Learn me building a PC, GRM-style.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

BoxheadTim wrote: If you want a Unix-like box that just works and also runs Windows, you can do a lot worse than buying a Mac.

You can have the best of both worlds by choosing components carefully, assembling it yourself and running os-x. I am typing this on the hardware equivalent of a $4500 mac workstation for a 3 digit cash outlay and some careful planning.

I actually looked into that and it looked like a fun project but I think I've been spoiled by the Mac Pros we have at work (running Windows, natch) so I ended up with a used Mac Pro. That one's three years old, and still powerful enough for development and the occasional bout of iRacing. The alternative would have been a new iMac (had one before and I love them) but I already had the monitors and I needed the ability to stick more harddrives in.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: OS-X is fantastic as a development platform but the cost to buy their hardware is prohibitive (for me anyway). I have no issue whatsover with shelling out the $29 to but the OS though. It is a bargain.

The hardware admittedly is expensive but IMHO it's worth the money. It's not chump change for me either, though, but they also keep their resale value if you buy used.

We used to sell brand new whitebox computers and priced them at $479. We had about $350 in them, including the operating system. While I had a lot of practice, I could put one together and have it running in less than 10 minutes. I'm sure that given an hour, anyone can do it.

These computers never came back in for repair, even though we included a 3 year warranty on the computers. At the time, a comparable Dell was in the $600 range and came with a 90 day, 120 day, or 1 year warranty. Anything over a year was about half of the MSRP of the computer.

HiTempguy wrote: Poor oem cooling? lol. The guy is building a solid works station, not some mad tite 20,000 3dmark2020 gaming rig.

My motherboard right now with just firefox open is 105 degrees and my graphics card is at 120 degrees, that is with a great case, start up anything strenuous and they will start to climb, using a cheaper graphic card and a cheap case and those numbers will be very high... just a thought.

HiTempguy wrote: As for junk with the oem software, they are just programs, you go "uninstall" and they magically disappear! It's not like they are hidden, and if they are, I don't know which oem's you are buying from.

I got an HP laptop (Touchsmart TM2 if anyone is interested) which came with Windows 7 and a BUNCH of preloaded HP "system health monitor" type BS software, which was embedded somewhere DEEP within the OS and was literally impossible to uninstall "cleanly" (god knows I tried!) Between 20 and 30 minutes after boot and at random times thereafter it would gank you out of whatever you were doing and dump you back to the desktop so that the HP crapware could nag you about installing updates or virus scanning or whatever the hell it wanted you to do. This made gaming on it 100% impossible and a lot of other applications which don't multitask well incredibly irritating to try to use. Unacceptable. Also, HP's own drivers for their stylus-touchscreen were so buggy if you left it sitting on for any length of time it would start registering random clicks all over the screen - even if it was just at the desktop, you'd come back to it and six programs would be running, a bunch of files would have opened and been screwed up, etc. I have no idea how it left the factory with that software suite installed; the fact that someone in QC tested and approved it for release in that state is mind boggling. Poking around the internet revealed that I was by far not the only owner having exactly the same problems.

My mum gave it to me because she bought it for herself and found it unusable (it was factory fresh at the time, the only things she'd put on it were Winamp and OpenOffice.) I ended up wiping the whole OS and loading a Linux distro. Usually I will make them dual-boot when I do that but not this time, I just said to hell with it and sent the Windows partition to oblivion. It works well now and the touchscreen bug is 100% gone, so it was just software after all.

So yeah, in answer to your query, HP at least, but I wouldn't put it past the other OEMs either. Horrible ideas seem to spread like internet memes in that industry.

BoxheadTim wrote:

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

BoxheadTim wrote: If you want a Unix-like box that just works and also runs Windows, you can do a lot worse than buying a Mac.

You can have the best of both worlds by choosing components carefully, assembling it yourself and running os-x. I am typing this on the hardware equivalent of a $4500 mac workstation for a 3 digit cash outlay and some careful planning.

I actually looked into that and it looked like a fun project but I think I've been spoiled by the Mac Pros we have at work (running Windows, natch) so I ended up with a used Mac Pro. That one's three years old, and still powerful enough for development and the occasional bout of iRacing. The alternative would have been a new iMac (had one before and I love them) but I already had the monitors and I needed the ability to stick more harddrives in.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: OS-X is fantastic as a development platform but the cost to buy their hardware is prohibitive (for me anyway). I have no issue whatsover with shelling out the $29 to but the OS though. It is a bargain.

The hardware admittedly is expensive but IMHO it's worth the money. It's not chump change for me either, though, but they also keep their resale value if you buy used.

Isn't it the same hardware these days anyways? Mac hardware = PC hardware.

In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker:

$29, what do I need to do to make a home build mac friendly?

I think I could learn to love it despite my time on macs in my photo classes.

92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: Needs more info. That chart just makes me feel like an idiot if i buy the 631 over the Celeron G530, and i even LIKE AMD cpus...

The G530 also has a very good price / performance ratio, but it's also very cheap, so you end up getting about half the performance of the 631. Which is fine if you only want half the performance of the 631.

I recommend the 631 because it's on par with the top quad-core Phenom II processors for about half the price. It's THE best performance bargain out there.

HiTempguy wrote: I've never built my own computer as it's not worth it IMO.

LOL.

Easy mode to build a PC would be to buy a copy of PC Gamer, open it to the tech section. They should have recipes for a PC on 3 different budgets. The scout around Slickdeals for discounts on comparable hardware.

MCarp22 wrote:

92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: Needs more info. That chart just makes me feel like an idiot if i buy the 631 over the Celeron G530, and i even LIKE AMD cpus...

The G530 also has a very good price / performance ratio, but it's also very cheap, so you end up getting about half the performance of the 631. Which is fine if you only want half the performance of the 631. I recommend the 631 because it's on par with the top quad-core Phenom II processors for about half the price. It's THE best performance bargain out there.

oh.. so all the info necessary isn't there. Gotcha.

92CelicaHalfTrac wrote:

BoxheadTim wrote:

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

BoxheadTim wrote: If you want a Unix-like box that just works and also runs Windows, you can do a lot worse than buying a Mac.

You can have the best of both worlds by choosing components carefully, assembling it yourself and running os-x. I am typing this on the hardware equivalent of a $4500 mac workstation for a 3 digit cash outlay and some careful planning.

I actually looked into that and it looked like a fun project but I think I've been spoiled by the Mac Pros we have at work (running Windows, natch) so I ended up with a used Mac Pro. That one's three years old, and still powerful enough for development and the occasional bout of iRacing. The alternative would have been a new iMac (had one before and I love them) but I already had the monitors and I needed the ability to stick more harddrives in.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: OS-X is fantastic as a development platform but the cost to buy their hardware is prohibitive (for me anyway). I have no issue whatsover with shelling out the $29 to but the OS though. It is a bargain.

The hardware admittedly is expensive but IMHO it's worth the money. It's not chump change for me either, though, but they also keep their resale value if you buy used.

Isn't it the same hardware these days anyways? Mac hardware = PC hardware.

Yup. Sandy bridge Intel i3, i5, i7 in a high end Gigabyte mobo, and AMD ATI Radeon video. Apple uses good quality parts - but you can too. Don't skimp and you can get better stuff than you get in their box. The downside is really that you are your own support and warranty. I am cool with that.

All you need is some custom software to get bootstrapped and a little bit of DSDT magic to get a well sorted set of parts to run it. The OS is a $29 download right from Apple.

There was a whole thread on here when either Mr Wallens or Pasterjack built one for the home office. I did a little reading based on that and gave it a shot. It is the unix I need, with the same great stability but more titles commercially available than Linux. I am pleased as pie.

92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: oh.. so all the info necessary isn't there. Gotcha.

It's there, but some maths are involved. score * price = performance rating

For example: 53.43 * 84.99 = 4541

or 51.36 * 43.34 = 2225

MCarp22 wrote:

92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: oh.. so all the info necessary isn't there. Gotcha.

It's there, but some maths are involved. score * price = performance rating For example: 53.43 * 84.99 = 4541 or 51.36 * 43.34 = 2225

Oh. I thought the bar graph was actually the score, my bad.

Thanks for all the help, guys. It's a lot to sort through, so I apologize if I'm a little slow between responses.

I'd like to eventually upgrade to a fairly competent gaming computer with multiple monitors. I know Solidworks FEA is pretty CPU intensive, but my fiance is currently obsessed with Skyrim (on Xbox at the moment) and I know she'd like to have something she could have some fun with as well. So with that as the end goal, I'm guessing I need to start with a case that could handle the thermal demands rather than a cheap out-of-the-box tower. Assuming I'm going the build route, am I looking at $400? $500? $750? I'm OK with having a slightly out-of-date graphics card for now, and I don't need more than 4GB of RAM at this point, but I'd like to have options to upgrade in the future.

In reply to unevolved:

If you want a triple monitor game rig - you need 2 video cars in a SLI/Crossfire configuration as well as a mobo that can handle PCIe x16 on two slots and a power supply to deliver all the juice at $100-$120.

So... you just spent $560 and you still need a case, memory, drive(s) and a DVD... oh and a processor. At this price point already don't even bother with the cheaper AMDs - go for the i5 at $210. The Intel sandy bridge stuff is a long way ahead of the AMDs according to just about everything you read. You don't need a lot of cores for gaming - so the i5 > i7 in this case unless you know Solidworks is capable of using a lot of cores to it's advantage. Games typically don't so 4 is plenty.

So... long/short - you are in about $950.

If you drop back to just two monitors (driven from a single card) you can save the $150 for the card, buy a cheaper mobo with only one 16x slot and use a 600-650w supply so... that 3rd display is costing you an extra $225 by my approximation. (obviously monitor cost also... which is not figured in above).

Good to know. I hadn't seriously entertained three monitors, Solidworks is enough of a bitch on two as it is.

Ram is so cheap you might as well go 64 bit Windows and 16 GB. (or at least 8.)

Frontrunner graphics cards are worse than cellphones. When they launch, they immediately are out-of-date, and perform marginally better than items costing 1/4 as much for 99% of what people use them for.

You can build whatever you want, budget-wise, and weigh the options of bang-for-buck. I've almost always been disappointed that $1200 systems weren't faster, but I've never been disappointed in a $400 system. (honestly, usually just as fast if you aren't rendering and such).

As far as building for the purpose of gaming, most of these will run whatever game you have at the resolution you are currently running. The only thing those $600 video cards do better is run them at max resolution with every effect possible turned on. I've played on some $8k machines, and while it was awesome, didn't look THAT MUCH better than a lower end machine, and I got the feeling that it was introducing a slight bit of graphics lag during multiplayer.

Since you are talking about an eventual upgrade, build something reasonably cheap, buy a generation or so old graphics card with great value (you know, best graphics card for $100, or whatever dollar amount over at Tom's HW) then once it's built, give it a try for gaming. It'll probably do everything you want it to do.

Thanks. That's exactly what I'd like to do. I guess part of my issue is that I don't know about graphics cards to know what's a year-old model. Would I be safe just going to a retailer like Tom's or newegg and setting a price limit and going with the highest rating?

unevolved wrote: I don't need more than 4GB of RAM at this point, but I'd like to have options to upgrade in the future.

Ram is so cheap right now that you'd be saving like $8-10 to go with 4GB instead of 8GB.

I like the sound of that.

I bought my first computer in 1993 and watched the guy custom build my smokin' AMD 386DX-40 with 4 MEGA-bytes of RAM. I've built almost every system I've owned since then. I don't think I could ever buy a cheap "brand name" computer based on all the negative experiences of friends.

And I'd recommend a step up on the power supply since the cheap ones drop like flies. I think the one I'm running now is an Antec.

unevolved wrote: Thanks. That's exactly what I'd like to do. I guess part of my issue is that I don't know about graphics cards to know what's a year-old model. Would I be safe just going to a retailer like Tom's or newegg and setting a price limit and going with the highest rating?

You can get a Gigabyte AMD/ATI Radeon 6850 1G card for $150 and that will do things like run iRacing with every setting turned to max... so if that number does not shock you - it is a good price/value point.

For video cards, I'd start with this:

Toms "Best Video cards for $xxx December '11

Generally speaking, a Radeon 6850 / 6870 is the best bang for the buck. You can get them for under the quoted $170 price with rebate.

Hands down... www.tigerdirect.com. They have tower deals with killer parts for $249. Sign up for emails and they send you special deals.

The other way I used to do it was buy computers at government auction. They would come without HDs or drives and I bought them to add. Bought a killer lot of 10 laptops for $100 and they ended up all being Dell Precision engineering laptops. Slap in a 100g HD and a $20 DVD and sold the rest for $200 a piece. Made a nice little chunk of money.

Towers are more rare at government auctions but they're around. Craigslist is also a good source. Towers go cheap. I had built a killer tower about 4 years ago. Cost me $1800 in parts and software. Liquid cooled processor, dual boot windows and Ubuntu, the works. I put it on CL for best offer and the best offer I got was $80. Instead I traded it for a tattoo which I'm getting tomorrow.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=603193&CatId=333

Not a big fan of the Biostar MB, but seriously... a Seagate barracuda 1TB, a core i5, DVD, 8GB of Kingston memory... for $500? I'll take two.

Case Inexpensive, but high quality case. Also, looks decent.

Motherboard</a. Good board, with the option to overclock, should you choose to.

Processor Core i7 2600

RAM Good quality, 8 gigs, $40.

Power Supply 500W Silverstone power supply. I have used this same model before and liked it. High quality, for not much more than "BSPSUs"...

Graphics GTX550 Ti Which is quite good for playing Skyrim.

Hard Drive WD 1TB drive

Total: $859.93

Now, I did this "build" as a Cost/Performance for improving your productivity with Solidworks primarily, which is why I suggest the i7 2600 processor. It is a quadcore with hyperthreading, so that it can act like an 8 core CPU. Why is this relevant? Solidworks is multithreaded, and WILL take advantage of the extra cores. HOWEVER, the i5 2500 or 2500k are both solid options being quad core, and $100 less than the i7. The 2500k can be overclocked with thhat motherboard fairly easily, to close a bit of the gap between the i7 and the i5 if you choose.

If you really want to boost your performance in Solidworks at the expense of gaming, you can swap out the GTX550 for a FirePro or Quadro entry level workstation card.