My “Big” PC
Processor: AMD Athlon X2 3800 O/C’d to 4200, Gigabyte Mainboard.
Specification: 2Gb DDR2/667 RAM, GF6100, 80Gb/10Gb HDD, DVDRW, TV Card.
Operating System:Windows XP Service Pack 2 / Windows Vista/ Ubuntu Linux / Puppy Linux.
Cost: £85, using existing drives and case.
Whilst the Duron 1800 is still more than capable of taking more powerful machines to the cleaners with ease, the mainboard has suffered the loss of the Primary IDE channel. No idea why, but it took a hard disk with it. So, after much soul searching, I’ve rebuilt it into a spare case, and it’s been readied as an emergency spare, using a LiveCD of Puppy Linux, which is a nice quick distro.
I could have spent £30 replacing the mainboard like for like…but I do more Virtualisation work now using VMWare and similar. Not wanting to move from AMD, I spied the AMD AthlonX2 3800 cheap on the net. Hmm. Dual core Athlon. Cheap. Socket AM2. Hmm. I got the Foxconn mainboard too, as it had integrated Nvidia graphics and I LIKE NVidia. It was also very cheap but has SATA/4 RAM slots etc. Ideal. Top that off with 1gb of DDR2/667 Value Ram for less than £20, and I’m set.
As soon as the parts arrived, I stripped the duron out carefully (as I intended to reuse it), and fitted the new parts in place. The board had a 24pin ATX connector, and I had a 20 pin plug..luckily, it’s no issue and it’s quite happy. I’ve had to reinstall XP due to the mass change, but Linux didn’t even notice. I thought I’d broken it because the CPU was didn’t spin - turns out it’s an intelligent fan, and the CPU is a “low power” 35w chip that barely gets warm, so the fan wasn’t needed.
It’s damn quick. Doom3 is lovely. I forgot I had PhotoShop open too, and it didn’t miss a beat. VMWare/Virtualbox runs at realtime speed too. The only qualm I have is the Geforce 6100 graphics dislike the Nvidia X server drivers in Linux, and crash..so I’m using boring Vesa..boo.
Update:
I returned the Foxconn Motherboard, as the Linux graphics issues came into Windows XP and Vista, and the machine got worse..it’s now got a Gigabyte board in it, and it’s nice and stable, which is more than Vista is..