1) Build your own ! Pre-made boxes tend to be crappy, expensive, hard to
upgrade or usually, a combination of the three. Bare-bones systems from
Fry's(tm) are not worth the money - cheap parts.
2) For almost anything, you will do better at the computer swap meet than at
Fry's.
3) Don't buy these things from Fry's. RAM, HDs, Motherboards, Video cards,
Processors, or most anything else that costs more than $20 or so.
4) I /would/ buy a new Antec case with power supply from Fry's ($100) as well
as a floppy drive, cables or small items. Perhaps a cheap CDROM or DVD-ROM drive.
5) Buy RAM from
http://www.crucial.com
6) Buy other, expensive parts from mail order places to get good quality and
price. I would recommend off the top of my head :
Mwave.com :
http://direct.mwave.com/mwave/index.hmx?
Compuvest :
http://www.compuvest.org
Computers4sure :
http://www.computers4sure.com/
AccessMicro :
http://www.accessmicro.com
I have done business with all of these outfits with excellent results.
7) DO NOT USE : buy.com, buycomp.com, or anyone with the word BUY in the URL.
8) I like IBM Hard drives .... No ... I Love IBM hard drives.
9) Like Bill said ... Static electricity IS your enemy. (Can you say latent
defects ?) A ground strap is a good idea. The damage you cause may not show up
for weeks or months and may then be manifested as just a general flakiness.
Tough to troubleshoot.
10) Try using
http://www.pricescan.com as a starting point to get a feel for
the market on RAM, motherboards, CPUs and hard drives. Just don't buy from the
cheapest guys unless they happen to be on the list above.
I prefer Soyo and Supermicro motherboards but have had good luck with ASUS,
ABIT and I feel Intel boards are nice ONCE you get them WORKING !
I get most of the video, sound and network cards from ... The computer swap
meet. I have bought 10 3C905C 3com Nics for $20 total. SB 32AWE and 64 AWEs go
for $15 or $20 there also. I just bought another Matrox G200 there for $15. At
these prices, the gamble is well worth it.
If you look around, the prices are so cheap that it is a very good gamble at
the swap meet. Pay attention to how the person selling is handling the stuff.
(Can you say - Anti-Static bags ?) The bunch-o-nics I bought for $20 were just
tossed in a box but so far they have all worked.
I have a lot of boxes here and run 8 of them 24/7 on UPSs. The one I am typing
this on has 256 days since reboot. (Dual P!!! 600 with Supermicro P6DGS. I got
this motherboard second hand. It was too pricey for my blood new.)
I try to buy procesors brand new about 12 to 24 months after they are released
for sale. The 1Ghz Pentium 3s would be about at the 'sweet point' now. This
gets you fairly fast parts at about the cheapest price they will ever be at.
Once they get much older, availability starts to dry up and the price starts
going back up.
Feel free to contact me off-list if you need/want more info.....
I am pretty sure you have some bad hardware in your computer now ;-(
Matt wrote:
> This isn't really directly about Linux, but what are your opinions on
> building your own computer, or buying a Sony/Dell/whatever? I ask because
> for the past few years I've been building my own, and it doesn't seem to be
> working out too well for me. SuSE Linux 7.3 is supposed to have an amazingly
> easy install, but it took me a week to install it, even though my computer
> is very powerful. It always freezes somewhere, usually when it has to reboot
> or on its way back to the installation from rebooting. But anyway, I
> shouldn't go into all of that. I think a manufactured PC might work better
> because I know the manufacturers test all the parts together to make sure
> they don't "fight" with eachother, and because I let my friend borrow my
> SuSE CD's and he installed it flawlessly on his emachine, with windows, and
> that computer is about a third as powerful as mine.
>
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>
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>
--
Kevin O'Connor
"People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun ...
The GNU Manifesto - Copyright (C) 1985, 1993 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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