Post by b0b on Oct 28th, 2005 at 12:24pm
It's time for the Bobulator VII to be built, and I've got most of the parts ready. This won't be a complete rebuild since I don't really need a new sound card and I'm too poor to drop $650.00 on a video card, but I think this stuff should last me another 18-24 months. I'll probably replace the video card with a 6600GT or something similar early next year though.
Soyo SY-KT880 Dragon 2 (v2.0) motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 3000+
Thermaltake Volcano 12 Heatsink
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Paste
(2x) Western Digital 80GB SATA in RAID 0
(1x) Western Digital 200GB ATA133
(1x) Plextor Pimptastic DVD/CD Burner
I think 4GB of copper-plated OCZTech PC3200 DDR in a dual channel configuration should be more than enough, so I won't need to replace that any time soon. I decided to stay with 32-bit for one last "hurrah", but Athlon XP motherboards are becoming very hard to find, so this will definitely be the last iteration.
I'm a huge fan of Soyo for performance workstation motherboards. Outside of the one that caught on fire (which was my original Soyo K7V-Dragon+ because the plus means better), I've never had any trouble with them. They offer tons of features, rock-solid stability, and a decent price.
As far as the drives, I went with cheap 80GB SATA's for the "system" drives and an old 200GB ATA133 drive for unimportant storage, like game installs and temporary download space. Since I store everything on the server, I'm not concerned with excessive storage space on my workstation.
So, what do you guys think? For a poor man's system, I think it'll do just fine for at least a year to a year and a half. I think the Bobulator VIII will be a complete rebuild, like the Bobulator IV was. New case (*gasp!*), all new optical and data drives, new sound/video/RAID cards, new power supply, everything. I'm going to try to pay off my car a couple years early (Dave Ramsey style), and if I can finish that off by next fall, I'll try to devote my cash to a totally new Bobulator. I might even splurge on a new monitor (19"LCD?) and some uber-speakers (Creative Gigaworks S750, baybee!).
-b0b
(...will be happy for now.)
SoyoMoBo.jpg (175 KB | )
Soyo SY-KT880 Dragon 2 (v2.0) motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 3000+
Thermaltake Volcano 12 Heatsink
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Paste
(2x) Western Digital 80GB SATA in RAID 0
(1x) Western Digital 200GB ATA133
(1x) Plextor Pimptastic DVD/CD Burner
I think 4GB of copper-plated OCZTech PC3200 DDR in a dual channel configuration should be more than enough, so I won't need to replace that any time soon. I decided to stay with 32-bit for one last "hurrah", but Athlon XP motherboards are becoming very hard to find, so this will definitely be the last iteration.
I'm a huge fan of Soyo for performance workstation motherboards. Outside of the one that caught on fire (which was my original Soyo K7V-Dragon+ because the plus means better), I've never had any trouble with them. They offer tons of features, rock-solid stability, and a decent price.
As far as the drives, I went with cheap 80GB SATA's for the "system" drives and an old 200GB ATA133 drive for unimportant storage, like game installs and temporary download space. Since I store everything on the server, I'm not concerned with excessive storage space on my workstation.
So, what do you guys think? For a poor man's system, I think it'll do just fine for at least a year to a year and a half. I think the Bobulator VIII will be a complete rebuild, like the Bobulator IV was. New case (*gasp!*), all new optical and data drives, new sound/video/RAID cards, new power supply, everything. I'm going to try to pay off my car a couple years early (Dave Ramsey style), and if I can finish that off by next fall, I'll try to devote my cash to a totally new Bobulator. I might even splurge on a new monitor (19"LCD?) and some uber-speakers (Creative Gigaworks S750, baybee!).
-b0b
(...will be happy for now.)
SoyoMoBo.jpg (175 KB | )