do care about sound quality (all my music is on my HD), but I
>   don't care about a lot of features. (I don't even want the ability
>   to mix sound sources; I want only my music to be heard. The
>   computer should otherwise be silent apart from the PC speaker.)
>
>
>
>   Current hardware (bought March 2002, RAM and HDDs upgraded)
>
>   P4 1.6GHz
>   1GB DDR RAM
>   Nvidia Riva TNT2 32MB
>   IDE drives:
>     160 GB
>     250 GB
>     500 GB
>   17" CRT monitor
>
>
>   I have the following running at all times:
>
>   20 desktops (WindowMaker, 2 banks of 10)
>   9 rxvt terminal windows:
>           3 local shell
>           1 alpine
>           1 slrn
>           1 root shell
>           3 ssh to remote
>   emacs - user, 3 windows
>   emacs - root, 1 window
>   2 gentoo file managers
>   oowriter - 2+ windows (until book is finished -- a few more weeks)
>
>
>
> --
>   Chris F.A. Johnson, webmaster         <http://woodbine-gerrard.com>
>   ===================================================================
>   Author:
>   Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
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>



-- 
Mark Lane <lmlane-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
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