Local system builders? preferably North York or Thornhill

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 01:52:18AM -0400, Digimer wrote:
> I'm not in the business myself any more, but I'd like to recommend  
> looking at online ordering the bare parts and assembling it yourself.  
> I've purchased from Amazon.ca, and I've heard good things about  
> Newegg.ca. There is also a CanadaComputers not too far from your area  
> and they also do online-ordering.
>
> This would let you get exactly the parts you want and not have to worry  
> about travel at all.
>
> Some parts/makers I'd recommend from past experience (others may offer  
> different suggestions):
> - ASUS or Tyan for the mainboard. In either case, get one with an  

Certainly Asus.

> integrated video. This usually means ATI, but I've had no problem in  
> Linux with those on-board ATIs.

ATI has never been anything but a nightmare under linux for me.
And windows too for that matter.  I keep hoping those open source drivers
will happen.  ATI makes lovely hardware after all, I just can't deal
with their code quality.

> - Antec or Silverstone for the chassis/PSU.

Silverstone PSUs are OK.  They are within require spec, but not great.
I do use one in my HTPC.  I used to use PC Power & Cooling, but those
are pretty close to imposible to find in Canada now (which is odd given
OCZ claimed when they bought it that they were going to improve the
distribution channels).  The most recent I bought was a Corsair 750HX
to replace a PC power & Cooling that unfortunately had to deal with a
lightning strike induced power surge (The rest of the machine was
undamaged).

> - Kingston or Crucial for the RAM (get DDR3, it's going down in price  
> where DDR2 is going up).

Or g.skill or mushkin.  Just make sure the voltage is within the spec
of the motherboard/cpu.

> - AMD for the CPU. Better 32b support and you can get some nice  
> low-power multi-core CPUs.

Intel has vastly better performance than AMD these days for anything
(32 or 64 bit).  And you aren't stuck with an ATI chipset as your
only choice.

I really do like AMD, but I wish they had NOT bought ATI and made nvidia
(and pretty much everyone else) abandon AMD.

> - Seagate for the HDD

Are you mad?  Saegate hasn't got a clue how to make HDs.  They have
firmware disasters after firmware disaster.  They have had SATA drives that
were incompatible with certain controllers because apparently Seagate
couldn't understand the spec the rest of the industry had no trouble with.

If you want a quiet fast reliable disk that works with everything,
you buy western digital.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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