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At home, we’re enjoying working on a brand new PC. Since I never got the NetVista X40 fixed completely, an upgrade was way overdue.

This is actually my first ‘all-new’ computer. My previous expenses never went above €150. Which basically means that I’d seen enough reliability and compatibility woes for quite a while.

I had some experience with assembling computers for relatives before, and I like making my own choice about components, so I bought all parts separately. Below is a descriptiong of the ‘component selection’ process that I went trough. I’m not claiming this is interesting, but I might be of some use if you’re in a similar situation…

A Mac mini would have been very nice, but it’s a bit expensive for just running Linux and the g/f also needs the odd Windows session for using crappy ‘multimedia’ educational software. Besides, where’s the geek fun in buying a pre-assembled system?

Other ‘mini’ systems (like mini-itx) are a bit underpowered, and hard to extend or upgrade. I’d certainly consider them for a media center setup or a server-in-the-closet system, but as a new desktop I wanted something powerful for a change. That meant going the ‘mainsteam’ route.

So, plain ‘el cheapo’ x86 hardware it would be. I optimized for price (still a cheap bastard), acceptable noise levels, and ergonomics (i.e., no more huge CRT on the desk ).

The first choice you have to make when building a computer is ‘the platform’. If you want live on the cheap side, there are only two choices, really: AMD socket AM2 or Intel socket 775. Intel has the best performing chips, but not always the cheapest ones. Critical factors are features (like dual core) and — more importantly — power consumption (and the related noise levels for cooling). You also have to take into account what kind of motherboard you can choose to go along with the CPU.

I decided to go for an AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350, which is reasonably priced, has two cores, low power consumption (65 nm process, 45Watt), and virtualization capabilities. Comparable Intel chips were more expensive, and scored worse on motherboard options.

Which is important because I’m not much of a gamer and wanted a nice integrated graphics solution to save some money on a graphics card. I chose the (fairly recent) AMD 690G chipset, which has the best 3D performance on the market and is, in general, a well-done modern chipset. According to reviews, it’s fairly power-efficient as well.

Now, actually nVidia has a better reputation for its Linux drivers, but AMD/ATI has announced better support for open source drivers developers. I can live with that…

Just because you know what chipset to buy, doesn’t mean the motherboard choice becomes any easier. Of course you want something from a brand that usually delivers stable products (say, Asus, MSI or the like), but even then the choices are endless.

Slight differences in prices and/or model numbers may mean you get less cables or connection ports (DVI? FireWire? HDMI? Serial-ATA cables?). I opted for an ASUS M2A-VM with HDMI expansion (which I don’t really need and takes up the PCI Express x16 slot, unfortunatly). It has some nice features, such as lower cooling fan speeds when the temperature is low. It came in a box with two SATA cables, which saves quite some bucks compared to the single cable that came with the MSI K9AGM3-F that I built before. The MSI however had a driver/documentation CD which was actually readable. Handy if you want to store the motherboard manual PDF document on disk somewhere — you’ll regret later if you don’t.

I didn’t really care about the hard disk model. As long as it’s big enough, and doesn’t make too much noise, I’m happy. I took a gamble and bought a Seagate 300 GB (Gigabyte, not GibiByte) serial ATA disk. It could have been a little more silent, but maybe I can fix that late on with hdparm -M.

Even less attention went to the DVD writer. A serial ATA model with a nice price did the trick.

As a case, I went for something cheaper than the ultra-silent Antec Sonata (drool). An AOpen QF50C is not butt-ugly and nice to work with, although it lacks a removable motherboard tray. The fan noise is not inaudible, but minimal.

The screen, though, was a tougher decision. Many video cards and most motherboards have crappy analog output quality, so I wanted a monitor with digital input. Which is not present on most of the cheap monitors — much to my surprise.

Most panels on the market today are TN panels, which usually only have a 6-bit brightness range per color sub-pixel. An ideal monitor would have 8-bit per color, in order to get a full 24-bit color depth. (When the specs don’t show a panel type, you can usually determine the color range from the specified color space: 16.2M colors instead of 16.9M actually means 18-bit (262K colors) with interpolation). However, screens with better color fidelity are hard to find and a lot more expensive. In the end I decided to ignore the panel type, thinking that all modern panels are better than the ones of previous generations, and even laptop screens are just ‘good enough’ these days.

Next, I actually prefer a plain 4:3 form factor over the widescreen (16:9 or 8:5 or what have you) models that are common these days. Widescreens have less display surface compared to similar 4:3 with the same ‘inch size’. On the other hand, regular form-factor monitors usually have a lower resolution. So it’s hard to find an optimal combination, certainly if you require DVI input and a low price.

In the end I bought the cheapest 19″ wide monitor with DVI input which is not totally ugly. The (analog) Acer 1916WAs failed so miserably on the ugly test, that its lower price could not make up for it. The LG L194WT-SF is so much nicer; it’s a really well-built monitor with a thin bezel.

To finish off the system, I included an internal card reader — I especially like the extra front USB port it provides. I also scavenged a twelve-speed CD burner and a floppy reader from an older, broken system. Wondering if I’ll ever use the floppy drive though. The keyboard is nice black one that came with the Netvista, and we have a wireless Logitech thing as mouse.

It’s funny that the resulting system is very comparable to the budget models of the ‘best buy guides’ by both tweakers.net and Ars Technica.

Due to very low price differences, I bought all components in one shop: tones.be. It’s a cheap webshop, but also a nice physical shop not far from my home with a professional attitude. I can certainly recommend it.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 21:13 and is filed under Consumerism, English, Hardware. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.