[ale] Do people still roll their own Linux desktops?

[m-aaron-r]

About a year back I was looking to update the sound studio
system at Railroad Earth. Had a few special customizing
criteria for UBER quiet case and fans, lots of drive space,
many gigs of memory and as much CPU Power as possible
on the cheaper side of bleeding edge.

After pricing out components to build it myself I also looked
at a couple mix and match assembly places.  I ended up
buying from Micro Magic after using their smart, compatibility
aware web tools to experiment with building and comparing
a couple custom systems. I ended up having them put together
a fairly impressive Quad Core AMD box on an ASUS mobo
that's been rocking pretty well for us:
    AMD Phenom 9850+ (Quad Core) AM2+ 4MB Cache
    Scythe Katana 2 AMD EXTRA QUIET
         Vertical HeatPipe Copper fan
    ASUS M3N72-D ,Onboard Video, HDMI, SLI PCI-EX,
          GB LAN, iEEE
    4GB (2x2GB) PC6400 DDR2 800 Dual Channel
    (2 ea) 500.0GB Western Digital 7200RPM SATA2
           UDMA 300 16m cache
     Antec Sonata III Black Ultra Quiet Case front USB & eSATA
     Dual Case Fans 120 mm Extra Quiet DC fan (two fans)
     Antec TruePower 650w Extra Quiet ATX Power Supply
     Logitech Wireless Keyboard & Optical mouse combo

<http://magicmicro.com/>

With their system I was able to leave out the bits we didn't need
(e.g., we already had decent CD/DVD burner and we didn't
need an OS License or anything special for graphics beyond
what came on the mobo).

Final $950 price with shipping was about the same as hunting
web bargains on all the individual parts, but without the time
and labor of the hunt and the elbow grease and bleeding finger
investments in assembling them.  Of course, I missed the fun of
the build a bit, but this path was certainly simpler and faster
for picking and choosing the parts, AND the finished build
system came with a 3yr warranty!

A tiny  annoyance was that they didn't include the mobo header
to 15pin VGA adapter we were counting on using to feed our
ancient (but beautiful) 22" Silicon Graphics Flat Screen CRT.
They apologized with the excuse that sometimes they came
in the mobo box and sometimes they didn't, but they hunted
one down and sent it along ASAP no charge.  Also, one of the
hard drives failed after about 8 months, but it was replaced
under warranty.

Right now it looks like you could have Micro Magic put together
a pretty screaming custom desktop box for $400 to $500, with
the bonus that nobody wasted a single dime of that on the
Mafia$oft extortion tax!

peace
aaron

On 2010/03/16, at 22:45 , Brandon Checketts wrote:
> I recently built my own system with parts from newegg.  My reasoning  
> was to
> ensure that I get good quality parts.  I don't trust the extremely  
> cheap
> systems.  I also wanted to make sure that I got a pair of hard  
> drives with a 5
> year warranty as they always seems to be one of the first components  
> to go.
>
> Thanks,
> Brandon Checketts
>
> Jim Kinney wrote:
>> The newer systems are far poorer quality. Those <$500 systems are 2  
>> year
>> throwaways. Mobos have really taken a beating in the low end.   
>> Those $50
>> specials are really crap.
>> A pretty nice system can be built for $800 unless you want top end
>> graphics cards. Add an extra $150 for a good mid-level nvidia.
>>
>>> On Mar 16, 2010 7:53 PM, "Björn Gustafsson" <bg-ale at bjorng.net
>>> <mailto:bg-ale at bjorng.net>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm in the market for a new desktop Linux system, and I've never
>>> bought a consumer unit before.  This time though I'm sorely  
>>> tempted by
>>> deals I see in the $350-$450 range on discount desktops, which are
>>> sometimes even quad-core systems.
>>> http://www.buy.com/prod/hp-pavilion-p6203w-desktop-athlonll-x2-r-215-2-7-ghz-4gb-500gb/q/loc/101/213720391.html
>>> for example is $370 for an older model dual-core desktop.
>>>
>>> My 5+ year old case is feeling creaky, and I'm probably due for a  
>>> new
>>> power supply, so I don't think I can build a comparable system  
>>> myself
>>> for under $450, and I worry about durability with such cheap parts.
>>> My main requirements are a dual or quad-core processor and at  
>>> least 4
>>> GB of RAM, with a decent video card.  If I look at pricewatch.com
>>> <http://pricewatch.com> and
>>> similar sites the components add up to $500 or more. (Not  
>>> including a
>>> monitor, which I don't need.)
>>>
>>> Does anyone have suggestions on a low-budget alternative to pre- 
>>> built
>>> systems, or am I wasting time even thinking about that?  For  
>>> example,
>>> are the "no OS systems" that Ascendtech sells any good?
>>> http://www.ascendtech.us/customkititems.asp?kc=DTPCC2DE8400912
>>>
>>> --
>>> Björn Gustafsson