Hardware recommendations, please

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 03:57:52AM -0400, Chris F.A. Johnson 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>

All $399 computers are made by cutting every single corner you can
to reduce price, while picking the cheapest thing that has impressive
sounding specs.

An Athlon 64 X2 5200+ was a nice CPU when it came out 3 years ago.  It has
since been replaced in AMD's lineup by the Phenom and then the Phenom II.

If they won't tell in the specs what the parts in the machine are (like
motherboard model, power supply model, etc) then they are certain to
all be complete crap.  The RAM will be the cheapest and slowest you
can get.  The power supply with be a few with $20 case type, which will
just make the system unstable and eventually kill the hardware.

>    I am not a gamer; the most taxing use I have for the video card is
>    probably playing DVDs and YouTube downloads.

Well for DVD's the nvidia drivers support XvMC for offloading the video
decoding largely to the video card.  Always nice to have and makes video
cale smoothly without a lot of cpu load.  Not sure if the intel chips
have that support in linux.

>    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.)

The onboard audio on good motherboards tends to sound just fine these
days (unlike years ago when it was noisy and complete crap).  Very few
add in audio cards are made anymore, and not many are sold.  The few
that are sold tend to be rather fancy expensive things.  So it depends
just how much you care about sound quality.  If you have computer
speakers, or you think MP3 is good enough to store audio, then onboard
sound on a good motherboard will be fine.  If you insist on FLAC or RAW
audio files (so no compression) and have $500 speakers, then you might
care enough to get one of the nice cards like the Asus Xonar D2X for $190.

>    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)

Well personally I have a few rules for what I will buy:

No ATI chipsets or video.  Their drivers have a long history of sucking
very badly.

No onboard video.  It is just crap, and tends to slow down the whole
system and eat system ram (which isn't even good for video cards in the
first place).  If you really don't have any need for performance, then
onboard intel video or nvidia is acceptable.  ATI/AMD chipset and video
would not be because of the above.

No seagate drives.  Way too many firmware and compatibility issues.

Only quality components from good manufacturers.  The system is only as
reliable as the weakest component in the system.  This is especially true
of the power supply.  There are companies out there (like genesis) who
label power supplies 500W when in fact none of the components inside
can provide more than 250W under ideal conditions (which you never
get either).  They are simply lying.

So things I would buy:
Asus motherboards.  I have used nothing else for 15 years now, and
I don't intend to change that.  I have heard good things about EVGA
(although they only make nvidia chipset boards and now intel x58 and tend
to be very high end as a result, so probably not relevant in this case).
I have had bad experiences with other peoples systems using intel boards,
gigabyte boards, as well as horrible experiences with ecs and pc chips
(now the same company conviniently).

PC Power & Cooling power supplies.  I don't think there is a better
maker out there, and they are much cheaper than they used to be.

nvidia based video cards.  EVGA makes nice cards.  BFG seems good too.
PNY makes good cards.  XFX makes nice cards.  A company with a good
warranty is generally a good sign.

Western Digital harddisks.  I have had very few failures and no
compatibility issues, and they are very quiet and pretty fast.  I like
quiet.

Places to buy that I use are: Canada Computers for local stuff.  NCIX and
bestdirect.ca for cheap mail order stuff (often they have free delivery
if you spend over $300 or $500 depending on current promotions).

If I was to build a high quality but fairly low end PC I would probably
do something like:

- Intel E8400 (cheapest CPU with VT support, and I think hardware
  virtualization support is going to be essential in the future.
  I certainly use it a lot.) $185.  If hardware virtualization really has
  no interest, an E7400 is almost the same speed and $135.
  For a very cheap but still decent for video option, you could get an
  onboard nvidia and replace the motherboard and video card with an Asus
  P5N7A for $130.  This is mATX so a smaller case is an option in that case.
- Asus P5Q (intel P45, realtek gigabit ethernet, via 8 channel audio codec,
  firewire) $130.
- Mushkin EM2-6400 2x2GB ram $63.
- Western Digital WD1001FALS 1TB harddisk $101 (I would get two and
  run raid1.  I always use raid1 or better).  500GB is $72 each, 640GB is
  $81 each.  If speed isn't important, you can get WD10EAVS 1TB for $82.
- LG SATA dvd writer for $30ish tends to work well.  I used to get
  plextor, but I don't burn as many disks (given external USB drives these
  days), and plextor isn't what it used to be.
- GeForce GTS 250 video card for $145 if you want something that can do
  3D, or otherwise just for nice video playback support a 9500GT for
  $58 would do.
- PC Power & Cooling Silencer 420W power supply for $50.  A 500W for
  $80 if using the GTS 250 video card might be better.
- Some case you like.  ATX if for a proper system.  Could be mATX if
  you go with the onboard video option although often mATX cases cost
  more for some reason.  Personally I really like silverstone cases
  because they are so well made and solid (which helps keep the noise
  inside the case).  The cheapest machine I have made with a silverstone
  case was $700 last year which was a budget game machine with a Core 2
  Duo E6400, an 8600GT video card and 500GB WD single HD with an Asus
  P5B motherboard.  It turned out to be a decent game machine as long
  as you didn't expect super high resolution.  The case was a TJ04 which
  took up a bit more than $100 of the system budget.  Right now I use a
  TJ04 for my own machine, my sister's machine, my friend's game machine,
  my wife's machine (with a small dremel job to fit in the GTX275 video
  card), as well as a friend from university that got it for 10 machines
  for a research lab at university of alberta on my recomendation (where
  they love the fact the office is now so much less noisy than before
  they got the new computers).  Ehm, oops that got a bit off track there.
  Antec makes nice cases too, although I personally find them cheap and
  flimsy looking compared to the silverstones.  Cheap cases will ratle
  and amplify all vibrations in the machine and be very noisy.

So for example here is what bestdirect.ca wants for the onboard video
option:

LG GH22NS50 Black 22X SATA DVD Writer OEM $29.70

Mushkin EM PC2-6400 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-800 CL5-5-5-18 240PIN DIMM Dual
Channel Memory Kit $59.71

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Dual Core Processor LGA775 3.0GHZ Wolfdale 1333FSB
6MB Retail $184.79

PC Power & Cooling Silencer 420W ATX 12V V2.2 20/24PIN 80PLUS Power
Supply $50.79

2 x Western Digital WD1001FALS Caviar Black 1TB SATA2 7200RPM 4.2MS 32MB
3.5IN Dual Proc Hard Drive OEM $197.46

ASUS P5N7A-VM mATX LGA775 nForce 730I/GF9300 DDR2 PCI-E16 PCI-E1 2PCI
SATA HDMI DVI VGA Motherboard $127.60

Silverstone Temjin TJ04B Black ATX Case 4X5.25 2X3.5 4X3.5INT No PS
$109.86

Total: 759.91 + GST.  Free shipping, and since they are in BC, they
don't charge PST to other provinces.  Assembly required.  OS your own
problem.  So a bit less than twice the one you found, but using
exclusively high end components, 3 times the disk space (with raid1),
twice the ram (and faster ram for sure), nvidia (rather than ati)
chipset and video, modern technology (like intel VT support and such),
much quiter, reliable power supply and a none 'plastic and tin' case,
DVI and HDMI support, optical digital audio out, ram expandable to 16GB
if ever needed, etc.  I would call that getting much more than than
twice your moneys worth for the doubling of price.

I didn't include mouse/keyboard since those tend to be personal preference
and you might already have some you like.  Altec Lancing speakers these
days are junk (and that is what the other machine included).  I recently
bought some Boston Acustic computer speakers on sale from tigerdirect.ca
for $35 and they sound quite good, but they aren't able to handle super
high volumes or anything, not that I need that.  They are the mm220
model in black.

I must admit the atom based boxes are pretty cute but would be no faster
than your P4 already is I suspect, at least not very much:
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=025045&cid=170.45
Not sure how linux support is for the ion so far.

And now I will stop rambling on (for a bit at least).

-- 
Len Sorensen
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