Zxian

You were willing to install BGInfo, so I figured Samurize would be fair game. It's a small program that can be run from a limited account - shouldn't be too much of a security risk, nor is it "junk software". You can actually use it to monitor workstations fairly easily with the Samurize server application.

My friend has his site hosted with 1&1. To give you an idea of what they're capable of, this page got hit with about 2 million page hits in a day after he posted that entry. If that's not solid hosting, I don't know what is.

I think this is what memnoch is aluding to. If the PSU fries, there's a chance that it can take everything else along with it. I'd be more worried about your PSU damaging your CPU/RAM/mobo than your video card (the latter couldn't damage the rest of the parts).

@mr.brownstone - I like... I like...

Q1 - Could you use a samurize config to do that?

Exactly my thoughts. Here in Canada, I can get 4"x6" prints for $0.19 a piece... a price that's well below the cost of printer/ink/paper separately. My laser printer is also much faster than inkjet printers for large volumes of pages.

PhpBB3 will have subforums - they're on RC7, and from what I understand, they're close to a full release. You might want to give that a try, since the difference between PhpBB2 and PhpBB3 is pretty significant. It moves PBB3 up almost to the same tier as larger forum software like IPB and vBulletin (in terms of featureset).

I'm not sure about PhpBB3, but I know 2 had this problem. It's not hacked per-se, but the default registration process can be beat by most adbots. PhpBB has the advantage of having the largest community. There are many sites that use PhpBB without any troubles, and it's probably much more flexible than the other two.

@Shelby_GT - very nice setup! I might have to give Trillian another whirl just by the looks of your theme!

@Panarchy... two things... First - you don't need to make 5 different threads all about the same computer build. You've got one system to build, and you can get all your answers in one place. Secondly - slow down... you're rushing into this, and I can tell you from experience, something WILL go wrong if you don't slow down. Especially considering that this is your first build... slow down. You need to learn how to crawl before you learn how to walk, let alone run.

One thing that you will have to deal with if you choose PhpBB is that the login system has been "hacked" in that it's very easy for spambots to register for accounts. There are some mods out there that are supposed to help curb this, but another solution is to manually approve members as they sign up. From what little I could play around with AEF, it's pretty nice, but I don't know about it's security or community. PhpBB has a much larger support base. Another option for you to try is PunBB. It's very small, fast, and the themes are nice looking (in a very simple kind of way). For the most part, the themes are purely CSS, so there aren't any graphcs to send as part of the theme (helps with bandwidth).

Whoa dude... hang on. Your first post said an initial budget of $200, which you said might be able to go up to $300. The parts I listed are under the $200 limit, so I figured that you'd be happy you could get some new stuff for pretty cheap. I never judged you based on your lifestyle. I'm a student, living on my own (paying rent, food, bills), and my income is just over the 5-digit mark. I don't have lots of money to spend either, but I make do with what I've got. The important thing to realize is that something which might be cheap now could be more expensive later. It's the razor/razorblade scenario in many cases, and you have to watch out that you're not trapping yourself (ask anyone who built a system with RDRAM back in the day).

The motherboard will be able to handle your DDR RAM - it can do either DDR or DDR2. If you really want to stick with what you've got, then the ECS board is probably your best bet. I'd still suggest moving up in the world, and leaving things like S478, AGP, and DDR-RAM behind. You're only going to tie your hands together if you want to upgrade later, or add something else. What if one day you wanted to upgrade the RAM? Or start using the system as a workstation? AFAIK, there are no dual-core CPUs for S478, and DDR RAM is becoming more and more expensive (while DDR2 prices are dropping). The i965 motherboard I suggested will let you move up to a C2D CPU and use DDR2-800 RAM, as well as any PCIe graphics card you can think of. It leaves a LOT more space for future expansion and use in another system. Old stuff - pricey, not futureproof New stuff - cheaper, more futureproof

I'd really like a Ferrari, but I'd be scared outta my mind if I were to actually own one. Why? Because I don't have the experience to drive one. In your case, I'd suggest that you find some old sacrificial system and learn how to take it all apart, and then put it back together. If you can do that consistently on an old system that you don't care about, then you should be able to build your own system from scratch. If you're willing to risk throwing away a $300USD CPU, then go ahead, but you definitely want some practice before playing with $1500 worth of computer components.

@Punto - he'd need a video card to go along with that one, if he were to get it. The motherboard he showed has an onboard graphics card, which for his purposes will do just fine. Another option is this board. I usually try to stay away from VIA chipsets, but considering that you're looking for an old socket 478 motherboard, you're going to have to skimp on some stuff. If you can expand your budget a little bit... I'd suggest getting a new motherboard and CPU and ditching the old P4 you've got. Here's my parts list so far: Motherboard - Intel BOXDG965RYCK LGA 775 Intel G965 - $39.99 CPU - Intel Celeron 420 1.6GHz 512KB - $43.99 RAM - Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 - $21.99 PSU - Thermaltake TR2 430W - $39.99 DVD-RW - Pioneer DVR-212D - $31.99 The motherboard has all the bells and whistles of modern systems (PCIe, SATA, DDR2, C2D support) and is based on the tried-and-tested i965 chipset. You also get an onboard graphics controller, so you don't need another card for that. I'm also guessing that this setup will draw less power than your P4 will, so your parents will thank you when the electricity bill comes along (hey - we all want to be green, no?). I can't say I agree with the reviews of the DVR-212D. I've got two of them at home, and they're fantastic. I've never burned a coaster yet (*touch wood*), and I rip about 6-7 DVDs a week. I know that jcarle has 4 of them in his system and I haven't heard any shouts of anger from across the country yet... For the KVM - I recommended the Linksys KVM in another thread - have a look at that one. I've used it for years, and it's never let me down.

RAID0 or 10 would only help if you're having multiple concurrent disk reads, for example from a VERY large database. If the site is mostly the same data over and over, that data will be cached, and disk speed shouldn't be a major concern.

Considering that both are "bottom of the barrel" systems, I think that'd be a problem either way.

As far as I know, the largest volume that XP can handle is 2TB. This is not a limitation of XP per se, but of the MBR disk structure. If you want to use the space beyond the 2TB mark, you'll have to move to another disk type, known as GUID Partition Table, or GPT. You'd need to move up to Windows Server 2003 to get this ability. Have a deeper read here.

If that's the only difference, I'd go for the cheaper of the two. The main question again comes down to load. With a low-traffic site, you won't notice any major difference in a properly setup website between the two servers. I'm assuming that we're going to be dealing with fairly "standard" web services here, and nothing where a single request would require a large amount of resources. Go for the cheaper - if you're finding that you're lacking on speed, then you can deal with something else.

Windows XP does cache files to a degree, at least any programs that you had opened. It might not show this, or do it as well as some *nix variants (or Vista), but that RAM isn't all wasted. You just don't know that it's being used.

From what I can tell, the Windsor is a dual-core CPU, meaning it can handle better concurrent requests than the single-core Celeron. Ultimately, if you're going for web-hosting, the main concern is how much load they put on their servers rather than the specific hardware. The Celeron 420 with a single user will be much faster than the AMD with 100 users (obviously).

If you want to make use of that extra RAM for a good cause, join the MSFN Rosetta@Home team. Your system will crunch data on idle CPU cycles and make use of all that spare RAM. If you're worried about a performance hit, I've found that I get about a 1-2% performance hit when running Rosetta@Home while doing everything else (XviD encodes take about 6-7mins longer on a 4 hour encode). It's really not enough to make it noticable, but you're helping a good cause.

DOS is dead... don't touch it. If you want a really good *nix system and want to dive into the realm of command line shells, then go for FreeBSD. If you want something with GUI shell to fall back on, I'd recommend FedoraCore. Just make sure you get FC6 (Zod) and not 7 - they made 7 too glitsy in my opinion.

I honestly can't say much about the Windsor CPUs, but the E2100 series isn't that much more expensive than the 420, and you'll get more cache and a second core to boot. Are you trying to go for an ultra-ultra cheap setup for web-development?

I hope the move from 7 to 8 isn't as bad as the move from 6-7. They added too much eye candy and fanciness, and took away from functionality IMO.