Zxian

Give me a couple of hours and I'll open up one of the old PSU's I've got here... I'm just getting started on my day.

@LICS - He might have thought CPU because your first posts didn't indicate the NB. You just said "board". Anyways - I'd recommend something a little larger than what ripken is suggesting if you can. Zalman makes a few passive heatsinks that are quite good. My Abit NF7-S board's northbridge runs cooler with a passive NB47J heatsink than it did with the stock cooler. Zalman has a newer version - the NBF47 - which works a bit better than the NB47J due to the wider spaced fins.

@brucevangeorge - ECC RAM is mostly used for server environments where data integrity is paramount. Quadro and FireGL video cards are used mainly in 3D modelling programs, for either CAD work or things like 3DSMax, Bryce, etc.

Well - I wouldn't call ripken's current computer a workstation. I'd call it a gaming machine, since that's what it was built to do. A workstation is meant to do work on. I'd guess that the majority of work done on computers involves relatively simple tasks which don't require a lot of memory. "Desktop computer" is too general of a term. My file server is built off a "desktop computer" motherboard, but it's currently running headless.

Samsung is still relatively new to the market compared to some of the other big names. I'm a little skeptical about using those drives in my systems...

Hang on a sec you two... punto - you're saying that people NEED 4GB of RAM? For what? XP-x64 definitely doesn't require you to use 4GB of RAM. When I'm talking workstation, I mean the typical office workstation where gaming isn't part of the deal, and not 3D modelling or the like. When I say workstation - I mean using programs like the Office Suite, internet browsing, e-mail, IM, some music. The simple stuff. I've got all of that kind of stuff running on my old steam engine (PIII 1GHz, 1GB PC133), so a new computer with massive amounts of RAM isn't needed. Also ripken - you seem to forget that Vista does a lot more caching than XP does. One of the main reasons why Vista "uses" more RAM is because it's kept that web browser that you had open (and closed) resident in memory in case that you want to open it up again. When I ran Vista Beta 2 on my laptop, I had 1GB in this system and didn't notice any large amount of paging (the sign that you're out of RAM). Vista is simply better at memory management than XP is.

For everyone who's saying that it's "not good" that you can't upgrade the RAM - why is that? You're set with a motherboard and RAM solution that will definitely last you another few years. There are very few people who need more than 2GB of RAM in their systems, and DDR3 is already the "big new thing". I would seriously consider this board for my next workstation. Dual GigE, two PCI-E x16, P35 based. DDR3 built in. What more could you ask for?

The WD2500JB's were bad for noise, but of the 500GB drives, the WD is the quietest of the bunch. Both companies are great in terms of reliability, but I'll take the quieter drives of the two.

I used to use Seagate drives all the time, but switched over to Western Digital. The main reason? Noise. The 7200.9 and 7200.10 series hard drives sound horrible during seeking compared to WD drives. I've got two WD5000AAKS drives in my tower, on top of the other 4 drives in there, and the overall sound quality and level is the same.

Topic Closed

Yay!!! Prathapml is back!!! Thanks for the tip buddy. I might try this out later on. Any idea if the process also works for Linux?

Whoa... that's actually not too bad of an idea.

I was about to say just what Iceman said. QuickSet has the option of disabling various networking cards based on what's plugged in, battery status, etc. Either disable QuickSet (I don't find it all that useful) or adjust the program settings.

Fixed Poll. And voted for Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.

That's a lot of dock icons... Love the wall though.

When will people read the rules. NO WAREZ. NO CRACKS. Topic cleaned and appropriate members warned.

Wait wait wait. This is a big confusion amongst many people. It's not that your computer will use Linux, it's that the router uses linux as a base for it's firmware. There are many people out there who have taken the base Linux firmware and modified it to expand on it's capabilities. It allows you to take a simple $50 device and turn it into something that's much more powerful. And the "third party firmware" for the WRT54G (not GL) is severly limited. The hardware on the v5 and v6 G routers has been stripped down compared to the GL model. When we all say you want the GL, you want the GL.

My workstation at home for July.

That extra 3mm is indeed a pain in the rear. It means that you can't put those drives in a laptop. I guess they're meant for smaller form factor storage farms, or to be put in place of SAS drives for larger storage capacities.

I know it's possible, but the two hard drives need to be the same size, if not the same model. I only know of a way using Linux, and it's not really all that reliable... You'll need three things - A Knoppix boot CD, the sockpipe tarball, and the built in program dd. I've got the exact instructions on my other computer... but it's a bit of Linux, so you might not be all to happy with that.

It's a question of how much control you want over your network. Certain applications will work better with some minor configuration, but whether or not you want to deal with that is up to you. The option of whether or not you can deal with those settings depends on the router you buy. I would also recommend the WRT54GL, but flashed with the Thibor or Tomato firmware. It's got options galore and I have absolutely no complaints. If you catch it on sale, the WRT54GL also rings in at about $45 before tax and shipping.

Egads... 300GB! It's a shame that it's only 4200RPM, but hey - you gotta save on power somewhere. USB devices can only draw 2.5W at peak load, otherwise you risk frying your USB controller. Stupid, stupid design. It's a shame more computers don't have proper 6-pin firewire ports and support.

Welcome back buddy! Good to see you here again.

I picked up two WD 500GB drives already for a RAID1 array at $120 CAD. Let's just hope that the prices keep coming down! (Please no this-brand-is-better-than-that-brand discussion. We all have our favorites and our choices)

What's really good is that this will drive down the price of 500GB drives, and that means I can build my 3TB RAID5 array cheaper.