In the spirit of the season, I will be receiving the following parts on Saturday:

• Case: Fractal Design Define R3 Titanium Grey

  • Soundproofed!

  • Tveysevalecanraq-friendly aesthetics ;o

• CPU: Intel Sandy Bridge Core i7-2600

  • The K version would have provided more overclocking and better integrated graphics, but it lacks virtualisation features, which are probably more useful than overclocking, and I won't be using the integrated graphics anyway.

• Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Deluxe

  • I had a hard time deciding between this and the Gigabyte UD5, but I found myself looking for excuses to get the Asus because it's pretty @.@

• Graphics: PowerColor HD 6970 PCS+ 2 GB

  • AMD (formerly ATI) vs NVIDIA was decided when I discovered that AMD have something called Powertune which automatically underclocks if the power draw exceeds 250 W, whereas nDIVia seem to have tied not only their drivers into their corresponding functionality, but also a list of recognised offending programs that nDIVia are going to have to update manually. Good luck combating thermal virus attacks with that. Sorry, Bob.

  • Having chosen AMD's most powerful single-GPU chip, I went out of my way to find an implementation where the apparently jet-engine stock cooler was replaced with a quieter cooler. mSI also did one that qualified, but it was too long for my case! PowerColor hardly seem to distribute in the UK, but eBuyer had about two in stock!

• Memory: Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 2000MHz XMS3 Memory Kit CL9 1.65V

• Primary hard drive: OCZ Vertex 3 2.5" 120 GB SATA-600 Solid State Drive

• Optical drive: LiteOn iHBS112 12x BD-RE with DVD±RW DL & RAM SATA Blu-Ray Drive - OEM Black

  • Forum threads dotted around were suggesting that LiteOn made some of the quietest models.

• CPU cooler: Gelid Tranquillo

  • Nearly had the Be Quiet(!) Dark Rock Advanced, but I thought 1.1 kg was asking for trouble.

• PSU: Corsair 950W TX Series PSU - 78A 12V Rail

  • Thanks to Tomasu for advising me against multiple-rail PSUs and finding me a good one when I was in a rush \o/

• And a Belkin surge protector. Not that I really wanted to fund Belkin when their KVMs and USB hubs are so utterly hopeless, but never mind!

At some point probably during next week, I will receive:

• Secondary hard drive: Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1 TB SATA Internal Hard Drive

At some point I plan to decide on an external 1 TB hard drive for backing up on to, which is largely down to aesthetics.

On Saturday I'll go and pick up a copy of Windows 7 from one of the local shops: amazingly, PC World actually have the cheapest price! That'll also be an opportunity for me to go and buy any miscellaneous parts that I overlooked. Did I overlook anything?

Thanks to demonicmaniac from #allegro for giving me all sorts of advice \o/

[EDIT]
I should add that I spent the entire Easter weekend (with national holidays on Friday and Monday) and longer researching all these parts, have managed to pull two all-nighters with work the following days, and didn't go out and enjoy the lovely weather once. But never fear, there's a royal wedding and a standard national holiday, so next weekend is four days long too, and we have nice weather forecast for precisely the three days when I'll be building my computer. Aaargh! Sun! It buuurns!

So how much did you spend?

According to the thread title it must be less than what bamccaig was going to (about 3000), but I guess it's more than what he did end up with (less than 1500)? I could of course click all your links and look for prices, but I'm too lazy

I would guess Bruce spent on the order of $2000. He got a fairly expensive case, cpu, motherboard, gpu, and a 120GB ssd.

So yeah, I'm thinking $2000 easy, if not $2500.

Neil's bike is cooler tho

Who can build the cheapest computer that can run Windows 7?

How well do you want it to run, and do you mind it installed in an old used beige ATX case?

(I imagine it could be done for $150-300, depending on how much you care about things like the windows performance scores, and how smooth you want the windows compositing to be)

No used parts. It must include a prebuilt enclosure (i.e., no do-it-yourself cases).

And it must boot up before you die.

A quick play with ncix.com gives me $270.02 (including shipping) or $283.50 with GST.

• Hec 6T Series 6T10BB Black 0.6MM Secc Steel Micro ATX Mini Tower Computer Case $39.99

• Antec Neo Eco 450C Power Supply ATX 12V Active PFC 80PLUS 120MM Fan $34.99

• MSI K9N6PGM2-V2 AM2+ GeForce 6150SE NFORCE430 mATX DDR2 PCI-E16 PCI-E1 2XPCI SATA LAN $44.99

• Kingston ValueRAM KVR667D2N5/1G PC2-5300 1GB 2X1GB DDR2-667 240PIN DIMM Memory $34.12

• AMD Athlon II X2 250 Dual Core Processor Socket AM3 3.0GHZ 2MB L2 Cache 65W $65.94

• Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA2 3.5IN 8.5MS 7200RPM 16MB Hard Drive OEM $29.99

Could drop the CPU down to a:

AMD Athlon II 160U Energy Efficient Processor 1.8GHZ AM3 1MB Cache 20W 45NM $33.51

To save about $30, but I didn't think it was worth it. The drop in performance would be significant.

That should do Windows 7, web surfing, as well as office and school type work fairly decently.

append: added the hard drive.. can't believe I forgot.

append2:

And if you wanted a new license of windows 7:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition 32BIT DVD OEM $118.80

For a total of:

 $368.82
+ $21.91 (shipping)
*   1.05 (tax)
=========
  $410.27

including shipping and tax.

append3:

Now, would I actually buy most of those parts for me? Hell no. But hey, it'd work for the average joe.

It's all about saving.

No need to include Windows 7 license price. It's just a baseline to make sure the hardware can actually do something. From Microsoft:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

  
  

• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

  
  

• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)

  
  

• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

I could probably find a cheaper mobo and cpu, and maybe drop the ram down to 1G. It would likely only save another $10-20 though.

So without windows, and with the more expensive cpu, it comes to:

 $250.02
+ $20.00 (shipping)
*   1.05 (tax)
========
 $283.52

Or $249.47 with the cheaper cpu.

From newegg.com:

• Foxconn R10-G3 Case / Mobo / GMA 3100 / Power Supply: $79.99

• Seagate Barracuda ST3500413AS 500GB: $39.99

• Kingston ValueRAM 1GB: $15.99

• Intel Celeron 430 Conroe-L 1.8GHz LGA 775 35W: $43.99

Total: $179.96

I picked items with free shipping. I don't get charged tax here. Assumes you'd install the OS via USB flash drive.

This goes to show you how crappy the $300 PCs that Walmart sells must be.

I didn't look very hard for any bundles, ncix tends to have some, but usually with higher end components than that.

Here are the prices I paid, including VAT and delivery. You'll notice I'm quoting a price for each order, not a price for each item. That's because the sellers have been annoying and sent me e-mails containing all prices excluding VAT and then a combined VAT addition at the end, which is too misleading to quote here; and I can't be bothered to reverse-engineer the VAT-inclusive prices for the separate items.

Graphics card: £273.96 from ebuyer.com
Case + processor + motherboard: £530.56 from scan.co.uk
Optical drive + memory + PSU: £328.98 from ebuyer.com
Secondary hard disk: £35.00 from some dude on eBay who had 7 left of 100 going cheap
Primary hard disk (SSD): £233.52 from span.com
CPU cooler + mains surge protector: £50.48 from scan.co.uk

And just this moment I ordered this external hard drive -> quack <- for about £125 (depending on exchange rate). <3

Windows 7 will cost me about £99 when I get it, so altogether I will have spent £1676.50. That's 2653 CAD or 2790 USD, so I guess it is fairly close to Bambams's figure after all I'll probably end up buying some new peripherals later too ...

But I reckon I'm allowed to splash out. I haven't replaced my computer for 9 years.

Incidentally, this bizarre product appeared in the search results for "202.99 usd in gbp"

I don't understand.

<div>Click for definition</div>

Antec TWELVE HUNDRED Full Tower Gaming Case NO PSU	$209.00
OCZ 60G Vertex Series SSD				$128.00
AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4GHZ Black Edition		$167.00
Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5 MB - AMD 890FX AMD SB850		$201.00
Mushkin 8G(2x4G) DDR3 1333MHZ PC3-10666 SL CL9	x2	$298.00
MSI R6870 1GB Twin Frozr II		(AMD HD 6870)	$329.00

Total : $1357.00

I already had a:

SeaSonic M12 700W Modulate with EPS 24pin SLI, Active PFC 12cm Fan Pow $199.00

for PSU, as well as keyboard / mouse / monitor

Also for GPU cooling, you might conisder getting a card that uses the reference PCB layout and then putting a fullcover waterblock on it. I'm currently considering getting a second 6870 for crossfire as well as waterblocks for the GPUS and 1 for the CPU as well. Because my case has to holes in it for the cooling pipes I will use an external radiator / pump, and keep the heat outside of the case.

Haha, bamccaig's thread actually inspired me to do some searching as well.
Ultimate budget machine I'm not paying for it It won't be mine.

32.99 Spire CoolBox 305 Case + PSU
26.00 Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 CL9. Dual kit 1GB x 2
36.84 Asrock N68-GS3 / GeForce 7025
46.62 ATHLON II X2 250 3.0GHZ
33.70 WD5000AAKS 500GB
+------------------------
176.96 excluding shipping

Price in euro's. All shops national expecting shipping to be somewhere around 50 Euro's. Could throw in a DVD writer for 20 euro's...

Most of the parts came today!

Royal Mail failed to obey a 'deliver on Saturday' instruction for the SSD, and tried to deliver it while I was at work; so that ended up at the Post Office, and I had to enlist a colleague's help in obtaining it without missing any of the other deliveries. He now has an Easter cake for his troubles.

More failfully, when ebuyer's website warned me that timed delivery wasn't available for the memory, apparently it meant it was going to be delivered reaaaally sloooooooowly. Fail.

So when I went to PC World to pick up Windows 7 for £99.95, I spent a further £24.99 on the cheapest DDR3 memory I could find: 2 GB at 1066 MHz. I'll probably flog it to someone at work when my other memory arrives.

So, without further ado! My actual camera I bought in Japan in 2004 seems to have gradually and completely lost the ability to detect light, so I'm left with my phone's camera - but here we go ...

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First lot of deliveries!

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Moar stuffs!

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Look at all those features~

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Japanese @.@

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Mmm, tsunami power.

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Motherboard mounted!

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PSU, CPU, heatsink and Blu-Ray drive are in, as well as the SSD, though not everything is connected.

This is where it gets interesting. The heatsink is actually supposed to go 180° rotated compared to how I've mounted it. When I was ordering, I looked at measurements of the heatsink and fan between them, assumed they'd be centred over the processor, and determined that I would be able to access all the memory slots. But the heatsink by itself is centred, and the fan would have been in the way of the memory. So I decided to be creative: I turned the heatsink round 180°, and mounted the fan on the other side away from the memory; but I didn't rotate the fan. It will therefore be pulling the air through the heatsink instead of pushing it, and the air will still blow towards the rear of the case. Good, huh? It's possible that the lower-pressure air will not pick up as much of the heat as higher-pressure air would have, but we shall see ...

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Watch out, it's the flying spaghetti TX950W! Somewhat more stuff is connected up now, and the graphics card is in. The PSU's still splurging out of the bottom of the case.

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I worked out what to do with the splurge. You can't see it here, but I also finally decided to fit the 3.5" USB 3.0 front panel that came with the motherboard. First, the 5.25"-to-3.5" adapter had to come out so I could screw the panel into it. Getting the combination back in past all those wires was like trying to solve one of those metal puzzles. Except I succeeded.

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Power on! Shiinyyyy @.@

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That looks healthy, doesn't it?

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Poweeerr @.@ I'll peel the protective covering off later ...

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Mouse-controlled BIOS! @.@ And it can be set to Japanese! @.@ Waaaaaai~~~ <33333

AHEM

So Windows 7 is now installed and seems to be working. I configured it not to use the SSD for swap, and I didn't really feel like doing anything else today, so I shut it down and it switched itself off in about two seconds.

And here's the best part. With the sides off the case, I pretty much couldn't hear it over my existing computer - unless I put my ear to it. Once I put the (soundproofed) sides on, I couldn't hear it at all. I haven't tested it with my old computer off yet, and nor have I tested it under load - but still!

So I think we can call it a (not so) resounding success

I think Bambam is still screwing in his floppy drive...

By the way, my C64 boots up and shuts off instantly and makes no noise. So I wouldn't call any of that "the best part."

In fairness, I still have a BBC Model B in the cupboard. But it does make a noise when you turn it on. It goes BAWWWWWWW-beep. And then you can hear all its processing in the form of interference in that speaker. Oh, the memories

There were two slight hitches I didn't mention above. I lost one of the four bits of rubber from under the PSU. I have a feeling it might actually be in the PSU, since one of the others ended up stuck to the grill over the fan. And one of the clips broke on the 5.25" blanking plate with the 3.5" hole in it, which is a shame; so that's a bit loose. I might see if Fractal could send me a replacement at some point. But these are minor woes

I finished a few days ago, albeit I'm currently using the DVD drive from my old PC. I plan to still get a slot loading DVD drive for my new one and move this old DVD drive back to the old one. I might also buy a mid-range case (and maybe a new CPU cooler) for the old one and transplant it; eventually.

I can confirm that I'm able to play Portal 2 and COD4: MW2 at 2048x1152 with no issues. Heat stays completely under control. I can also tab switch out of games without any problems so I'm suspecting that the problems I used to have was due to a lack of video power.

All of the cables are still a mess, but they are sufficiently tucked out of the way so as to not hurt anything, I think. I don't intend to do anything about it for a few weeks or months while I enjoy having a gaming PC again.

Status update!

Running a computer with Windows 7 64-bit, "only" 2 GB of memory, and swap disabled since it's bad for SSDs, turns out to be rather limiting. If I run more than two or three things, I get frequent "Low memory" popups, sometimes offering to close things for me, and if I ignore them then I get random crashes as things presumably fail to check their mallocs. I kinda got Portal to run for a bit if I reduced the desktop resolution first, but it's precarious. I expect it'll be fine once the remaining parts arrive.

I also had a strange issue with the audio. When I plugged my speakers in, I got a relentless buzzing sound. After lots of fruitless option raiding and thread reading, I eventually ended up with the computer switched off, the speakers plugged in, and the black flat-panel monitor you see above plugged in. If I turned the monitor on, then it would display "No signal" and the speakers would buzz; and then it would deactivate itself and the buzz would stop. If I did the same with the monitor unplugged from the computer, it didn't buzz. I don't know enough about electronics to have a clue what was going on there, but a forum thread somewhere suggested a "ground loop" whatever that is, and it doesn't happen with my other monitor, a white CRT, luckily! The CRT can go to a higher resolution anyway, so I'm happy for now. I'll have to learn more about it before I think about new monitors ...

Anyway, apart from the memory issues, it's brilliant! Everything is completely responsive and smooth. Things load almost instantly. I can put Youtube videos into fullscreen with impunity. Demanding Flash cartoons such as the Madness series actually run at the intended frame rate. That may sound normal for everyone else since I'm sure no one else is silly enough to still have thought 512 MB of AthlonXP 1800+ goodness was actually sufficient any more, but it's a huge change for me. I now really notice when something is DVD-read-speed- or Internet-bound!

Oh yeah, I'm also going to have to do something about the Microsoft MIDI synth at some point. >_>

I have not given up on my six five year old Athlon 64 X2 4200+ / 2GB RAM machine.

64-bit, 2GB RAM... ARE YOU NUTS?!

My old computer runs 64 bit linux fine with only 1.5Gb ram. Actually it didn't do badly when one of the two 512Mb sticks failed, but adding one stick with 1Gb didn't seem too expensive. XP runs fine too.

If you have 3GB of RAM or less, there's no real point in running 64-bit. 4GB is borderline however.

Are you talking about how 32 bit can access 3.2Gb, or do you mean it's not enough ram to run it?

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Mr. Ben is waiting on his gigarams to arrive.

I, however, run 2GB on 64-bit fulltime. There's more to running a 64-bit OS than being able to access more RAM.

Matthew, do you also have swap disabled? Which OS?

But I don't see the disassembly of current C compilers making good use of all those additional (and larger) registers.

Same here. 64-bit debian, 2 GB RAM. No problems whatsoever, the machine hardly ever touches swap (except when I run two or three virtual machines simultaneously).

Maybe it's a windows thing.

Faster 64 bit arithmetic comes to mind.
My chess program is about 50% faster in 64 bit mode than in 32 bit mode, for instance.

On Linux, swap is enabled. It doesn't seem to ever need it.

On Windows 7 (64-bit) I never enable swap space. But I don't use it for much, so I don't know if it would ever complain. I used to use Windows XP a lot, and it never had a problem with no swap.

My chess program is about 50% faster in 64 bit mode than in 32 bit mode, for instance.

You're using bitfields for the 64 positions? Actually my bignum calculator is 4x faster for multiplying since it can do 64 bit multiplies in one fell swoop instead of high/low/high/low, but this sort of thing isn't needed often.

[EDIT]

I like to push test programs to the limit to see what happens. Here I "drew" 100000000 lines of text to make sure my scrollbars worked right.

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[EDIT2]

I just calculated that for a monitor to show all those lines at once would be ~531km high. I have an old TimexSinclair 2000 with 2 kilobytes of ram, when you get to about 50 lines of BASIC typed in, the previous characters start disappearing instead of showing more because it's running out of ram. We've come a long way in 20 years...

Yes. Each bit records a true/false statement about a position on the board.
I'd have to check how much 64 bit mode matters for floating point calculations (if at all), but if it does, then I'm getting a boost there as well (though not in my chess program, which doesn't use any floating point calculations).

The gcc compiler (maybe all 64 bit compilers) exclusively use the SSE registers for all floating point calculations, I've used the f87 registers without problems in assembly language (they don't get trashed).

Speaking of hardware fetishes, I just bought 6GB of ram for my macbook (to replace the 4GB in there now, what a waste but I'll sell it on ebay) and a 750GB scorpio black hard drive. I'll need the extra RAM at some point, and I need the extra disk space now, with 3 operating systems plus 3 vms (and I'll be adding more)... I have a 320GB scorpio black in the machine now, and it's a great drive, but I've already run out of disk space completely several times.

Yeah, after demonicmaniac told me to look at thinkwiki for unoffical ram specs of my thinkpad, I'm probably going to upgrade to 8G on this laptop. I just have to buy two $80 4G DDR2 SO-DIMM modules.

6GB is the max for this laptop. Apparently it'll take 8 but something makes the system unstable with 8.

I know, but I haven't benchmarked how much of a speedup that gives for 64 bit mode (if any).

But are slower, right?

Shame. I upgraded the RAM in my MacBook to 4GB (from 2 GB) less than two weeks ago.
Makes a nice difference too, I don't have 4 GB used at the moment, but I do have more than 2 GB used (a lot of which is cache of course, and another large chunk of which is Firefox).

I read that that problem is solved with the latest firmware update, possibly depending on OS version.

I poked around awhile looking for the mandelbrot directory that had this stuff and failed.
IIRC, rearranging the code to look like assembly did more to speed it up than using SSE.
Either way was faster than the old asm I wrote for 287. I suppose I could write a thing based on that old code that used the 16 SSE registers to calculate 8 pixels at a time, but I'm insufficiently interested.

Thought I'd jump in and give everyone a laugh. I'm not upgrading/replacing old hardware with new, I just ordered a monitor for an Inspiron 3500 laptop. Even with 2nd day shipping, it's costing less than what you two are spending. I probably could use a new EIDE hard drive for my desktop.
[edit] I just spent $25 USD for a 160g hard drive. I can't believe they are so cheap.

I leave swap enabled on my ssd. Makes for less hassle when things want or expect swap, and its not like it will wear out the ssd that fast. I recall seeing some calculations at one point that gave many years with swap usage on ssd.

From my googling, I couldn't positively determine that it would work, so I ordered 6. Most sites said 6 was the max, with "possibly working with firmware update". Played it safe.

My secondary hard disk arrived today, so I've set up some swap space on it and everything works now!

Portal now runs properly! And it's epically smooth the whole time, unlike on my laptop where it got jerky towards the end. And the GPU was quiet as a mouse. And Portal took advantage of my rear speakers. @.@

The new hard disk is the loudest component in there when it revs up. Hopefully it'll do that less often when I've got my 8 GB.

I spent $600 on mine and it came with wireless internet and a 10 hour battery life.

10 hours? I want that!

Sounds like a shitty netbook, or an iPad (or similar device).

For that price, yeah. There are nice notebooks that will last that long. I think the newer macbook pros and I've heard of some thinkpads that do too.

I have my doubts. The only laptop style devices I know of that can last 10 hours are really netbooks (or at least "sub-notebooks"). Like the MacBook Air, or the ThinkPad X series.

Hallelujah ... Search for 'quack' in this thread to understand why I'm posting this here ...

My life is complete.

I just got these parts. In spite of what I said a few months ago, I'm going for a homebrew system after all.

HDD - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ, 1TB - EUR 44
Cooler - Scythe Mugen 2 Rev. B - EUR 34
Ram - Kingston ValueRAM KVR1333D3N9K2/4G - EUR 36
CPU - AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition - EUR 160
Mobo - MSI 890FXA-GD65 - EUR 121
Gfx - Sapphire HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 PCI-e - EUR 157
PSU - Seasonic M12II 520W - EUR 69

Total: EUR 621

What do you think?

No, I still don't understand...

Apparently the Peter Griffin Duck Hunt Game is too big to fit on his current hard drive.

That's a pretty decent system

I don't know about the thinkpad x, but the macbook air definitely is not a net book.

I got my new hdd:

Trent-Gamblins-MacBook:~ trent$ df -h
Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2   372Gi   12Gi  360Gi     4%    /
devfs          109Ki  109Ki    0Bi   100%    /dev
/dev/disk0s3   327Gi   18Gi  308Gi     6%    /Volumes/BOOTCAMP
map -hosts       0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%    /net
map auto_home    0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%    /home

Loads of jiggabytes free now.

I guess you could call it a sub-notebook if you wanted to. But the only real differences between the Air and a normal netbook, is the price, and that the air uses a core2duo rather than an atom. other than that, the size, and battery life are very similar.

I was referring to my ipad 2

My 8 GB arrived today and is now installed! I had a scare when I didn't push it in properly the first time and started to wonder if it wasn't supported; turns out I just had to push harder. Still, it was an excuse to learn more about the motherboard's spectacular array of lights and buttons

I cranked Portal 1 up to 4x anti-aliasing with motion blur, and it's still flawlessly smooth! What they can't do these days! Meanwhile, Portal 2 is downloading, Portal 1 has extra radios, at some point I'll play Half-Life and Half-Life 2 and maybe some of the countless other games in Valve's complete pack bundle thingy, tomorrow my piano's being tuned, and on Saturday I'm going to fail an audition to play Rach 2

Yay!

Does the RAM make the puzzles in Portal 2 any more challenging?

It's more to do with being able to run ridiculous amounts of rubbish simultaneously and reducing my concentration to nil. So yes, probably.

What you need is here. Good luck smuggling it across the border though.

I've been to the beer store many times... it's... just a beer store. I guess that works on drunks though.

That's pretty random, but I'd argue that an iPhone is quite a bit more of an achievement than stacking a bunch of cases of beer in a cooler (which the buyer doesn't have access to, they have to ask for what they want).

I don't have an iPhone, and I'm proud of it.

I have an iPhone, but I'm not a prideful person...