11–18 of 18 posts
That's an interesting approach to building a machine. I haven't built my own box in some years now, but I'm curious if the savings involved are still worth it? Idea: Aggregate compatible configurations and prices/coupons to yield "complete system" pricing.
There is even a fanless version. Its nearly a complete working computer for $70. I often use a 4 gig CF card with an adapter instead of a hdd as well. One less power hungry moving part. They beat all but the fastest VIA mini-itx hands down at many 3x less the cost.
One sidenote. I had trouble getting Xorg/XFree86 to run accelerated at higher resolutions (than 1024x768) with this board. As of a month or two ago, they were still having driver issues. Windows XP worked like a champ.
Also their popularity has caught up with them. Everyone seems sold out lately. I've had trouble finding on the last few times I've looked
A PC like that mentioned in the article should be free. A 533 MHz Celeron, 512 MB of ram, 80 GB hard drive? Don't you have any family? I know of several old computers meeting or exceeding those specs that various acquaintances have sitting around. Personally, I would spend another $150-200 and get a processor that was top-of-the-line a couple years ago (instead of nearly a decade ago), faster/more RAM (512 MB is soli…
Here are the board's specs: http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d201gly2/
The chart of Intel Core 2 processors (search for "Celeron 220"): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Celeron_microproc...
I love those little intel boards. They actually have 1.33Ghz Celeron D cpus on them. The whole system with a hdd clocks in at about 48watts. About 8 watts while sleeping. There is even a fanless version. Its nearly a complete working computer for $70. I often use a 4 gig CF card with an adapter instead of a hdd as well. One less power hungry moving part. They beat all but the fastest VIA mini-itx hands down at many 3…
Also, for some reason the spec shows Celeron 220 CPU which is 1,2 MHz, not 1,33: http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d201gly2/configs.h...
Fun (for a certain definition of fun) and economical, but not what you want to do if you need to PC to work every day when you sit down at it. PC power supplies, in general, are ticking time bombs the day you buy one. Buying a used one just ensures your PC fails even sooner. Used third party ram makes me queasy too. It is a good price, but consider that at the RAM factory the lots go through statistical process contr…
I'm not sure I buy all of those arguments. Power supplies (cheap ones, anyway) are, indeed, of pretty mixed quality. But their failure rates show (in my experience, anyway) a distinct "bathtub curve", essentially failing within the first few months or not for several years. For a part like that, a used one can actually be more reliable than a new one, because you're essentially getting the "burn-in" for free. And whi…
I love those little intel boards. They actually have 1.33Ghz Celeron D cpus on them. The whole system with a hdd clocks in at about 48watts. About 8 watts while sleeping. There is even a fanless version. Its nearly a complete working computer for $70. I often use a 4 gig CF card with an adapter instead of a hdd as well. One less power hungry moving part. They beat all but the fastest VIA mini-itx hands down at many 3…
You're right, except for Celeron D part. Celeron D was the last step of NetBurst architecture, notorious for its high power consumptions and thus screaming stock fans. This is Core 2 architecture, which runs much cooler and has better perfomance/MHz Also, for some reason the spec shows Celeron 220 CPU which is 1,2 MHz, not 1,33: http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d201gly2/configs.h...
Looks like there may have been a short lived D version thats not as nice. Good eye.
Also disregard my power measurements since I did them on the first one. The consumption on more recent ones may well be lower.
A PC like that mentioned in the article should be free. A 533 MHz Celeron, 512 MB of ram, 80 GB hard drive? Don't you have any family? I know of several old computers meeting or exceeding those specs that various acquaintances have sitting around. Personally, I would spend another $150-200 and get a processor that was top-of-the-line a couple years ago (instead of nearly a decade ago), faster/more RAM (512 MB is soli…
It's actually a 1200 MHz Celeron with the Core 2 Architecture (Conroe-L), with 533 MHz FSB
But still, the machine mentioned is no better than the PC I bought 6 years ago before my freshman year of college (and currently have sitting in the closet because I have no use for it). It's a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB ram, 60 GB hard drive, CD-RW and DVD drives, and a GeForce2 graphics card, and it was far from top of the line when I bought it for somewhere between $600-800 (I don't remember). Oh, and it came with Windows XP, which served me well for four years before I replaced it with FreeBSD.