Bare bones systems come without CPU, memory, Disc, CD/DVD, Monitor etc. This has the advantage that you can choose exactly the right components for you, but before choosing your components you need to do some research, I found it useful to visit some forums such as sudhian, kustompcs or theglowlounge
These are the components that I chose with some explanation of my reasoning:
| Component | Suppliers | My Choice |
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shuttle sn25p |
There are many barebones systems available, I chose sn25p because I wanted one with Athlon 64 939 pin CPU and pci-express. If your requirements are different there are many other systems around (see links). | |
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AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester 64 bit 512k L2 Cache Retail inc.fan Skt
939 (3 yr.warr.) |
I like the 4000+ because it has twice the L2 cache but it is very expensive at the moment, so I chose the 3200+. I got some useful info from this thread |
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Geil® Value 1Gb PC3200 Dual Chan DDR Kit (2x512MB) (Cas 2.5 6-3-3) with Aluminium heat spreader |
Corsair® memory has a good reputation and I was planning to get Corsair® 1024MB TwinX XMS 3200 C2 Memory Kit (2 x 512MB) but this Geil® stuff is half the price so I took a risk and went for this. |
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MSI GeForce 6600 128MB DDR, PCI-E, DVI, TV Out, Retail |
I like the Gigabyte GF 6600GT because it has passive cooling instead of a fan, however reading the spec from the Gigabyte website it does not appear to support 1280x1024 with full true colour depth. Also it did not have any information about OpenGL support. Therefore I decided that it would be a safer option to go with the MSI option. | |
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160 GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 7200rpm 8MB cache HDD with NCQ Manufacturer Code ST3160827AS |
As with the other components my main priorities are low noise and reliability. I vaguely remember seeing something about Seagate being better in this respect but I could be wrong. I decided to get a single medium capacity disk, It would be good to have a RAID array but at this stage I wanted to keep it simple. In the future it may be a better option to get a second system and connect them with gigabyte LAN? |
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LG http://www.lgelectronics.co.uk/ LG GSA-4163BAL Black DVD +/-R/RW 16x16x4x4x5 Dual layer IDE OEM |
The supports all the standards including DVD-RAM and it seems to be a reasonable cost. | |
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Sharp LL T19D1-B - flat panel display - TFT - 19" 24 pin DVI-D |
I wanted a big display and since I tend to spend a lot of time using the computer so I want something easy on the eye, so I'm not looking for fast response time or glossy display. | |
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DVI cable |
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| Linux Operating system and operating system, SUSE 9.3 |
Order the components, wait a few days, then the exciting bit, just when I have given up on the delivery van arriving for the day, the boxes arrive.
Goto unpacking
