DIY or shop bought PC - Page 2 - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Trelinski · #16 07-12-2002, 03:14 PM

I agree with benzman about the reliability. I've been building my own systems for a few years, but the rest of my family continues to buy them. My dad has a Dell desktop and laptop, and my sister has an old AST desktop. I cant say these systems have been anymore reliable then my homebuilt machine(which is overclocked heavily I might add).

Benzman, computer shows are actually a great place to get parts, and there are many around here, so I'm just keeping my eyes open for a good deal. The best deals I find are in the Asian neighbourhoods in TO.

G-Benz · #17 07-12-2002, 04:04 PM

I guess as an IS expert, I SHOULD be "rolling my own" PCs at home. I don't...

...why...I DON'T HAVE TIME!!!

Our family has three workstations, and an additional workstation (for my wife) that belongs to FedEx that is tied to an ISDN that they had wired to our house. I also have a laptop provided to me by FedEx.

Our hardware and software needs are not dramatic...family budget, learning software, and surfing the net. The work PCs are tailored for particular duties based on what my wife and I do. So we don't really need much that isn't already offered by the name-brand manufacturers. When one of our PCs ceases to be useful or becomes obsolete, it will be donated (with a tax credit), and a new one will take its place.

Kudos to those of you who can and do build their own stuff. If I had time to do that, I'd have that Beetle of mine looking and running pretty nicely by now...instead, it just sits.

rmasteller · #18 07-12-2002, 04:32 PM

I am a completly competent computer professional 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week. Hence the geeky avitar from the Simpson's TV show appearing in my Bio. But, I don't want to do computer work at home too. Many of my peers do, but I want to be a little more diverse. My MB is my biggest hobby, then golf, then social events. Outside of work, computer systems is the last thing I want to deal with.

Zeus · #19 07-12-2002, 04:38 PM

I've been building my own (and girlfriend's and girlfriend's Dad's, etc.) for a few years now...here's mine:

Asus A7A266 mthrbrd
Athlon 266 1.2 GHz CPU
MSI GeForce3 Ti220 128 MB vid card
512 MB DDR RAM

This one has been running smoothly for a year now on W2K.

I had plenty of headaches with the first few PCs I put together. Once you've done a few, you get the hang of it and you start to get a feel for what will work with what, etc.

The big bonus is that I learned A LOT from making them. Now I can diagnose pretty much any problem that crops up and fix it, or at the least, I can tell a tech shop exactly what is wrong.

I can't agree with Ashman more about the power supply, esp. if you are running an Athlon or equiv. I had a dead PC that took me days to figure out what was wrong and swapping every known component - it turned out to be the power supply. It was working enough to kick the machine on, but not enough to run it.

The NVidia vid cards are great, as are the MSI versions. Simple, fast and problem-free, especially when it comes to *shudder* drivers and driver compatibility.

#20 07-12-2002, 09:31 PM

I've had purchased systems that were awesome, and others that were total trash. I've had homebuilt systems that were awesome, and also a couple that were trash due to hardware problems. Literally, the difference is in the quality of what is installed. I build my own as I want to know that the best hardware that I could afford was used. That said, my current system is:

1.5gig Intel P IV processor
Soyo Motherboard
256 meg DDR Ram
1.4 mb floppy (from old system)
10 gig IBM hard drive (master) (from old system)
100 gig Western Digital hard drive (slave)
54X CD rom drive (from old system)
24x10x40 CDRW drive
SIS AGP SVGA card
on board sound
Adaptec SCSI card
100 meg internal SCSI zip drive (from old system, try finding one of these now)
US Robotics 56K modem
10 base-T network card (from old system, need to upgrade home network)
All this is housed in a server grade full tower case with three cooling fans and vented sides

Other stuff includes:
17" monitor (untill the cost of 17" LCD displays comes down)
cordless keyboard
optical mouse
lexmark printer

I have a 350mhz PII in the living room serving jukebox duties.

The P IV machine replaced a 266 mhz Pentium, which will be resurrected to run my weather station that needs an old operating system to work properly.

#21 07-12-2002, 10:23 PM

here is a good site to
www.nexthrdwareshop.com
great prices

pentoman · #22 07-13-2002, 08:42 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ashman

Ask me any questions you want. My friends don't call me nick burns for nothing.

Alon

Okay but you asked for it...

Why, in my spare computer, does the combination of Siemens OEM motherboard, Geforce based graphics card (tried 2), and certain memory sticks give me 'No RAM' beepcodes? Changing to a non Geforce graphics card solves it, so it ain't the sticks..., as does using same combo in a different motherboard.

Ashman · #23 07-13-2002, 09:28 PM

thats a good one. I would think if you are having problems with some ram and not others, perhaps that ram is the wrong configuration...

Alon

pentoman · #24 07-14-2002, 08:29 AM

Yes I suspect they must be incompatible - a reason not to make a computer by DIY. But I still do anyway, then I can do things like run my Power Supply fan at 7v instead of 12v so it's super-quiet. Now I just need some way of quietening the hard disks...

ML Dude · #25 07-15-2002, 12:31 PM

I would think that the biggest reason to go DIY is cost savings. The middle alternative which DieselPower alludes to and I have done which is purchase a built system. That's a system with best of breed components ordered to your spec.

I think that major manufacturers like Compac and Gateway rely on selling systems which use generic components and then brand label them. This may mean that the system components interoperate, but does not ensure reliability or performance! In some recent surveys of customer satisfaction, the quality of customer support from some major manufacturers was a factor in their low ratings.

I'm sure if a DIY built their own computer using the same cost parts that go into system packages, there would be a great cost savings. The reason the prices differences are slight is we aren't talking apples and apples!

#26 07-15-2002, 06:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by ML Dude
I would think that the biggest reason to go DIY is cost savings. The middle alternative which DieselPower alludes to and I have done which is purchase a built system. That's a system with best of breed components ordered to your spec.

I think that major manufacturers like Compac and Gateway rely on selling systems which use generic components and then brand label them. This may mean that the system components interoperate, but does not ensure reliability or performance! In some recent surveys of customer satisfaction, the quality of customer support from some major manufacturers was a factor in their low ratings.

I'm sure if a DIY built their own computer using the same cost parts that go into system packages, there would be a great cost savings. The reason the prices differences are slight is we aren't talking apples and apples!

Actually, no, I wasn't implying buying a built system. I used to work in one of those sweatshops that builds them. They go together much like the Dells, Compaqs, and others. The shop owners typically put in the lowest cost part to maximize profit.

I strictly adhere to building my own machine. I can then research the best possible quality that my budget will allow. This was the problem with the Pentium machine that I recently retired. I paid too little attention to quality, and too much to low price as I was trying to build a fancy PC for it's day, and refrain from building up a large balance on a credit card that I worked hard to pay off. That particular machine gave me fits from day one, and probably had almost every single component except the microprocessor replaced at least once. That "cheap" pc ended up being the most expensive one that I've ever bought since very few of the parts lasted more than a week outside their warranties.

While I still had to pay close attention to cost on the new one, I still paid close attention to the quality of the parts going in. The new pc has been a dream so far. By this time with the last one, I had the cover off of it three times. It spent the last two years without a cover on it at all.