Girl's computer...

[Santilli]

Hi
The 400mhz P2 girls computer is getting long in the tooth. It's a Dell XPS 400, and, that's border line for a DVD player, without the SLI they used.

I need a 8x AGP slot, and, a barebones system. I'm looking for a
Supermicro, or Tyan solution, since reliability, and longevity are most important.

Cheap is good, too.

Anyone found any nice, inexpensive , barebones scsi solutions for a Supermicro box?

Xeons are ok, since I can add another one, later. Or, if it's cheaper, a P4
system?

I would like something upgradeable, and also something that can play games at a reasonable rate. I might pull the 700xl ATI card and drop it in this machine.

Anyone looked at this box:

http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/far_cry.txt

Supermicro SC733i-645 Beige EATX Full-Tower w/ 645W PSU


Steel-Based Full Tower Workstation Chassis
Standard / Extended ATX Motherboard Support
2 x 5.25" External Bays (Optical Drives)
1 x 3.5" External Bay (Floppy Drive)
4 x 3.5" Internal Drive Bays
2 x Front Panel USB 2.0 Ports
Includes Low Noise 645W ATX Power Supply
Includes 1.44MB Floppy Drive With Chassis
Includes 1 x 92mm Intake Fan, 120mm Exhaust Fan
Both Fans Support New 4-pin PWM Connector


At 255, it looks reasonable...

s

 

[Santilli]

Sorry the link doesn't work, but the specs and the case are correct.
s

 

[Computer Generated Baby]

A Girl'z Computer? I take it we're talkin' about a woman'z computer. :-?

I would suspect a Supermicro SC733i chassis would be at the bleeding upper edge of affordability. For nice/affordable, I'd just go to a local "clone boutique" and pick This Week's Special chassis or any adequate barebones chassis that is present with 1 or 2 external 5¼ inch drive bays, 1 or 2 internal hard drive bays, and a floppy drive bay. I doubt she will tolerate any sort of large / technical chassis, so, stay the hell away from anything with a lot of drive slot capacity. Also, beige, cream, or ivory finish may very well win out over a black finish. Buying a case locally will save you a bundle on freight costs.

Next, pick a decent 300-to-400 watt power supply with the proper power connectors for the chosen mobo.

As for mobo: If one were looking to future-proof their new rig, it might very well have a PCI Express based mobo. It would have 512 MB RAM with the fastest contemporary memory bus. Also, at least 4 USB slots.

The microprocessor (A64 or P4) would simply be the one with the current "sweet spot" price. These are currently selling widely for under US$200:

* Athlon64: A64 3200 Socket 939

* Pentium 4: P4 3.2 GHz / 800 MHz FSB (non LGA!)

Even if Opterons and Xeons cost the same as a Athlon64s and regular Pentium 4s, they make no sense for this application, because the mobos and the RAM they require are simply too expensive.

Hard drive: Definitely SATA (it doesn't have to be SATA II), probably 120 GB, maybe 160 GB. If she only surfs web, does word processing: 80 GB, maybe 120 GB.

* DVD + - R/W with good CD-ROM read speed (dual layer capability not reqired).

Backup capability: External USB2 chassis with a good used hard drive. External drive stays unplugged and turned off until needed for weekly backup routine. If this was 2006, I think we would seriously be talking about an external SATA hard drive for backups.

If you plan on adding a bunch of software, you might want to consider Ghosting a "Basic O/S" installation, where XP (if using WinXP) is fully installed with latest drivers, but has no application software installed, and has just undergone the Mister Bill XP product activation. From this restorable OS image, you can experiment with various software configurations without having to worry again with re-loading XP and going through product activation yet again. If you plan on loading recent versions of MS Office or Adobe software, these will require their own product activations. So, you may want to image a known-stable AND activated image of XP + Office, XP + Photoshop, or XP + Office + Photoshop (etc).

UPS: A decent 500 VA ~ 650 VA uninterruptible power supply with a standard-sized battery would be a very worthy addition for many reasons.

New Monitor? As with chassis, look at some locally.

 

[Santilli]

Hi Splash:

"The girls' computer" is the name given the Dell by my other half.

You have some good points. I did find a box for 30 bucks with a 420 Watt power supply. I might combine that with an Asus, dual Xeon motherboard that does uses cheaper ram, and is on sale for 200 bucks. That, along with the cheaper ram, gives me an optional processor to add, if it's not fast enough. I would need a bargain basement scsi 320 card, along with a nice cable and terminator, but, I do have an LVD granite digital setup laying around, also, along with a 15.3 36 gig with adapter for a boot drive. She doesn't use much storage space, and the existing 30 gig should be fine as storage, and, I'd like to back up her stuff to DVD just in case.

The board has an agp 8x slot, and, she's likely to end up with the P650, which is sort of the reason for this upgrade, and the fact that a P2@ 400 mhz doesn't want to run a DVD burner too well.

I'd try and keep it quiet, by using a Swifttech heatsink, with Vantec 80mm stealth, and buy one processor, probably 2.8 ghz, or maybe a bit faster, and use all my scsi cd and dvd plextor stuff. I'll get a bit more detailed tomorrow.

I'm in the middle of raiding two 36 gig 15.3 Cheetahs, in my SCA box, and reinstalling XP. I needed the extra boot drive capacity. Games ate up the 36 gigs, real fast.

Install is pretty quick, except for figuring out the scsi raid bios, which took way too long, and I finally had to look at the manual... :roll:

s

A Girl'z Computer? I take it we're talkin' about a woman'z computer. :-?

I would suspect a Supermicro SC733i chassis would be at the bleeding upper edge of affordability. For nice/affordable, I'd just go to a local "clone boutique" and pick This Week's Special chassis or any adequate barebones chassis that is present with 1 or 2 external 5¼ inch drive bays, 1 or 2 internal hard drive bays, and a floppy drive bay. I doubt she will tolerate any sort of large / technical chassis, so, stay the hell away from anything with a lot of drive slot capacity. Also, beige, cream, or ivory finish may very well win out over a black finish. Buying a case locally will save you a bundle on freight costs.

Next, pick a decent 300-to-400 watt power supply with the proper power connectors for the chosen mobo.

As for mobo: If one were looking to future-proof their new rig, it might very well have a PCI Express based mobo. It would have 512 MB RAM with the fastest contemporary memory bus. Also, at least 4 USB slots.

The microprocessor (A64 or P4) would simply be the one with the current "sweet spot" price. These are currently selling widely for under US$200:

* Athlon64: A64 3200 Socket 939

* Pentium 4: P4 3.2 GHz / 800 MHz FSB (non LGA!)

Even if Opterons and Xeons cost the same as a Athlon64s and regular Pentium 4s, they make no sense for this application, because the mobos and the RAM they require are simply too expensive.

Hard drive: Definitely SATA (it doesn't have to be SATA II), probably 120 GB, maybe 160 GB. If she only surfs web, does word processing: 80 GB, maybe 120 GB.

* DVD + - R/W with good CD-ROM read speed (dual layer capability not reqired).

Backup capability: External USB2 chassis with a good used hard drive. External drive stays unplugged and turned off until needed for weekly backup routine. If this was 2006, I think we would seriously be talking about an external SATA hard drive for backups.

If you plan on adding a bunch of software, you might want to consider Ghosting a "Basic O/S" installation, where XP (if using WinXP) is fully installed with latest drivers, but has no application software installed, and has just undergone the Mister Bill XP product activation. From this restorable OS image, you can experiment with various software configurations without having to worry again with re-loading XP and going through product activation yet again. If you plan on loading recent versions of MS Office or Adobe software, these will require their own product activations. So, you may want to image a known-stable AND activated image of XP + Office, XP + Photoshop, or XP + Office + Photoshop (etc).

UPS: A decent 500 VA ~ 650 VA uninterruptible power supply with a standard-sized battery would be a very worthy addition for many reasons.

New Monitor? As with chassis, look at some locally.

 

[Santilli]

Splash: I was thinking of either this one:

Asus NCCH-DL Intel 82875P Chipset 800MHz FSB Dual Channel DDR400 Dual Xeon / Nocona ATX Server Motherboard with AGP 8X, SATA, GbLAN, USB 2.0, IEEE1394 Firewire, PCI-X (Retail)

Regular price: $244.99
Your price: $209.99


The Asus uses
Memory: Dual Channel PC3200 ECC Unbuffered up to 4GB

However ram is

1GB PC2-3200 DDR2 ECC Register PC Memory RAM (240-Pin, 3-Year Warranty!)

$235.99


or:

1GB 1024MB PC3200 DDR400 PC Memory RAM ECC Registered (400MHz, 3-Year Warranty!)

185.00

Tyan Tiger i7505 (S2668) 533/400MHz FSB Intel Xeon Chipset Dual Channel DDR266 Motherboard with 6 Channel Audio, Gigabit LAN Controller, USB 2.0

$255.99


Hmmm?

s

 

[Mercutio]

I'd suggest you quit buying massively overpriced midrange server hardware.

Seriously. You can buy an Athlon64+board+RAM for the price of either of the motherboards you're bringing up here. Ultimately you'll get the same level of reliability, lower costs for power, less heat and more real-world speed from an AMD solution.

 

[ddrueding]

Seconded. Supermicro? ECC? What on earth for?

 

[Buck]

Thirdeddedided . . . Athlon 64 3000+, Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9, and two sticks 512 MB PC3200 RAM.

 

[GIANT]

Thirdeddedided . . . Athlon 64 3000+, Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9, and two sticks 512 MB PC3200 RAM.

Fourth'd, except... Two sticks of 256 MB PC3200.

512 MB of RAM is more than enough for the average user. Someone doing non-linear video editing or a depraved gamer would get more out of 1 GB of RAM. The savings will pay handsomely towards the DVD writer.

If one wanted to splurge here, it would have to be either the monitor (bigger) or the previously mentioned external hard drive for backup. But, then again, it sounds like there's not much to backup, so a re-writable DVD should work fine. Input devices could be another splurge candidate.

Worth mentioning at this point: In my snotty opinion, a WIRED keyboard and a wire-LESS mouse is the preferred combo for input. Few people actually truly NEED a *wireless* keyboard. Someone doing presentations may need a wireless keyboard, or someone doing WebTV-like activities can benefit from a wireless keyboard, but not someone sitting next to their desktop computer. A wireless mouse, on the other hand (pun intended), is nearly essential these days. Since a mouse moves around a LOT, it makes total sense to have a wireless mouse.

Today's wireless mouses are quite good in every respect. The only thing I've heard that could be construed as a negative against the wireless mouse is that I've heard that their response time is not quite suitable for some of the quick violent movements needed in certain gaming situations, but maybe that's changed with he latest generation of wireless (optical) mouse. By the way, a battery charger capable of handling NiMH AA and AAA cells, along with 2 changings of batteries, is a very good thing to have around with wireless peripherals.

 

[ddrueding]

I have to agree that it's simply amazing how much more a person thinks they're getting when you cut back on the PC and upgrate the I/O equipment. I recently built a system for a home user and cut the CPU, RAM, HDD, and video way back to upgrade from a 17" CRT monitor to a 20" LCD and from the stock input to a Logitech DiNovio...they were thrilled with how far they're money went.

 

[Santilli]

Points sort of taken.

I guess it's because I use my Athlon 1.4ghz at school, and I'm sort of reminded that I didn't really get great value for my money. The Asus 266A7M is ok, but kind of over priced. Also, I can't do the kind of multi-tasking that a dual machine allows. When a 2.8ghz becomes too slow, thanks to whatever, just add another...


I've been shopping for an Athlon system, and the motherboards that have been recommended are all in the 130-200 dollar range. A 939 Athlon 64, from what I gather, is much superior to the 3000, and, they aren't cheap, 170-200 dollars from Pricewatch cheapest I've found, oem.

Could be the switch to PCI-E has made AGP boards a bit rare, I don't know.

As for server equipment, I LOVE it. Having Dual Xeons, the speed, 2 gigs of ram, and my favorite, the SCA box, is just the cats meow.

I'm in the middle of reinstalling all my stuff on two raided 36 gig 15.3 cheetahs, and, even though it's on a slow raid card, it's still a noticeable speed jump from a single drive, and it was soooo easy, as is switching boot disks, or backing up data.

It just seems that for about a 30% increase, or slightly more, you get way more expandability. Everything I put together seems to be in the 700-1000 dollar range for this person, and, yes it would last awhile. However, if I spend a 1000 dollars, I can get WAY more in both value, and expandability.

I'm just not finding great deals on the stuff you are suggesting, at least in this area.

I guess buying wholesale you can get good prices, put stuff together at considerably less then I can, and the gap between regular stuff, and low end server is much larger then it is in this area.

I am in the Silicon Valley most of the day...

s
PS: For example, that Supermicro chassis includes an excellent power supply, probably 130 dollars retail, a hot swap box, probably another 130 retail, and a very nice case, for 255 dollars. So the case costs really, -5 dollars.

David: The reason this is coming up is she has dual monitors, one 21 inch, one 19 inch, Hitachi and Sony, and, the beautiful P650 Matrox card won't work in the Dell XPS 400 motherboard, but the 550 Matrox is adequate, at least for most of the stuff she does.

Also, to replace her current drive with a DVD writer puts the computer on the limit of the writers component requirements.

 

[Buck]

I've been shopping for an Athlon system, and the motherboards that have been recommended are all in the 130-200 dollar range. A 939 Athlon 64, from what I gather, is much superior to the 3000, and, they aren't cheap, 170-200 dollars from Pricewatch cheapest I've found, oem.

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ s939 - Model: ADA3000BIBOX - $146.00 NewEgg

Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 - $106.00 NewEgg

Kingston RAM 512MB - KVR400X64C25/512 - $65.59 NewEgg
Kingston RAM 256MB - KVR400X64C25/256 - $31.98 NewEgg

 

[Buck]

Supermicro FYI

 

[time]

Can I fifth it?

I wouldn't go past Buck's suggestion of a GA-K8NF-9 board. It's incredibly well equipped, comes from one of the top two manufacturers, and is amazingly cheap considering the exclusive use of quality capacitors etc.

You should be aware that for practically everything you're likely to run, a single Athlon 64 will probably be faster than twin Xeons. AMD's architecture gives that one CPU more bandwidth than the poor Xeons have together.

And it can run 64-bit software. And it will use one third of the power (less if you use Cool 'n Quiet etc).

If your SCSI gear is getting a little long in the tooth, why not pour the money into four new SATA drives? The native motherboard controller supports RAID 0+1 (10), so you can double your transfer rates yet have full redundancy. Maybe even consider Raptors? Four of those in RAID 10 make a formidable combination that, in desktop applications, should give your 15,000rpm SCSI setup a run for its money.

(Yes David, I know you had a high failure rate, but maybe you had a bad batch, and in any case it would be mirrored). 8)

Alternatively, throw the money at a graphics processor to suit the PCI-e bus. nVidia 6800GT sounds pretty good to most people.

BTW, Splash didn't mean that you should use the 420W PS that came with the cheapo case. If you want reliability, buy your PS separately.

 

[Santilli]

Looking for an AGP motherboard, 8x, so I can use the Matrox p650, and the dual monitors.

Also, I thought the Athlon 3200+ was the best value of the new processors, due to something that I can't remember?
:lol:

I like the ram prices.

Still looking...

s

 

[Santilli]

How about this board?

http://www.xpcgear.com/gak8nsc939.html

http://www.xpcgear.com/gak8nsc939.html

gs

 

[time]

No firewire and only two SATA ports. And I'd count on changing that stupid little chip cooler for something quiet (common problem these days).Otherwise, fine.

Greg raises the issue of how to support dual analog monitors. Is a Matrox dual-head really necessary? I have a customer who wants to run an analog monitor alongside a 30" LCD TV, which only has VGA and S-video inputs. I've been wondering if it's possible to have separate desktops on the S-video and VGA outputs of a contemporary graphics card?

 

[blakerwry]

Most vidcards now have 2 DACs to allow just that. I can guarantee any Radeon 9200 or GeforceFX that has DVI+VGA+Svideo has 2 DACs.

The analog can be used on the DVI + VGA, or VGA + TV, and possibly DVI + TV (not positive).

 

[ddrueding]

Most vidcards now have 2 DACs to allow just that. I can guarantee any Radeon 9200 or GeforceFX that has DVI+VGA+Svideo has 2 DACs.

The analog can be used on the DVI + VGA, or VGA + TV, and possibly DVI + TV (not positive).

I can step in and confirm DVI + TV.

 

[Santilli]

ATI 700XL and 800XL both came with converters to allow connecting regular monitors, as does the P650.

gs

 

[Santilli]

May have solved the problem. Kick the girl out...
s

 

[ddrueding]

May have solved the problem. Kick the girl out...
s

???

 

[Santilli]

Gf stayed out Saturday night, didn't tell me why?
Came home Monday morning with great story, and hurt leg.

In retro, sequence is exactly something she would do. Meet new people, go racing, next day, screw up leg in bay to breakers.

s

 

[Santilli]

Hmmm.

Recently had a chance to watch a Athlon 3500+ with about the same video card, and it did move pretty well.

Recently bought a switch, and that has increased internet browsing speed a bit. Noticeable, actually, and I didn't think it would be. Use a 16 port at work, and, with a 250 k connection, it seems real slow. With my connection, and far fewer computers, it does seem to make a difference.

s