Finally, I managed to replace my ancient desktop PC, beckett, with something that was designed in this century. Going with my new naming scheme (elements) I’ve named it Palladium.
Palladium (pronounced /pəˈleɪdiəm/, pə-LAY-dee-əm) is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pd and an atomic number of 46.
Quoeth Wikipedia.
I decided on a budget of £300, and got the best PC I could get with that money. I was quite suprised at what I managed to get!
- Be Quiet 350W Pure Power PSU – 80plus Certified
- AMD Phenom X4 9650 2.3GHz Socket AM2+ 2MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor
- Antec 300 Three Hundred Black Case
- Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache – OEM Caviar Blue
- ASUS M4N78-AM GeForce 8200 Socket AM2+ onboard VGA 8 channel audio mATX Motherboard
- Kingston 2gb Ddr2 1066mhz/pc2-8500 Hyperx Memory Cl5
- Xilence Red Wing 120mm Quiet Fan – 3&4pin connection
- Logitech LX8 Blue Wireless Laser Mouse – USB
The mouse was a little luxury extra (which blew my budget by £10, but never mind).
To my great surprise, the shipment which was processed by eBuyer yesterday afternoon (after the transaction being blocked for fraud protection the first time) and was at my house via Parcel Force this morning. And this is with Up-To-5-day-shipping, which cost me nothing. Awesome!
I went for a nice case, and I have to say the Antec 300 is definitely a nice case. Compared to my £15 ATX case I’ve been using, it’s like moving into a mansion after living in a shed.
I opted for the 80plus PSU because I wanted it to be an efficient machine. I’ve had enough of cheap power supplies with horribly inefficient power supplies that eat up almost as much power as the actual computer uses.
It’s got 4 fans in it, to keep it nice and cool (and efficient). Also, I’ve set the fans to their minimum speed. The theory being that if I have several big fans running slowly, it’ll be quieter than fewer fans running faster. And it certainly is quiet. Compared to my old beast, I can hardly tell it’s turned on any more.
It has a Phenom X4 processor in it. It’s 64-bit (a new thing for me …) and it’s pretty nippy. I used the stock heatsink, since I’m not intending on overclocking it at all, and the motherboard has the Cool n Quiet system so the fan doesn’t go crazy.
It’s got a single 2GB stick of ram in it – so I can upgrade to 4GB at a later date if I need to.
So far I’ve installed Windows XP and Ubuntu Karmic 64-bit on it.