The missing circuit is in your head!

[dr_kromm]

My current PC has issues. By which I mean Issues. If we're comparing computers to economies, I've got the Weimar Republic here.

The main hard drive horked a couple of months ago. At the same moment, one of the optical drives disappeared from the system. I don't mean, "Windoze sucks, bah!"; I mean that even after checking cables, the BIOS couldn't see it. It was gone. That's more than a coincidence . . . something fundamental fried, and the ensuing transients killed a couple of devices.

Which doesn't surprise me. Not long before this incident, the p.s. fan grew noisy. Intermittently so, but its braying was unmistakable. My theory is that the p.s. is dying or at least very unstable.

Since then, I've managed to resurrect the system. I mean, I'm fairly competent with computers. It's patience that I lack.
 
But now the other optical drive has gone noisy -- very noisy, sometimes at random intervals. The graphics card occasionally fails to wake my monitor, and at least once has displayed some serious noise. And lots of little bits that would normally need periodic replacing anyway are also overdue for replacement, right down to the mouse.

So I have to face facts: This PC is living on borrowed time.

Option 1 is "repair the bugger." Added up, it needs about $500 in parts, assuming that nothing else was fried . . . and experience tells me that a dodgy p.s. means you can't make that assumption. Then I have to add in the downtime, which leads to the conclusion that it's actually cheaper for me to pay Computer Dude to do all this at his hourly rate, with the proper tools, than to do it myself with a Canadian Tire ratchet screwdriver. Oh, we have lots of tools . . . for woodworking. Nothing for computers.

Option 2 is the dreaded "replace the bugger." Now as it happens, I was looking to replace in March or April 2009 anyway, so this is a six-month-early replacement, not a one- or two-year-early replacement. And I don't have time to build it myself, so I'm looking at having a local place do that. That isn't free, although it's still a better deal than paying, say, Dell to ship me a mystery-meat motherboard, lowest-bidder drives, and so forth.

Looking at it hard (I mean, really boring holes with my eyes), I think that I have to bite the bullet and replace. This will come out of my pocket -- SJ Games doesn't give me a computer budget, unfortunately -- so at least I get to pick all the bits and pieces. I have three priorities, since this is a work PC and a home PC:

1. Work. This demands a big screen for proofing books; a large hard drive for endless rough PDFs of each book, and one with an excellent duty cycle at that, since I kill drives with my compulsive saving after every sentence; and lots of RAM, for having a zillion memory-hogging Word documents open at once.
2. Computer Gaming. What can I say? It's one of my de-stressors. This calls for a nice graphics card paired with a display that has a decent refresh rate; a respectable sound card; and a moderately fast (but not killer) processor. The cards will be PCIe 2.0, for future-proofing purposes.
3. Music. I listen to music a lot. A decent sound card isn't optional.

Minor priorities are the cooler P45 chipset and Gigabit ethernet. And I'm generally big on future-proofing whenever affordable. On the other hand, I don't program, do any audio or video encoding, or mess around with Photoshop or layout, so features relevant only to those things are irrelevant to me.
 
Right now, I'm looking at: 

• Motherboard: ASUS P5Q Premium (a P45 board with PCIe 2.0 support).
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16GHz, 1,333MHz FSB).
• Memory: 4MB OCZ DDR2-1066 (a.k.a. PC2-8500).
• Hard Drive: Seagate ST3500320NS (a 500GB SATA drive rated for fairly heavy duty -- which I actually need, given how I work).
• Sound Card: ASUS Xonar DX 7.1.
• Graphics Card: ASUS EN9800GT Hybrid (a 512MB GeForce 9).
• Display: Samsung 2253BW (a 22" widescreen LCD -- again, which I actually need, given how I work -- with a 2ms refresh time).
• Case, Keyboard, Mouse, Optical Drive, Power Supply, Other Bits: Whatever Computer Dude recommends.

I'll also have to (re-)buy Windoze (Vista Home Premium 64-bit) and some MS product or other that includes Word (which I need for work). And yes, this will be a Windoze system. I know: Why am I spelling it funny, as if to show disrespect, and then buying it anyway? Simple: I don't need another learning curve right now.

So . . . do any of my friendly readers have thoughts or suggestions? I'm not exactly rich, so "You can make this less expensive without losing anything, because you missed [some wonderful underpriced component]!" is the sort of thing I'd really like to see. Comments like "Er, this one was rated 0/10 and catches fire!" are also good. However, I'd like to avoid OS wars, ATI vs. nVidia wars, etc.

Comments

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Very sorry to hear that about the Canadian market.

You seem to have a pretty firm idea of what you want. I really don't have anything to add, other than there's no particular special tools for the great majority of PC assembly any more. Most special fastener heads are out of fashion, and I was able to pick up an $8 set of bits from Harbor Freight that covered Torx and everything else I've had to use in the last 4-5 years (1500+ Dells of all kinds, 500+ miscellaneous). A couple sizes each of flathead and Phillips, pliers, and a handy ground is all I need on any given day. You can get into some special use items if you like, like a socket that fits over the hex lugs on either side of an SVGA connection, but I wouldn't bother for a one-off.

In your copious free time, of course. :)

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

Very sorry to hear that about the Canadian market.

It's just the way of things when you live in a low-population-density market. Nothing here is as cheap as in the U.S., even when our dollar is unusually strong, because there just isn't enough genuine capitalism possible to compete for said buck. This is especially noticeable for electronics.

You seem to have a pretty firm idea of what you want.

I do indeed. I'm just fishing for ways to get what I want without paying a premium, or for ways to get more bells and whistles if I must pay that premium. What has me asking publicly this year is the seeming explosion in motherboard and processor choices. There's more out there than there ever was in the past, and it seems bizarre that two P45 boards with Gigabit, PCIe 2.0, etc., can be at $60 and $500.

In your copious free time, of course.

Heh, yeah, that. What specifically takes time that I hate to burn is the install-reboot cycles as you stick drivers for each device on the machine, and then the day spent talking to Windows to convince it that everything is kosher. The purely hardware parts don't really bug me.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

There's more out there than there ever was in the past, and it seems bizarre that two P45 boards with Gigabit, PCIe 2.0, etc., can be at $60 and $500.

The $60 end is bottom-feeders like First and Elite Group and other faces of PC Chips: stay away, unless you enjoy high failure rates and fake components. The $500 end is for people wanting to make enterprise server-level gear: not necessary for home use when you could make a home quality PC and two hot backups for less money than you'd spend for components of equal breeding and/or branding.

Do you have Computer Dude picked out? Usually he would have better data on your market than we would, and will be able to better respond to items like CPU + Board combos, which aren't necessarily cheaper up front, but have the advantage of being configured at the vendor, preventing a certain amount of finger-pointing in the event of a warranty claim or support issue during assembly.

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

The $500 end is for people wanting to make enterprise server-level gear: not necessary for home use when you could make a home quality PC and two hot backups for less money than you'd spend for components of equal breeding and/or branding.

Aha! Now that's useful to know, and why I start discussions like this one. I was seeing all these costly boards and wondering who needed them. The one I'm looking at is right in the middle ($200-$300 range), gets good reviews, and is from ASUS who -- like 'em or hate 'em -- have never done me wrong.

Do you have Computer Dude picked out?

Yes. It's a local PC-building chain called Microbytes. They have 16 outlets and have been around for years, and the outlet I plan to visit tomorrow is right in the middle of high-rise land, and builds large numbers of enterprise computers every day. My wife is extremely happy with the PC she got from them, which she put together with their advice. When I head down there, I'll be sure to ask about board + processor combos. Thanks!