Be Right Back, Uninstalling

I'm really getting serious about building a desktop. And I also need to put one together for my mom. So will someone help me peace it together? I'm shooting for the lowest cost possible with the ability to upgrade easily on both. Mine obviously needs gaming. I do not have a budget now but it could be anywhere from $500-$1,000 maybe a bit more since I'm telling everyone the only thing I really want is to build a new desktop so moneys plz. For my mom's it will be $500.

Monitors won't be necessary on either for now.

First off, do you have anything laying around that's salvageable?


Old DVD-ROM, HDDs, Cases?

My mom has an HDD she can salvage. Out of mine I dunno I think Dell uses non-standard drive dimensions to keep you from reusing crap. If not I can feasibly salvage all the drives necessary. I really think I should replace my HDD though since it is over 5 years old.

Do you have an OS for each computer?

(11-24-2009, 11:28 AM)Spore link Wrote: [ -> ]Do you have an OS for each computer?

Will need for both, I want to dual boot mine ubuntu and W7. I can get ahold of .edu emails but I don't know if you can get the full with those? I'd need full copies obviously.

Anyone have any info for me? I'm thinking about setting up a RAID but dunno if it is necessary or would provide speed or safety improvements to justify the cost.

RAID 5 requires 3 disks so you're probably not going to do it, what I would recommend....

1 Small HDD (~60 - 80g)
1 Large HDD (1TB)

The small one is your OS disk, if you want, you can simply salvage this from another box, and the large HDD is for all of your games, data, music, etc.

That's the thing I'm not too sure on, like if I have an OS HDD that's small then SDDs become affordable but it seems to me having a super fast boot drive isn't all that useful except for booting fast. Am I right? Would a better option to be have a smallish SDD for games that you put only one or so at a time on and then just secure wipe and install new ones when you want to play something else?

W7 is on newegg deal, check your email for details

(11-24-2009, 12:19 PM)Surf314 link Wrote: [ -> ]That's the thing I'm not too sure on, like if I have an OS HDD that's small then SDDs become affordable but it seems to me having a super fast boot drive isn't all that useful except for booting fast. Am I right? Would a better option to be have a smallish SDD for games that you put only one or so at a time on and then just secure wipe and install new ones when you want to play something else?

No, bad surf BAD


Throwing an OS on a large drive that you put everything else on is just asking for fail, you get a virus or windows takes a dump and then you have to wipe it and lose everything.

You could partition the drive, but I am also not a fan or partitioning physical drives, I tried partitioning a drive to be linux and windows once and completely fucked the boot records up (thanks red-hat).

But one thing I hate most of all is deleting games or data (old ISOs, music, etc), because I've run out of space. Its all fine and dandy if you are installing games off of a DVD, but think about downloading something from steam.

"Ooops, Ive run out of space, gotta go delete borderlands to make room for dragon age"
(1 month later)
"Oh, sweet! DLC for borderlands, lets go tie up the old internet connection for a few hours to reinstall....and oh shit, I'm out of space, gonna have to delete dragon age now, herp da derp"


Space is cheap, and it gets cheaper all the time, just get a Terabyte drive for your data dump and be done with it 

So is there any advantage of having an SSD OS drive?

(11-24-2009, 12:38 PM)Surf314 link Wrote: [ -> ]So is there any advantage of having an SSD OS drive?

Yes, it will boot hella-fast, because theres no moving parts to spin-up/down

(11-24-2009, 03:20 PM)Caffeine link Wrote: [ -> ][quote author=Surf314 link=topic=3881.msg123530#msg123530 date=1259084292]
So is there any advantage of having an SSD OS drive?

Yes, it will boot hella-fast, because theres no moving parts to spin-up/down
[/quote]

I will keep this in mind then. I'd only need 30 gigs right? W7 64 bit takes up 20 according to the tin.

I say go with a decent HDD for now and then switch over to a SSD when they get a little more affordable. That way you can put applications on it instead of just your OS.

(11-24-2009, 03:47 PM)Mission Difficult link Wrote: [ -> ]I say go with a decent HDD for now and then switch over to a SSD when they get a little more affordable. That way you can put applications on it instead of just your OS.

30g should be plenty for all non-gaming applications

OS
Browser
Photoshop
Premire
Office
Media Player(s) and codecs
Other Misc stuff

Heck even if you are partitioning it 50/50 Windows and Unbuntu, 15g is more than enough for a base assortment of programs.

I want to get another HDD, but my video card covers up all but two of my SATA slots, so I can't.  Unless anyone knows where to get really thin wires?

(11-24-2009, 04:10 PM)Eschatos link Wrote: [ -> ]I want to get another HDD, but my video card covers up all but two of my SATA slots, so I can't.  Unless anyone knows where to get really thin wires?

My motherboard came with ones that were kinked for just this purpose

Sort of like this.....

(11-24-2009, 03:50 PM)Caffeine link Wrote: [ -> ]Heck even if you are partitioning it 50/50 Windows and Unbuntu, 15g is more than enough for a base assortment of programs.

Windows 7 Ultimate is basically a 15gb os install alone.

Give Ubuntu something like 15-20gb, and leave the rest as NTFS for Windows 7. Ubuntu can read NTFS but W7 can't understand Reiser..

Hows this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product

Per Ertai what I have so far:

https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySav...D=12897966

That's most of it at $500 which isn't too bad on my wallet.