The Client and Server

Over President's Day weekend I built a new computer.

Here's what I learned:

• Athlon X2 4400+ + Gigabyte board with NForce4 = Crazy delicious!
• For all the advances in plug-and-play on XP-running x86 computers the last few years, installing a sound card is still a massive hassle.
• In the last five years, Athlon CPUs have made incredible strides in heat management. My old CPU (Athlon T-Bird 1700+) regularly ran between 140-160F. The dual core 4400+ in my box right now has yet to reach 90F with constant, hardcore use.
• Oh, and when you work on your computer, you need to turn the power off and pull the plug on the power supply. Otherwise, you might do what I did and, well, blow the power supply. $70 later, back up and running.

It does astonish me how relatively easy building your own computer can be. It's not something I would recommend to the eMachines-lovin' folks out there, but with $1700 in parts (and a $70 add-on after I blew the OEM power supply) I built a machine whose equivalent is selling at Alienware or Dell for $2500-2700 with a mere one-year warranty. That is one downside to building your own machine -- you break it, you fix it.

Anyway, more points for me on the Geek Test.

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Comments

1. I am taunted.

   When I was working at S3, and part of my freakin jorb was to build a new open box (i.e. no case) about every 3 months from parts we had to buy off the bleedin' edge to run pre-production video cards in, I attempted to build my own AMD machine for home.

   The case is now a planter. The remainder is poisoning our water supply or something.

   I failed Really Dude, This CPU Runs Freakin' Hot 101. Fried the sucker.

   Posted by: M1EK | February 28, 2006 08:02 AM

2. I built an Athlon system a while back by myself - it was a challenge due to both the heat issues (I ended up having to buy a new case with more fan openings) and motherboard installation (not all the holes lined up). The computer ran pretty well, all things considered, but I think I cracked the mobo when I put it in, because some of the PCI slots were really flaky.

   The next time I put together a computer from parts, I had the store I bought the stuff from put in the motherboard and CPU. They didn't charge much extra, and I got a guarantee on the parts in case anything got broken in the process. Given the option, I'd do it that way again.

   Posted by: Dave | March 4, 2006 01:07 PM