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thewelshbrummie
Yes, I really mean a starter for 70. Don’t worry, I’ll explain further in the 1st post of my project blog.
Firstly about me; I’m a student in Birmingham but was born and bred in Wales, hence the username. Thanks to being dyspraxic, I was computer literate before I was able to speak; I wasn’t able to string together decent sentences until I was 4 but was quite at home on my dad’s PC of 1986-vintage.
My main hobby is radio broadcasting, mainly with my student station in Birmingham. As such, I need a PC that’s nippy when encoding and with a big HDD; something that my current computer does. It also makes having something thta allows me to listen to FM radio using my computer; of that more below.
So onto my computer history, the recent details being fraught with many breakdowns and annoyances with the manufacturer, hence my decision to build my own.
The first computer of my own was an IBM business machine with Windows 3.11 and IBM-DOS, which I hated as I had to relearn the major commands I knew from MS-DOS (I will add that I had my own Amiga 500, of which more below as it’s relevant to my new-build). It was a rather basic machine; a 486 CPU at 66MHz, with 8 MB RAM and a 512MB HDD. In it’s final year, a 6.4GB HDD was added, (along with Windows 98 which in hindsight was a poor decision, but in fairness I was 13 at the time). This was split into four 1.51GB partitions as the 486 CPU couldn’t handle such a big HDD.
My second computer arrived in 1999, a P3 CPU clocked at 450MHz with 64MB RAM and an 8.2GB HDD. The aforementioned 6.4GB HDD was moved into my new base unit, but the partitions remained as I could never move all my files onto the one HDD in the 5 years I had it.
I would have had this computer longer if it wasn’t for being dyspraxic (adding a 2nd 64MB RAM chip made it far more stable after the registry was hammered, but it was still rather slow). Having started university, I was given my current machine (the student support people give computers to people with disabilities and while I’d argue that mine are minimal, I still couldn’t refuse a new computer!) along with my current 17″ TFT (I was using a 17″ CRT from 2000) but of this machine more below, as it’s been very problematic in 2007. The original spec as a P4 at 3GHZ, 512MB RAM, a GeForce 440MX and a 120GB HDD (with 100GB usable space). Actually I lie when I say it was free; even in May 2004 it was obvious that 256MB RAM wasn’t enough so I paid to double it, and a bit more for the TFT which I still use; so in total it cost a mere £200.
So why do I want to build my own; because the original P4 machine has caused me so many problems, especially this year. Less that a year after I had it the CD drive failed though was replaced under warranty with little hassle and at home, probably because I had ripped my entire CD collection using it.
However this year has been nothing but problematic. As I spend the holiday periods in Wales my base unit travels between home and Birmingham 3 times per year. Until January I had no problems with it, when all hell broke loose, caused my a USB power surge when I connected and used my scanner. Having had a frozen computer for 10 minutes, it seemed sensible to reboot it.
That was the last time that computer did anything.
It was refusing to BIOS POST, and was only spinning the HDD and DVD drives before stopping. Helpfully there was what I assume to have been a diagnostic PCI card installed, which I had never previously noticed. All that is had were 4 LEDs, all of which were lit (which is why I hadn’t noticed it).
Here is where the problems started, as the original repair didn’t make any difference and it failed to boot as before. It took 7 weeks from the original failure, and a threat of legal action (for inaction) to get a computer back (the problem their end was not having the exact same model of CPU which IMHO is ridiculous as they clearly had a similar one in stock (the 3.2GHZ rather than 3.0GHZ P4). I say “a computer” as it’s technically a different machine save for the HDD. New case, graphics (GeForce 5200FX), CPU (3.2GHZ P4 CPU) and a difference in the primary partitions (the original was split into 15GB and 85GB, it’s currently 30GB and 62GB).
The big problem is that the original repair included a reinstall of Windows due to poor booting speed (I had installed lots of software that I use along with games). However, this is where I lost trust in the manufacturers; they only duplicated the “My Documents” folder before wiping everything else on my computer, reformatting the HDD and partitions and then re-installing the OS (XP Home). Therefore I lost over 15GBs of data and my entire email database thanks to incompetence, rather than HDD failure. An angry phone call got nowhere and as such I’ve not trusted Microlink PC since.
So I had my new computer, but less than 8 weeks from having received it (and a return journey to Wales) the PSU failed; a rather obvious bit of troubleshooting when blue sparks appear from it! Another 3 weeks later, it was repaired and is pretty much the computer I now have.
However, I haven’t called this post “Starter for 70″ for nothing. Since the 3 year warranty expired in May, I’ve made some additions to the spec of mmy existing PC and it’s far more functional than before. However these additions will be used in my new-build, hence my mentioning them here.
As my room in Birmingham has its own aerial connection to the roof aerial, I wanted to make the most of it and build a computer that could be used as a media centre. I initially went for the Freecom USB dual-digital tuner thanks to the review in PC Pro and it’s recommended award, which worked well enough. However I was far too tempted by the Compro T750, so a visit to Scan in June made it mine.
Why that TV card? Partly because of the twin tuners, but it also has a useful FM receiver (which is an essential for me) and the remote is fantastic; having rewired the internals, the power switch is now connected directly to the TV card and I can now use the remote control to boot-up and shutdown my computer. Along with decent enough software and Media Centre compatibility with XP Media Centra and Vista, it was an essential buy (the Freecom isn’t Media Centre compatible and is therefore not needed).
You could argue that the FM part of the tuner is unecessary, as I invested in Griffin Technology’s original RadioSHARK (you can look at the current model here). Version 1 of the software allows recording of FM/AM radio in wma or wav (version 2 replaces wma recording with mp3, but it’s buggy and has failed to record about half of my scheduled recordings). It’s reliable with the original software but I don’t use the AM tuner, so the FM tuner on my TV card is better and can be controlled via the supplied remote control.
The 2nd purchase is perhaps frivolous but it will have uses in the future; my new £20 DVD-RAM SATA drive. It is much faster than the existing CD-RW/DVD reader that I still have.
The other 2 upgrades I’ve made were free thanks to chance. My flatmate upgraded his computer with 2GB of RAM, making his existing 512MB useless (as he has 2 RAM slots). Here’s where the replacement computer has favoured me somewhat; the current motherboard, unlike it’s predecessor, has 4 RAM slots rather than 2 and 2 SATA slots. My broken computer had the RAM split over 2 DIMMS so any upgrade would have meant losing the original DIMMs; however my current machine has a single 512MB DIMM and 3 spare slots. Luckly, my flatmates spare DIMM was PC3200 like mine, so I’ve been able to double my RAM for free.
The other free upgrade is a new HDD; my dad purchased the Custom PC Elite listed Samsung HDD (he doesn’t read the mag), making the elemental mistake of purchasing a SATA drive without checking any of the computers he uses. Typically, none of his computers have SATA slots. So I’ve now got a free 500GB HDD sitting inside my computer… how the broken PC I had in January has actually been of benefit, though it is still at the expense of 15GB of data (mainly game saves and my emails; tbh I’d still prefer to have that data to hand).
So onto the new-build. I’ve mentioned the upgrades I’ve made to my existing computer, as I intend on using the HDD, TV card and DVD-RAM drive in my new build and have therefore already spent £70 on it; there was little point in waiting!
So what am I after? Something very fast but at a reasonable price. I may overclock but I’d prefer a reliable and quiet PC that’s as fast as possible.
Do I have any limits? Not really. My target is not to spend much more than a grand, though I will if it’s necessary and I’m more than happy to spend up to £1,300 on a new base unit.
I say that as my TFT is still good; even though it’s beige, is VGA only, is 17″ and has a response time of 14ms, it’s more than good enough for me. I’m also holding out until 1080p TFTs drop in price drastically and ideally are smaller than 24″ screens. As for my speakers, they’re 7 years old, beige and box-like, but they’re still capable of pumping more than enough volume for my needs (to the point that I did a presentation using them and it more than filled the room). I am seriously tempted by a 2.1 JBL set, but from that it should be obvious that full surround sound isn’t what I’m after.
So the base unit; I’m still deciding on some components. But I have made some hard decisions.
Case; the black Antec P180, especially as ebuyer have it for £70 including P&P. It’s ideal for what I want; no flashy lights, no window and plenty of HDD storage options. It’s as close to perfect for my needs.
Memory & CPU; the problem at the time of writing as I’m intending on waiting for DDR3 and Penryn to become mainstream. Ideally I’ll be going for 1,333MHz RAM (I don;t want more than 2GB RAM at the moment as I’ll be using the 32bit Vista Ultimate as my OS) and a FSB matched CPU. Of the current options it would have to be the E6750 or E6850; quad-core can wait!
HDD; The Samsung drive is fantastic and unless terabyte drives drop in price (and platters) I’ll be buying 2 more (I don’t want to buy a HDD with 5 platters as I am trying to build a fairly quiet PC). The existing drive will be converted to backup my 250GB laptop and 250GB external drive, which I still need for my radio work (so I can transfer any mp3 I own).
OS; Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit. This is essential for my needs. DosBox makes all of my Dos games run perfectly (which my Win 98 machine couldn’t always manage, even with my autoexec.bat rewrites for the boot in dos mode). However Xp makes many of my games fail to run; patches and the compatibility mode have got most of them working, but there are still a few that don’t work. So I want to get everything working on a 32bit OS before I switch ti 64it.
I also mentioned my old Amiga 500 above. I still have it and over 400 floppy disks. This is a big side project as I’m intending on creating image files for the lot. I’ve already got Amiga Forever which works really well, so I just need to convert them. The same goes for my old Minidiscs, I’ll soon be ordering the final Hi-MD recorder Sony made as it does USB conversion of analog recordings (including those I made with my old band) and want to convert them all to mp3; ALL of my other music has already been converted.
Again, I’d prefer to do both on a 32bit OS that I know will work rather than try it on a 64bit OS and have more RAM (4GB seems excessive even now, regardless of the OS being 64bit or not).
So I’ve got plenty of shopping to do and plenty of work to do. If you’ve read all this way then thanks for doing so! I’ll be updating whenever I made a purchase or a major decision with my new-build and I hope you find it an interesting read from someone who has used computers for 20 of my 22 years but having never built my own.
btw I would create a reader blog on Custom PC if it wasn’t for already having my own general ramblings; they’re usually about radio (my other big hobby) and interesting things I’ve found/heard. Check it out here.
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