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Need some advice for a $200 computer
09-07-2013, 02:12 AM
I found myself flipping right the hell out today over not being able to do some digital work; there's no more patience in reserve to try to save up more money so absolute budget is $225 incl. shipping and tax. Now this is doable, if barely, with a DIY desktop, but I haven't actually been keeping up with trends in hardware - what's the general waterline for a low end but not obsolete machine in terms of cpu speed/cores, ram/hdd size, video cards? Can you even get a modern card with a VGA connector, or does
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
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lacking an hdmi monitor shut me out of the market?
Can I get an acceptable refurb in that range? Everything I've seen locally is $400+, even pretty old stuff.
I'm not asking for a detailed research report, just opinions off the top of your head, and even that much only because all the shop sites seem to have layouts assuming 4x my screen width,
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is next to impossible, and I wouldn't be willing to even log into a shop on a library computer even if they weren'
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
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RAAAGH! AND THERE'S ANOTHER REASON WHY!!
weren't assigned in 30min time blocks.
Thanks in advance, for just taking the time to read and think about this.
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1. You want dual-core, at the very least. That much, I wouldn't budge on. Speed varies, based on what you want to do, but I'd shoot for 2Ghz or higher.
2. How much RAM you *need* depends on what OS you run; XP will run (though modern programs don't jive well with it) on 512MB, where Win7 won't run at all below 1GB, and is sort of lacking (but good enough for basic tasks) on 2GB.
3. HDD size? 80GB will work, even for Win7, but you won't have room for a lot of video or anything.
4. As for video cards, depends on what you'd like to do. For basic Internet and the like, anything will do, even like a surplus 128MB video card or built-in mobo card. I'd aim to add on a better GPU later, and work off of a basic one to start. Most modern ones won't come with VGA any longer, but a lot have DVI; DVI converts down to VGA *real* easy. I've got a couple of converters bumping around my house, and my company had about a metric ton of them.
5. No clue on refurbs. Sorry.
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Bare-bones Win7 build idea:-Pentium dual-core-2GB RAM-Cheap GPU-Cheap HDD
Decent Win7 build idea:-Intel i3 or AMD quad-core-4GB DDR3-Modern, low-end GPU (NVIDIA 620ish or equivalent)-500GB, 7200RPM HDD
It's quite possible to get the CPU/mobo, some of the RAM, and the HDD in one go, and add the GPU and the rest of the RAM later. Also, you can't get a new HDD below $50ish, so you don't save much by dropping your drive too low.
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I refuse to pay the Windows Tax, that means openSuse or possibly Ubuntu as the OS. 4Gb RAM is mandatory as I do a lot of 3d modeling, and some kind of graphics card, even if it's 5yrs old, because what's got me in a lather is wanting to get back to my programming project.
... Actually, is there anything but drivers to separate mac and x86 pci graphics cards? I think the Radeon 9800 in the dead g4 should still be good, and it's newer than the NVidia TNT2GO I was using in the dead tablet. Must check.
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Checked, and the card is a 32mb 7000, not a 9800. Even if I got the firmware flashed to work with x86, it would probably be no better and possibly worse than modern onboard gfx... I remember now getting it from the Staples remaindered shelf because it was cheap and didn't need a fan, when fan failures had eaten the original card and the 9800 mum originally bought to replace it, plus an NVidia I don't remember the model of in a DIY I built for a CS class. I seriously have the worst luck with cooling fans!
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
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From my own experiences: a lot of mobos have functional if not useful graphics and sound cards as part of the hardware.
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Oh Primus... AMD is offering EIGHT CORE 4Ghz cpus... for more than my whole pc budget. This is WHY I haven't been following hardware trends, it's just a tease.
(sniffle) That thing would render scenes and sequences so fast...
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Odd, I thought most on-motherboard video options now come in choices of VGA, DVI & displayport. At minimum DVI or VGA should be present on a basic board.
It's something that tripped me up when I'd upgraded from a "580"GTX to a "780"GTX. I'd no boot response and thought I'd need to flash the bios, with the same result each time I'd tried to do that. I took it to a shop they hooked up to onboard - that I'd forgotten about - and changed the bios setting that enabled the new card.
Hmm, I don't think the 580GTX had an issue with it's fan. I think its problem was down to when my powersupply blew up. Still not too many new cards come without some form of active cooling.
I also take it that something like these are completely off base, even if they do meet the pricepoint requested, but the video outputs are HDMI only. Great for plugging into a LCD TV.
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I doubt I can help much from here. If I were looking for something like that, I'd go to a local place called "The Trailing Edge", which specializes in older computers and refurbs. I'm attaching the website link anyway just in case you can find something you can use. Depending on costs and shipping, you might be able to afford a laptop for close to that. If you could find another $100, there's a nice laptop on the main page for $300 CAD which might have what you need. It ships with Win7, so you might even be able to afford it if you bought it without an OS. Check it out.
http://www.tte.ca/
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Here's what I'm currently looking at:
AMD 3 (or 4) core, 3.5ghz cpu
4gb (or 8) RAM
160gb (or 320) hdd
Radeon HD 3000 (or 5000) graphics - mobo gfx are the 3000
ATX minitower case w/500w psu
DVD+RW drive
If I can afford to bump ONE of these to the parentheses version, which should it be?
I will admit, looking at the various forum posts of people struggling with driver problems or worse yet posting a call for help and getting no replies is doing a number on my resolve to build as a pure linux machine...
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The bigger thing you should bump first is RAM. That usually gives the biggest speed boost to a system, especially if you're dealing with memory-intensive 3D work. Hard drive, you can always buy an external later for data storage.
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A very good point, that. I found a board with integrated 5000 series graphics for $7 more, too... I haven't looked up SATA cables yet, but current total is $256 and change... a stretch, but not too much of one... as long as I can use a free as in beer OS. Anybody here know their way around Ubuntu?
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Xubuntu is the best version - or at least it was last time I used it. Will happily live with 256mB of RAM - or at least it did a year ago - and the interface is much easier on the graphics card than Ubuntu's Unity. Xfce is also a really nice, functional environment to be in. I used it for about 5 years or so happily on hardware ranging from bottom-end to high-end then depreciating down to bottom-end again over 4 years.
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Turns out some of those parts aren't compatible with each other, so it's out of reach even with a bit of a stretch, so picking a 'nix is moot after all.
... I have to go sit in a corner and rock for a while now.
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If you're just looking for something to run a decent web browser on, and you're willing to use open-source and tinker, why not get one of the "educational" computers such as a Rasberry Pi? You'll get change back from $50...
No, wait - I see you don't have a HDMI monitor, and that's what most of those pocket machines use (to keep the form-factor small). Never mind.
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Yeah, plus I do lots of 3d and dabble in programming, with a 3d game engine. Those smaller-than-a-power-brick machines are cute, but not functional. While I was of being all dramatic I did come up with a paradigm to describe what I was upset about to my technophobe father, though: The office of J. H. Digits & Sons, Computer.
CPU core count is the number of guys you have sitting at desks with their slide rules, solving figures
GHz is how many problems they can handle per minute (with J. H. Digits himself
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also having to take time for management decisions)
Gb of RAM is how many assistants they have, bringing sheets of problems and reference material back and forth from the file cabinets to In and Out trays so the computers (in the job title sense) can get on with things rather than having to jump up all the time and poke around the filing cabinets themselves.
With this image in mind, he finally understands why a multi core machine is better than a single core but not a straight multiplication of cpu speed,
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
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and why it's important to have enough RAM (and a fast HDD/efficient filing system) to keep the pipe full so those guys with the slipsticks aren't sitting around waiting while there's work to be done.
He may even lend a bit of financial assistance, if I can hold out until certain matters stabilize.
However that works out, this long sought success bouyed me enough to go a few more rounds with Directron's web site, and iron out the compatibility issues. I now have a grid, ranging from $230 (plus shipping &
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a small fee for having one of their techs put the bits together and make sure nothing's DOA) with a single 2.8ghz core and 2gb RAM, to $429 for a 3.5ghz 6-core w/16gb ...
So the choice is now between cranky old Mr. Digits and his two bumbling sons, or a bustling business filled with hotblooded go getters just itching to figure out ALL THE THINGS! For the minor inconvenience of helping Dad look at my nieces' Facebook galleries and his girlfriend's daughter's YouTube movies, I might soon hire a busy office.
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Otherwise it's mostly as listed before except the HDD is a 500gb SATA with 6gb/s transfer rate, rather than slow ass IDE that the mobo doesn't support, and the PSU both fits in the case and includes SATA power connectors for it and the DVD+RW.
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It may be a bit late, but it's better to buy the better CPU first. You can add RAM, but you can't upgrade a CPU (without removing the old one first).
If you have to buy a CPU, why buy it twice?
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middlin' CPUs are actually cheaper than the larger RAM sticks, and since I'm looking at a micro-ATX board with only two slots with intent to fill them with a matched pair, I'd just be buying RAM twice - and I can use extra ram immediately, but a cpu choking on a small pipe just wastes power on idle cycles. My uncle's quad-core laptop never gets above half-load on the CPU meter, even when I have it chugging away on a Blender render that should be gobbling all the clock cycles it can.
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Regarding the "HDMI capable monitor" requirement, they do make HDMI to DVI adapters, and I believe I saw an HDMI to VGA adapter on the MicroCenter website. The former is definitely usable (it's actually how I have my laptop HDMI plugged into my widescreen DVI Acer monitor right now), I can't speak for the latter.
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