On 06/19/10 05:37 pm, [email protected] wrote:
I know we have been thru this before,but its 8 months since I looked into
building a new computer for the flex 5000 and Iam sure what was great 8 months
ago is not any longer the best pick. the box will run only the 5000a ,nothing
else. Running a tired old P-4 now ,time to upgrade. point me in the right
direction ,if the info is sitting around to read, I can't find it on the KB.
looking for ,mother board, processor, fire wire card, memory , video card,
recommendations, trying to keep the cost down a bit. be grateful for any help
in the right direction.
I don't think you can go wrong with a machine such as Neal Campbell
builds, but here is what I put together a couple of weeks ago (with
ballpark prices -- from NewEgg unless otherwise specified):
Motherboard: Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 [has integrated video] -- $120;
(This board also has 6GB/s SATA and USB3. I have no 6GB/s drives, and I
know of no USB3 devices, but I think I have read that even USB 2.0
external drives transfer data faster when connected to a USB3 port.)
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition -- $180;
(Neal is now using the AMD 6-core CPU, which is hardly any more
expensive than the quad-core one I used but slower (2.8GHz vs. 3.4GHz).
Nevertheless, I am glad that I bought the quad-core, because the BIOS on
the motherboard was too old to support a 6-core CPU. I *assume* that if
I had bought the 6-core CPU, I would still have had to install an older
CPU to get the motherboard operational and update the BIOS ready for the
6-core one.)
Memory: 4GB G.Skill 1.35V [power-saving] 1600 DDR3 supporting 7-8-7-24
timing -- $120;
Power Supply: Corsair TX650 -- $70 from Best Buy;
Case: Antec 300 -- $60 on sale at Best Buy (but NewEgg now has them
cheaper and with free shipping);
Hard disk: I already had a 500GB Seagate SATA drive that I recycled from
another computer. I know that Neal prefers Western Digital, but I get
the impression from reading reviews on NewEgg and elsewhere that all
manufacturers nowadays manage to turn out a significant percentage of
DOA drives (or drives that last only a few weeks, days, or even hours).
All the dead hard disks I have sitting around here are Western Digital.
I'd be inclined to recommend buying a drive locally so that you can
exchange it more conveniently if necessary -- and to a lesser extent the
same goes for power supplies.
Optical drive: I used an ATAPI drive I already had. Lite-On seem to have
a good reputation.
Firewire: The on-board VIA Firewire did seem to be not bad, but I bought
a Syba PCI card with Lucent chip anyway -- $12.
Serial card: Most motherboards these days have only one serial port, but
I need additional ports to communicate with the rotator and a wireless
weather station, so I bought a Syba 6-serial PCI card for $29.
There was free shipping on some of the items from NewEgg. The items from
Best Buy I bought at my local store.
73
Alan NV8A
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