arch13

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

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shakran

Now is a pretty decent time to buy new. Prices aren't very high. You're in for a new chip (minimum , I wouldn't be surprised if you need a new motherboard as well) anyway, so you may as well do your full upgrade now and get it out of the way. Especially since, if you only get a chip now, and then go upgrade later, you'll be buying a new chip anyway.

The 506 is the top of the line standard (non-hyperthreading) P4 chip.

Your motherboard uses http://www.crucial.com/store/partspe...E=BL6464AA1005
DDR2 ram. As you can see, it's rather expensive.

Nvidia is generally considered to be on top of the graphics card game right now. Wait a few minutes and it'll be ATI again. those two switch off quite often.

Keep in mind you'll still need a new power supply, and you'll probably need better cooling than you had in your old one.

why such a low price point? If you went up by just 300 bucks or so you could build yourself a real screamer that would last you way more than 3 years assuming you don't want the latest & greatest games.

arch13

Becuase that's all the budget can spare. The computer is important, but not more important than the bills

What type of memory is that though Shakran? DDR2-8000?
I was trying to figure out last night, and it looked like the system used either 4300 or 5200 ddr ram. Could somebody please tell me what type of memory an intel 506 needs to match it's FSB?

Also, what ATI and GeForce cards are good right now?
I see a GeForce 6600 for $69.00

or a

Radeon X550 for 65.00

Are either of these any good?

Along with the motherboard, Network card, and HDD above, either of these cards puts me at 500.00 without having a case or operating system.

Is it possible to make a decent system below $500.00 with the motherboard combo I pointed out, or am I just dreaming?

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xepherys

Well, first, do you know for sure what parts do and do not still work? Replacing the CPU for sure, based on the previous issue, is highly recommended. I would say the following parts:


Asus A8N-E ATM Mobo $110.00

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ $160.00

For a video card, I recommend an ATI FireGL card for the type of work you do. For gaming, I'd never in a million years recommend ATI, but here it's much more fitting. Has better OpenGL support for CAD and 3D work. You can pick up a 128MB card for about $175 or so... PCI Express.

Your memory may transfer over. If not I recommend Mushkin SP3200 512MB chips for $40.00 each. You don't need more than CAS3 for that type of work (again, a different type of recommendation from gaming). The 3-3-3-8 timing will be good, and you should see a memory improvement over PC2700. Also this is $40 for one stick, meaning it's an easy, and relatively cheap upgrade to 1GB of RAM. Crucial, Corsair, Geil and OCZ are also reputable, solid brands of memory. I've used Muchkin for years, though, and prefer them overall.

As for harddrives, Maxtor, WD and IBM/Hitachi are decent... for SATA drives, I tend to recommend Seagate. If you're mirroring drives, you won't increase their size, you'll just have a 1 for 1 backup. Maybe you already understand that, just clarifying. Failure rates are roughly the same as they've always been. Seagate is the most reliable, currently, but also tends to be a touch more expensive. If you back up your data some other way, get a larger drive. But then remember that it's that much more to back up. Getting 2 decent size drives and mirroring them is always a good option. The ASUS board, of course, has RAID 0, 1 an 0+1 on board.

As for power supplies, I generally recommend Antec, though ThermalTake and Sparkle are both great brands as well. The Antec SmartPower 350W goes for about $50 and is decent. If you have a few more bucks to throw at it, go for a Antec TRUEPOWER2 480W for $85.00. If you really want a high end power supply, try the Antec Phantom 500W Silent for $160.00.

As you can probably tell from the links, I also recommend NewEgg.com for buying online. VERY fast and inexpensive shipping, good customer support, easy to RMA through if something comes DoA. I think many ppl here would recommend them as well.

At any rate, if you have any other questions, feel free to ask here or PM me. I can get any data you may need to back up product claims and such. Good luck!

xepherys

I'd vote for the GeForce if these are the cards you're looking at. Is your heart set on the MSI board? MSI is a good brand, but their boards are not generally as efficient and fast as Asus or Tyan or a few others. With the type of work you listed, bus efficiency is important to not sitting around waiting for things to happen. Also, do you need the bluetooth? I assume this is a home system, so the security concerns aren't too great, so I suppose it's not a problem. Working with system and network security everyday, my company strongly recommends against bluetooth currently... but again, in a home environment it shouldn't be an issue as blutooth doesn't have too great a range (unless you make one of those BT rifles). Can you reuse your existing case? I assume you're already reusing CD drive, floppy, sound, etc. Can you just keep using your exisitng HD? As for OS, you should be able to transfer your OS license from one machine to another. When you buy a system with Windows pre-loaded, you still own that copy of Windows, regardless of what the manufacturer may lead you to believe. $500 is plenty for a computer... but often not a very good one. I'd say $750 would get you a great PC for what you do. If you can maybe skip the HD upgrade and such for now, you might save yourself a bit now and be able to upgrade later. Just a thought.

arch13

Thank you for the advice Xepherys.

My mind is set on the MSI board based on previous experiance in system building. The Dual-Net card is in fact a big point to me. In our house we have two palm's and two cell phones, all of which sync their Phone Number Databases with the computer for business and personal use. It also lets me eliminate a wire snaking along the wall in the Parlor room of the old Victorian we live in by placing the router & modem at the back of the room.
MSI tends to be good at Bios and Driver updates, and has one of the best integrated Bluetooth/WiFi ideas around right now.

I like the board, and the combo is a good deal for the price. The board alone is $130.00 from either Tiger or Newegg. If I could find a better proccesor that still keeps the combo price under $275.00 I would grab it in a second.

I can pick up either a 250gb SATA drive or a copy of Windows Xp Pro OEM via a credit I have at Tiger. Which is more worth the use of the credit? I do need a copy of Xp Pro, to replace Windows 2000.

I did find some
DDR2-800 (6400) Memory for $55.00. Is that a fairly good price for DDR2 right now?

I'll probably end up getting the Combo at this point, so the question now is such:
What else can I do with $200.00 plus a $150.00 Tiger credit to make a good system?

I need the following:
-Power Supply (Case / Power supply would be even nicer so at some point I can revive the current machine as a server with a flavor of RedHat)

-Video Card

-Either 1 or 2 drives of fair storage capicity. 1 larger drive, or two smaller drives to use as RAID with one mirroring the other. SATA only needed.

-Xp Pro w/ SP2

-I would like a CDR to replace my CD-Rom, but that can be taken care of later or via Ebay.

Assuming I used my credit for XP Pro; I need to find a HDD, Case, and Video card for 200.00. What if anything would you suggest?

The best I've come up with so far (@ Newegg) is:

-MSI P4N Sli-FI, $119.00
-Intel P4 630, $181.00
-Dual-Net Card, $26.99
-512mb DDR2-800, $55.99
-Maxtor 200gb Sata-150, $84.99
--------------------------------
Total: $464.98

That still leaves me without a Case/PS

Suggestions are most welcome

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Sty

As looking at your current configuration, I can suggest you the following. Since you don't have any specific OpenGL card now, I don't think you should get one now either. And you don't play games. Photoshop loves RAM, so lets see:

Motherboard:
A8N-VM CSM $82 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131570
-Integrated everything. Stable.

Harddrive:
Western Digital WD2500SD 250G $105
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144179
-Resonable amount of space, reliable. 5y warranty, certified for 24/7 use (other cheaper drives certify only 8h/day)

Memory:
2xBUFFALO 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 $74.55
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820150007
-Photoshot and CAD loves memory, here is 2G of CAS2.5 (a tiny bit faster than CAS3) of it

Ok, so now we're at $336

CPU:
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice $164
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103535
Get's you to the total $500.
You can skimp on the memory to save the 74.55. You can survive with 1G.

Case & PSU:
Recycle from old computer. Along with the rest.

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Nimetic

I think that you should first figure out what is wrong with the PC.

Shouldn't cost much. I'd suggest that a technical person would be able to get a fair idea of the problem within 15mins.

Sure - buy a new computer if you need it. Apart from games, I'm not sure if there's much that came out in the last few years that needs new hardware.

And perhaps if you are looking to upgrade, wait until M$ release the list of (hardware) requirements for Windows Vista. After all, it's been late for a few years now. They'll have to ship it eventually.

JolietJake

Fix the old box. Start saving up now for a new box to put together in a year. Vista will (allegedly) be out for a few months by then. Vista will benefit greatly from using dual-core processors. All open windows capable of being displayed in 3-D will appear that way with 256 mb. video card. Use your Tiger credit to repair your current computer.

In 6 or 8 months we'll all have very nice obsolete computers if we want to upgrade to Vista. I hope to go to OS X by then! Mrs.Jake will be stuck with Windows. At least she's covered, since the last Dell she got has a dual-core P4, 2gigs of ram, and an ATI All-in-One with 256mb memory.

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Sty

Too bad that no no display card nor computer monitor support the HDCP yet, so you're still out of luck if you'd like to show protected content on that...

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shortynickel

I also would find out what is wrong with the computer, the first thing i would do is replace the ps, but just make sure that you can return the ps without getting a restocking fee just incase that doesnt help.

If you do plan on upgrading i would go with abit kn8 sli. I would stay away from ibm/hitachi hd's. i like maxtor and wd drives. i would keep the hd you have atm unless you are running out of room on it. I wouldnt get less then 1gb memory for whatever board you end up getting.

As for the pci-express video cards, it comes down to what price range you have and if you want a dvi or vga card. I would get a dvi card , you can always get an adapter cable. (I have some if you would like one).

Also i would hold off getting xp and wait til vista comes out expecially if you get a 64 bit processor.

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