My computer died recently and I have been letting it sit and feel lonely in the corner, hoping it would decided to work again so it wouldn't be alone. Alas, it did not work out as well as a I planned.
I'm hoping that fellow TFP'ers can help me analyze the cost and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of fixing the machine versus replacing it. I'm not just talking about monetary cost, but also usefullness for the tasks I do.
To eleborate, I'm an architectural designer who works for long periods in AutoCAD and Photoshop with some small 3d modeling on Microstation. I do not play video games on my computer, it is strictly work related
I currently have a
KT3-Ultra2 BR with an Athlon XP 2100 that had been underclocked to 1700 following a previous partialy system overheat that left it damaged. The system had 512mb of DDR 2700 memory and an 80gb single drive.
The CPU needs to be replaced, along with the power supply and CPU fan.
I estimate that it all could be repaired for about 200.oo assuming no new problems come to lite after it can boot again.
My other option is to build new. I of course enjoy this, but need to look longterm at if it is cost effective. I have not kept up with the latest and greatest in the last year becuase of work. Therefore I was hoping for opinions on the configuratiion below with the understanding that I need to keep my cost below $500 in the long run. If I go for the larger purchase, I need it to last at least 3 years without being so "old fashioned" as to be un-useable.
The system I'm looking at is as follows:
+
MSI P4N SLI-FI NVIDIA Socket 775 ATX Motherboard and an Intel Pentium 4 506 2.66GHz Processor - $264.99
with
+
MSI Bluetooth/WiFi card - $25.99
What is a Pentium 506, and how does it compare to other Intel and AMD products? The deal looks good, and really like the features and quality of MSI (MSI is what I'll use no matter what) Does this combo strike you as a good deal?
+
Maxtor Diamond Max10 250gb SATA drive - $89.00 after rebate.
I like Maxtor, but how good are their SATA drives? Would it be better to have a raid array (Mirror) of two SATA drives that are cheaper or one large disk? What are the disk failure rates at nowdays?
That's all I could find that caught me.
What's good for PCI-E video cards nowdays? What type of memory does a system like this use?
Am I wasting my money? I could repair for now and hold off if there was something coming that was of major use, but the horizon doesn't seem to hold much.
What would you add to the above parts to make a great system?
Please help me figure out what my options are
