The Underscore Archives

On Sun, Feb 03, 2008 at 07:32:14PM +0000, Richard Davey wrote:
> > Really, generally I have to spend a few hours researching what
> > components to buy (e.g. I was thinking of an SN10000 and it takes a
> > bit of effort to figure out which is best).
> 
> If I was buying a pre-built I'd spend the same amount of time
> comparing deals from various vendors, checking out the specs of the
> parts they've included, etc, to see if they'll fit my needs.

Yeah okay, me too really, and that does so often lead back to building
from components when I realise how crud the pre-built will be!

> > Then you've got to spend a while ordering components, unless you buy
> > only from one outfit, still it's more than 20 minutes, then it all
> 
> True, I rarely order PC parts from more than 4 different sites,
> and mostly if I'm doing a full build I'll get everything from OcUK in
> one hit.

Yup, I have a set group of favourtite suppliers too but lately I've
been finding the difference in delivery prices is way more than the
difference in component prices, so I might have to rethink that bit.

+1 for OcUK as well though.

> > arrives (spending time to stay in again), then I have to build the
> 
> I work from home several days a week ;)

Same here, possibly more days than you at the moment due to stupidly
finishing a contract in January! It's been a minor problem in the past
though needing to stay in, and they do always seem to want to deliver
during daylight which isn't often too good for me! As you can tell
from the time.

> > thing and if it was to run Windows or something I'd then have to spend
> > another couple of hours installing it.
> 
> Yes, the build is time consuming. But it's (a) fun and (b) less time
> consuming than installing Windows ;) You also know for a fact that
> you've got exactly what you want, routed the way you want it, for
> minimum noise and maximum airflow.

I think that some of this satisfaction at building another PC is
sometimes a little bit misplaced, sure it's great but perhaps
sometimes it seems that the time might have been better spent doing
something else.

I think everyone who buys PC's should try and build at least one if
they think they've got any technical expertise, and in my experience
people build a few computers before they've got past the point of
buying fans with lights on and cases with windows in and return to
some sense and buy just good hardware that matches, but may or may not
be colour co-ordinated internally!

(This isn't an intentional dig at anyone on this list, but I think at
least one person who might have once fitted that bill!)

> That's for XP anyway, Vista install extremely quickly. There is of
> course the time you'll need to install drivers and all the software
> you enjoy using - but you'd need to do that regardless where you get
> the PC.

I still hate that bit, much prefer to just boot something I know will
work on any old hardware, but that's a different matter, so far I've
only uninstalled Vista, XP wasn't too bad to install, just found that
the tweaking it 'til it worked well/right/the-way-I-like was very
tedious.

> > Damn... I just can't see it being as profitable, even performance
> > wise, as compared to doing some techie work for the same amount of
> > time!
> 
> It depends what you want and how much you're going to spend. If you're
> talking a cheap-ass Dell/Tesco box then you are right. But I like
> researching things such as heat sink fan noise, ram speeds/timings,
> PSU outputs, RAID chipsets and the like.

This laptop I've got was the first PC I bought where I knew i could do
better on RAM timings (it's got slow old hypertransport and the CPU is
capable of more than the board can handle), but it's not mattered much
and I don't think on the whole I max these out enough to matter. Maybe
that's my use case vs. yours, or maybe it's not always that important
anymore.

> The PC I have now I know I could only really have bought from a
> handful of PC vendors and Dell certainly isn't one of them - Scan,
> Vadim, or Alienware at a push perhaps - because I trust them to do a
> superb build job on it. Net result - you pay for that skill.

Ah, yes, I'd never meant to imply one should buy a Dell, personally I
think they're awful build quality. i.e. They look nice, they fit
together nice, but often they're all badly matched parts. Excellently
colour matched mind you. They do seem to be a bit more crashy and
problematic than a lot of other hardware for some reason. IMHO, and
I'm talking about racks full of dells here, not just the odd one or
two, but it's a personal gut feeling and I could be wrong.

Then again, usually I'm thinking about machine rooms full of Dell PC's
and Sun's [*] with hardware contracts on so maybe it's not a fair
comparison.

> Hence, I might as well do it myself.

Yeah, I'll carry on doing it myself as well, but probably continue to
wonder if it's worth it. :)

Certainly food for thought anyway.. I think what I meant overall is
that build it yourself vs. any manufacturor always feels a bit better
but that feeling that the computer is "right" is very subjective and
as human beings we're often wrong on the guess of which component
would fail first anyway.

i.e. Surprisingly it's not always the perfectly specced at the time
IBM disk that goes years before anything else.

        Steve

P.S. Has anyone here built a recent fanless/low power (C7?) type
system.

*: I'm not all that impressed with Sun quality either, and the common
"my mac is built so well" line often seems to have been forgotten
about when the lovely color coded mac sets itself on fire.


P.P.S Hi Richard! ;)