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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC )

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To: al who wrote (8051)	7/10/1999 10:54:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Read Replies (3) of 14778

Looks like everyone here has already built their Dream Machine and this thread has became focused on how to add or replace different parts of the computer or how to tweak the software drivers etc .. I do think we all have computers...how did you post to the thread?<g> Tweaking..updating..off the shelf..building from scratch...all good topics for the thread. would love to see what peoples' boxes contain inside .... i.e. which motherboards are the best which sound cards and other cards are the coolest etc etc The exact status of my two machines is probably not very interesting. I will give you a rundown on the preferred status of my most recent machine. Case Full tower..preferably with a lot of external drive bays. I have the Supermicro with 5 external bays..Dave has had some good things to say about the Antec...6 external bays?? CPU PII line of CPUs. I have a Celeron 300A overclocked to 400. I have not kept up with the latest CPUs. I just checked price watch pricewatch.com It looks like the 450 PIIs are now under $250. The PIIIs are about the same price. What is the difference? I know the PIII has an internal serial number. What distinguishes the PIII..full speed cache??? Anyhow if I were to get a CPU today it would probably be the PII or PIII 450. RAM I would go for 128 MB ECC RAM Motherboard I have an IWill, Aopen and an ABIT..no complaints with any of them. If I had to chose a favorite it would be the Aopen. Again I am not up with the latest...the latest is often not worth the money ( mostly referring to CPUs here). I would opt for 5 PCI slots or more if more is available..unless you have several legacy ISA cards you want to use. If you want SCSI peripherals you may want to consider onboard SCSI..cheaper..Aopen has a nice board with onboard SCSI..Clarence has one. Harddrives Minimum two for me. I am more interested in a redundant...reliable machine that can take a lick'n and keep on tick'n than a speed machine...don't get me wrong, I do like speed. Paying big bucks for marginal increases in speed is a waste of $ IMO. My second harddrive is a bootable harddrive that is boot selected from the motherboard bios. It will boot the machine if the first harddrive fails. IDE harddrives are the best bang for the buck for the base machine. A lot of posters have the Maxtor drives...IBMs are popular and we have at least one Quantum<g> If I had my rathers all of my harddrives would be in removable trays..The case I really like has 10? external bays (Calif PC)..a bit over priced IMO. Buying the best of everything gets expensive quickly and the benefits are minimal. So..I have a combination of internal harddrives and harddrives in removable bays. Video cards. I have pretty much switched to ATI from Matrox. I have had some recent trouble with Matrox video drivers..I picked up one of their dual monitor cards and it crashed NT:( Then I read the manual and it said it was not compatible with some mobo bioses..which ones?? I want a FAST 2D card and do not know what th fastest 2D card is. I am not a gamer. SCSI Best thing if you want peripherals..scanners..CDR..CDRW. CDRW is now affordable IMO..DVD is also worth a look...oops you are gonna need all those external bays <g> OS NT if your software runs in NT. It is more stable. (I use NT, Win95 and still run some DOS apps) The heavy weights all use NT. I still use mostly Win95 but am trying to make the transition. Essential software. Drive Image to make hardrive clones. Seagate Backup EXEC to automate daily backups of essential files. Sound Cards. The latest machine still has no sound card..and I like it like that. I can still listen to CDs as the Plextor has a microphone jack. One of these days I will get a sound card. Spots says they are needed for some programs to work properly. They are resource hogs so I plan on roughing it without one for a while. Monitors 21 inch. (can you put a 21 inch monitor in the trash when it breaks??) If you are going multiple maybe 19 is the way to go. 21s are very heavy. Let us know what you have in mind. What is your intended use? Are you going to assemble it yourself? or just design it? Zeuspaul

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