I’ll be receiving some extra money in about a month. Well, I’m kind of at a lose at what I should do with it. It really does depend on how much I’ll actually be receiving. If it is around $200-$300, then I think I’ll buy a new 22″ LCD monitor. If it is around 1000 USD, then I think I should save at least half of the amount, buy the LCD monitor that I’ve had my eyes for while now. I also think I’ll buy two 500GB hard drives and mirror them. However, I should perhaps buy Windows Vista, but I’ll think I’ll wait on that. I need to have some money in my savings. However, I also want to buy some more RAM to have at least 4GB.
What I might end up doing however is a mix, buy a 1GB RAM stick to up my max to 2GB and buy one 500 GB hard drive. This doesn’t quite bring into any planning that I have for hard drives. I’m thinking a cheaper hard drive for Windows or the OS is better in any case one of them fails and I need to replace the drive quickly. It is easier to go out and buy a 300GB drive for 100 or should be cheaper by the time I have to buy a new one, hopefully.
One of the nice features of my new motherboard is its ability to show Windows SATA hard drives, my old motherboard needed RAID drivers to be installed before Windows would see it. This allows me to install on the SATA drives when I first install Windows freeing me from having a primary master IDE drive. It is nice, but I can do this later. I have a large amount of files that need to be moved from their current storage containers. Some of the drives are ready to fail.
So, in conclusion, in about 4 weeks, I’ll have to decide whether to buy two 500GB, two 1GB RAM sticks, two 300GB, or some combination of the above.
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I’d go with the 300 size – less expense if one fails. Just make sure you don’t get fobbed off with an SATA-I instead of an SATA-II. I found a local store (Maplins) were not advertising the SATA version and nobody there seemed to have a clue which was which (more than a bit odd).
If you intend installing Vista on that PC, the 2GB RAM is needed. Vista, unlike XP, will basically suck all the RAM you have so applications you regularly use start up faster. Not a bad system though it’s a bit unintuitive since you expect RAM to be free until something needs.
Hmm, I’ve been thinking hard about Linux for this case exactly. However, I’ve not found a suitable Media Center Linux application, free or otherwise. I’ve heard of a paid Linux Media Center application that you can install (compile more like it) on Linux. This would be the more optimal solution, since the PC will only be used for Media Center functionality.
Looking over the options that I have currently, going with Vista Ultimate would provide all of the features that I need, even if I do get extra bloat. Vista can still be tuned and optimized, perhaps not as much as Linux, but enough to take advantage of its advanced features.
Right now, I’m more focused on items that I’ll probably not think about once I finish the rest of the machine components. 4GB should be enough, and I can always go up to 8GB when they start coming out with 2GB sticks and the 2GB sticks come way down in price.
I also have to focus on savings, so I can focus on building a new machine or buying highly expensive items that I shy away from when going pay check to pay check. A $300 dollar item doesn’t really seem tempting when it is more than half your pay check. It does when you have over $1000 in the bank though. That is really the goal.
Looking over my plan, I did have it as buying a 320GB drive and have another 500GB for storage. I also broke the 320 drive down in to different partitions for management. Looking over the price difference between a 300GB and a 400GB, it doesn’t make sense to buy 300GB for ~$80 when for $20 dollars more, I can buy 400GB, but then I think that with $20 dollars more, I can get 500GB. I should probably expect the 400GB to last at least 2 years and at which time, I would be ready to upgrade to bigger drives and machine most likely. (I do have plans on buying a motherboard that has 10 SATA connectors, which I can plug my old drives into.)
Well, it just comes down to the final prices, what devices I buy. I do have my eyes on a Gbit Firewall Router for $114 to replace my old Linksys 10/100 Firewall Router. I’ll be more happy with ACL than filters and crossing of the fingers and I do expect it would be more secure and functional than my current one. Going to Gigabit now would benefit me later when all of my new machines support 1000Mbit Onboard LAN devices.
PS: The only good thing about SATA-II is hot-swapping, which for consumers (end users) I would think would be less of a requirement since an average user is going to turn their PC off anyway.
I’m a gamer when it comes to building a high end PC, so SATA-II just makes sense when I see Oblivion spending so much time hitting the hard disk since it dynamically loads content.
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Wasn’t sure about the P.S. – SATA-II has double v1′s data throughput (300 MB vs 150MB per sec – likely limited to 240 max unless it’s really rollin’
) and it can handle multiple transaction requests/re-requests from applications (versus the single one by one queue of SATA-I). I don’t even think it’s pricier – both are still being manufactured since they use the same tech, it’s the controller and firmware that differs (along with the need for a supporting MB chipset). I’m not certain since Ireland is pricy anyway. Granted that’s a lot of room since the processor will bottleneck the 300 rate just like it bottlenecks the most recent graphic cards – but at least it’s forward looking. SATA-I isn’t much faster (if) than PATA133…
I just found places refused to show the version number since they were carrying cheaper drives from Asia which are SATA-I only. Cheap skates – I can’t believe all those educated sales persons are that ignorant…
Just bear in mind Vista’s memory use isn’t bad – I made it sound like 2GB was a requirement but mainly the extra GB is to let Vista do a lot of preloading. In a media center I wouldn’t think that’s as much a priority as a gaming or production rig?
For a Media Center, yeah, having a fast machine isn’t such a high priority (actually, the CPU on the machine is one of the lower end AM2 models, Athlon 64 3000). It is really when I get into encoding using the High Definition standard that memory and CPU comes into play. The machine will also have to serve the files out to the network. (Another reason to upgrade to Gigabit.)
My plan was to find a Graphics Card that did encoding directly into MPEG 4 format. However ATI All-In-Wonder still only encode in MP2 format. Saves more space than AVI, but not as much as MP4. Probably have to generate a script that encodes old episodes overnight or something. Part of the reason I’m still looking at my options for TV Tuners, besides that I want to have the other components first. I was able to find a ATI card that can do High-Def encoding/decoding so it would potentially speed the process up, but it was mostly for HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drives and media. I do still think that any encoding that uses the standard should see a speed increase. The card is a upper high end card and well above what I’m looking to spend at the present time.
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Well, for hard drives, unless you get a faster RPM, the hard drive isn’t going to be pushing out much faster than a SATA I anyway. It is just the bonus features of SATA II is what makes it worthwhile. SATA III should be out within the next two or three years which will have 600 MB/s and again, with 7200 RPMs, you won’t be pushing out much faster than with SATA I. However, when you do start getting up with higher RPMs, Solid State Drives (when they too get quicker), it will make a huge difference. I do not think SATA III will be seen on low end motherboards. It has been a while, but I thought it is more for Server setups.
Still, I think it is better technology than PATA and will eventually allow for that bandwidth to be used in the not so distant future. I just wish they would remove the floppy connector.
Still, I think it is better technology than PATA and will eventually allow for that bandwidth to be used in the not so distant future. I just wish they would remove the floppy connector.
Missing FDDs can be trouble though
. I remember trying to fix XP one time and I was all up and ready when I realised my friend’s PC was missing a floppy drive (the setup program often can’t load RAID/SATA drivers without a floppy drive). I had to drive all the way back home (no mean feet when you live out in the sticks 
) to pick up a spare. If he was missing an FDD controller when I got back I may have murdered him…
Well, most current systems (Motherboard, Windows, and Linux) can load everything from CD device. I did have a motherboard that required drivers for its RAID controller. My current one does not. I do not even have a floppy drive installed and haven’t had one since two or three years ago. Really it is a waste of money (not in your case), since I’ve had to keep replacing floppy drives that kept failing or jamming.
Really, once more motherboards support booting from flash, it will completely remove any need for floppy. Sigh, AGP was replaced just so quickly while there is still floppy connectors around. Well, I was hoping it would go the way of ISA.
Here is to hoping for the next generation of PCs or the next upgrade in two or four years.
I got caught with AGP
. Had to hunt around for a AGP video card a year ago and luckily found one suitable. Of course with PCIe 2 coming soon, it’s only a matter of time before AGP vanishes completely (Not sure whether AMD are releasing their new DX10 cards for AGP). Of course PCIe 2 is too fast for another year or more – the GeForce 8800 cards actually can’t reach top FPS in many games because even a current Dual-Core top line processor is TOO SLOW to keep up 
.
Damn, I was reading about PCI Express 2. I wrote about the speeds before. It should be interesting as to how the next generation of chipsets are going to be.
I don’t think I’m going to wait or rush out when it first comes out. Like you said, the current generation PCI-E is more than enough for cards.