[Gllug] hardware recommendations?

[Jonathan Harker]

On Sunday March 2 2003 15:07, Steve Nicholson wrote:
> Had a quick look at my local hardware shop and have a couple of
> questions for you people in the know with the latest stuff.

You too can be in the know:
   www.tomshardware.com
   www.anandtech.com
   www.sharkyextreme.com
   www.aceshardware.com

> 1. Is an Intel P4 1.7Ghz really going to be that much better over a
> Intel Celeron 1.7Ghz?  Celeron is about £40 and the P4 is over twice
> that at £90!  Going for an Intel as I leave my box on all the time and
> I read the article about the tests with the AMD catching fire (don't
> want to burn my house down).  Is a Celeron a P3 or a low end P4?

I've used AMD kit exclusively for about the last 4 years (K62-400, Duron 800, 
Athlon 1400, Athlon XP 2200). I can personally vouch for their non-flammable 
behaviour and solid reliability. Rumours of baked chips are nonsense as far 
as I'm concerned.

Most realistic benchmarks show Athlons go the same as or faster than equiv. 
Intel kit, even including the much-HypedThreading 3GHz model (Athlon XP 2800 
is about the same), and what's more they're way cheaper.

> 2. Is a motherboard with onboard sound and network any good/work with
> Linux? I already have a good soundblaster sound card and 3com Nic.

I'm running an Asus A7V333 motherboard with onboard ethernet, USB2, firewire, 
sound, promise RAID (which I haven't got around to yet :-) which all works 
fine. I'd recommend doing a bit of homework first and making sure your chosen 
kit has Linux cred.

> 3. Any particular chipset I should be looking for in a motherboard for
> Linux compatibility?

If you go Athlon, you're probably best off with the VIA KT266/333/400 line. 
Toms Hardware suggests the NVidia nForce2 chipset is the best Athlon chipset 
(dual channel DDR, whizzy onboard GeForce 4 graphics, best performance), but 
I have no idea whether it is well suppported in Linux.

Also, bear in mind the choice of chipset makes bugger all difference to 
overall performance, ditto the choice of mobo maker using the same chipset. 
Nowdays the speed bottleneck is mostly disk IO (gaming aside!).

> 4. Any recommendations for mother boards? My only really requirement is
> AGP slot and I would like one ISA slot for my SCSI adaptor so I can
> still use my CDW. I get the feeling there aren't any P4 boards that
> support ISA anymore.

Asus, Gigabyte and Abit are good motherboard makes (cf. above sites).

You'll be hard pressed to find any new boards with ISA slots nowadays. Maybe 
you could go hunting for a 2nd hand mb, or buy an Adaptec PCI SCSI card?

> 5. Any particular RAM specifications I should be looking at?  Hoping to
> get 512Mb, I see there is cheap 512Mb for £55, doesn't give any specs
> though just PC133.

Get decent ram! You might pay a tenner more for it, but it's more reliable. 
Especially considering your current plight may be due to dodgy ram! :-)

> 6. Know where to get a Nexus NX-3000 power supply at a reasonable price?
> They are £52 +VAT at http://www.quietpc.com/uk/psu.php but work out at
> £45 in their US shop!  Why are things so expensive in the UK?

I have an Enermax Whisper PSU which is completely silent. I also have the 
matting and foam (which upped my case temperature 5 degrees, but it is worth 
it) and one of those copper flower thingies on my Athlon 2200. CPU 
temperature is 48 degrees. Try getting a P4 down in that range, you'd need 
liquid nitro! The loudest noise is my oldest hd - the PC is almost completely 
silent when it winds down after 30 minutes!

> Any pointers appreciated.
> thanks again.
> Steve.

Hope that helps  :-)
Cheers,
Luv Jon

-- 
Jonathan Harker
www.jonathanharker.co.uk

Men often believe -- or pretend -- that the "Law" is something sacred, or
at least a science -- an unfounded assumption very convenient to governments.


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