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Misery loves company, as the saying goes, and nowhere is that more evident than on the Linux blogs. Case in point: Linux Planet's Carla Schroder recently told a woeful tale about her attempt to upgrade the CPU on her ECS motherboard, and it has inspired a vast outpouring of sympathy from geeks far and wide. "My nice new Phenom X3 CPU worked beautifully at first," Schroder wrote. "The whole system was more stable, and I could do things in Audacity that I couldn't before, like 32/96 recording. But the good times did not last, and after a couple weeks of happiness it croaked."
I have been building 'whitebox' computers for 2 decades now. All 5 of my current desktops are 'home built' and have been working just fine for a minimum of a year now. (I replace about one per year simply to try out some of the new hardware that is offered.)
A few comments:
1) A lot of the sad tales in the article seem to be the result of the 'builders' not being hardware savvy.
2) CPUs come in various power consumption levels (watts) and can be run at varying voltage levels if you are knowledgeable/brave enough to play around. This mainly seems to be done by gamers trying to get the last bit of speed out of their cpu.
In simplest terms, if I up the voltage to the chip I also up the power consumed and consequently the heat produced. (P=IxE) So I get higher performance at the cost of higher temperature which translates into shorter chip life. If I value the performance, it can be a good trade-off vs. buying a faster (more expensive) CPU.
3) Power supplies vary by quality in how close to the rated voltage is supplied (5v might actually be 5.1 or 4.8, etc.), how regulated they are (how much does the voltage vary under changing loads) and the quality of components (how reliable will they be over time).
Beyond selecting a supply that has the correct power connectors for your system and which supplies sufficient power for the system demands, you are paying for appearance (blue lights?), noise level (quiet fans), convenience (no requirement for splitter cables to connect all your devices or detachable cables to avoid having to tie up unused connectors - neater looking).
A good supply should last through several systems. I have one system using an old 300w supply that was too small for the system I built replacing the one it came out of. The last system I built up had very low power requirements, but needed a 4 pin CPU power plug and SATA power connectors. I added the 4 pin cable and plug (from a trashed supply) and used adapters for the SATA connections. My 4 year old power supply is working fine.
4) Memory must be matched to the CPU and MB bus speeds and must be the correct type for the MB. So this should be selected from supported memory types for the MB and fast enough for the CPU you intend to install. Every motherboard manufacturer offers list of known compatible memory and cpus. Using something not on the list may work or may result in serious hair loss and spouse / significant other severe irritation with you.
5) CPUs are offered in several socket types and must be matched to the MB socket type. (I generally select the MB first and then match the CPU and memory to it.)
6) You can select MBs today which have all the necessary features to get your system up without needing additional cards. (Analog and DVI video out, sound up to 7.1, HDMI, eSATA, USB, etc.) Make sure it meets your current and projected needs and then only buy cards to get increased performance or functionality. (generally video and hardware RAID if needed) Make sure the MB will support the amount of memory you want. (It is often less expensive to upgrade later if you have 3 or 4 memory slots and only use 1 or 2 to begin with. Then you won't have to throw away any memory if you want to upgrade later.)
Finally, every vendor has good and bad products. Check out not just the vendor, but the specific product you are interested in.
A great source of input is the ratings on Newegg. I check out the lowest ratings first to see what sort of problems people are reporting. After I weed out the obvious user errors / unqualified comments I get an idea of just what issues there may be with the specific MB, HD, Mem, etc.
Not everyone has the background or desire to develop the necessary skills and knowledge to build systems. Configured systems are a great bargain for these folks.
But, if you have the interest and even modest manual skills, exercise common sense and spend the time to investigate what you really want to achieve, building your own computer can result in all the features you want, higher quality components and sometimes even less cost than buying off the shelf.
Want to save a bunch of money while satisfying your computer needs? Buy someone's 'old' computer.
I have even gotten computers less than a year old off FreeCycle and simply wiped the disk and reloaded the desired software winding up with a great machine.
Sometimes you will need to upgrade the used box, but even after adding that in, you can save a bundle. Not to mention keeping stuff out of the landfill.
A few comments:
1) A lot of the sad tales in the article seem to be the result of the 'builders' not being hardware savvy.
2) CPUs come in various power consumption levels (watts) and can be run at varying voltage levels if you are knowledgeable/brave enough to play around. This mainly seems to be done by gamers trying to get the last bit of speed out of their cpu.
In simplest terms, if I up the voltage to the chip I also up the power consumed and consequently the heat produced. (P=IxE) So I get higher performance at the cost of higher temperature which translates into shorter chip life. If I value the performance, it can be a good trade-off vs. buying a faster (more expensive) CPU.
3) Power supplies vary by quality in how close to the rated voltage is supplied (5v might actually be 5.1 or 4.8, etc.), how regulated they are (how much does the voltage vary under changing loads) and the quality of components (how reliable will they be over time).
Beyond selecting a supply that has the correct power connectors for your system and which supplies sufficient power for the system demands, you are paying for appearance (blue lights?), noise level (quiet fans), convenience (no requirement for splitter cables to connect all your devices or detachable cables to avoid having to tie up unused connectors - neater looking).
A good supply should last through several systems. I have one system using an old 300w supply that was too small for the system I built replacing the one it came out of. The last system I built up had very low power requirements, but needed a 4 pin CPU power plug and SATA power connectors. I added the 4 pin cable and plug (from a trashed supply) and used adapters for the SATA connections. My 4 year old power supply is working fine.
4) Memory must be matched to the CPU and MB bus speeds and must be the correct type for the MB. So this should be selected from supported memory types for the MB and fast enough for the CPU you intend to install. Every motherboard manufacturer offers list of known compatible memory and cpus. Using something not on the list may work or may result in serious hair loss and spouse / significant other severe irritation with you.
5) CPUs are offered in several socket types and must be matched to the MB socket type. (I generally select the MB first and then match the CPU and memory to it.)
6) You can select MBs today which have all the necessary features to get your system up without needing additional cards. (Analog and DVI video out, sound up to 7.1, HDMI, eSATA, USB, etc.) Make sure it meets your current and projected needs and then only buy cards to get increased performance or functionality. (generally video and hardware RAID if needed) Make sure the MB will support the amount of memory you want. (It is often less expensive to upgrade later if you have 3 or 4 memory slots and only use 1 or 2 to begin with. Then you won't have to throw away any memory if you want to upgrade later.)
Finally, every vendor has good and bad products. Check out not just the vendor, but the specific product you are interested in.
A great source of input is the ratings on Newegg. I check out the lowest ratings first to see what sort of problems people are reporting. After I weed out the obvious user errors / unqualified comments I get an idea of just what issues there may be with the specific MB, HD, Mem, etc.
Not everyone has the background or desire to develop the necessary skills and knowledge to build systems. Configured systems are a great bargain for these folks.
But, if you have the interest and even modest manual skills, exercise common sense and spend the time to investigate what you really want to achieve, building your own computer can result in all the features you want, higher quality components and sometimes even less cost than buying off the shelf.
Want to save a bunch of money while satisfying your computer needs? Buy someone's 'old' computer.
I have even gotten computers less than a year old off FreeCycle and simply wiped the disk and reloaded the desired software winding up with a great machine.
Sometimes you will need to upgrade the used box, but even after adding that in, you can save a bundle. Not to mention keeping stuff out of the landfill.
No idea who ECS is, so this may be beside the point. I recently built a system based on an ASUS board. They were quite specific about the CPUs and memory that were supported and the PS requirements. Without this, I would not have attempted the build.
I always built my own computers until a couple of years ago when I could buy a retail computer cheaper than building one. I bought a Compaq presario with amd 64 cpu and win xp this was just before vista came out so I got a it for a good price last one in stock. under $500. It is still working and going strong running Linux my prefered OS. A few months ago I decided to replace my 10 year old computer (it was starting to show its age) with a new one for my network. Since memory and prices have come way down I decided to build one. Dualcore amd 4 gigs ram Gigabyte motherboard and western digital sata HD's and Sata CD/DVD burner. put it together and installed Ubuntu Linux 9.04 It is fast and working great. I have used ECS MB in the past, installed probably over 100 of them. Only had one that went bad and that was out of the box. I am a retired computer tech. For everyday computing non business, just surfing the net, Email, Letters and sending pictures. I don't need something that costs big $$$. That is the advantage of Linux.
Mel
Mel
