Computers Never Die, They Just Slowly Fade Away - Valdarez's Blog

Valdarez's Blog

Computers Never Die, They Just Slowly Fade Away

Posted on January 31, 2010 at 06:22 AM.

(2)

Since the mid nineties I have always built my Windoze PCs. Typically I would build a new machine every other year, but the cycle was somewhat short circuited with the purchase of my first MacBook Pro laptop last year. The MacBook Pro is what I use when I consult as it has a dual boot that I can work out of Windoze or Snow Leapord, or even virtualize XP inside Snow Leapord if I so desire.

When I build an new PC, I typically buy close to the top, with my processor being one or two steps down, my memory being about half of what the board can support, the hard drive being the fastest it can support, and a video card about halfway through the current cycle (usually at the midpoint). This allows me to add RAM and a new video card to the PC a couple of years down the road when I hand it off to the parents or my sis ensuring the computer is still good for most games and/or apps for several more years.

Here's an MSI mini computer I built back in 2002 or 2003, can't remember which now. It's a MSI Mega 865.

Here is a shot of all the parts prior to assembly.

As you can see... it's pretty small.

I'm not sure if these pictures display what a tight fit all this stuff was. I had to actually disassemble the video card (scary) to remove some pieces from it (luckily it never over heated). The video card is in the 3rd picture. It actually sat out too far too. It took me forever to get the case back on, and when I did, it was somewhat bent, but I got it all in there!

After this PC, I built a little Micro-ATX comp using a Gigabyte board. I had to send it back twice before I finally got a board that worked on the 3rd time. Come to find out everyone was returning it, and the problem was a single chip driver for the sound that was crashing windows. I found the driver, fixed it on mine, sent the chip type and driver info to Gigabyte only to receive a haughty response from their support saying all their drivers were up to date. Yeah... that's why newegg had all of them returned when they were first released.

Here's a shot of the PC and the PC specs below it.

APEVIA X-QPACK-BK/420 Black Aluminum 1.0 w/ ABS plastic front panel MicroATX Desktop Computer Case ATX 420W power supply Power Supply
APEVIA Chameleon ATX-AS550W-BL 550W ATX12V v2.03 Power Supply
GIGABYTE GA-K8N51GMF-9 939 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester 2.0GHz Socket 939 Dual-Core Processor
2x Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB SATA
DIAMOND Viper 3870PE31G Radeon HD 3870 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card (this is the upgraded card)
Intel Pentium 4 3.2E Prescott 3.2GHz Socket 478 Single-Core Processor
2x Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)
PLEXTOR 16X DVD�R DVD Burner Black E-IDE/ATAPI Model PX-740A/SW-BL
LINKSKEY LKA-CR15B 19-in-1 USB 2.0 Black Card Reader/Writer
Dell 2408WFP Ultrasharp 24 Inch Widescreen Flat Panel LCD Monitor (main monitor)
ViewSonic X Series VX924 Black/Silver 19" LCD Monitor (side monitor)
Maxtor 1 Touch 250 GB External Hard Drive (leftover)
Eclipse keyboard

It's been a pretty good cycle, but oddly enough, I find that my last computer is still pretty good for pretty much all gaming and even most development as I can run a full database server, application server, IDE, and even debugging tools (server) without so much as a hiccup. I believe the key to the longevity of the PC has been the dual RAPTOR RAID 0 that I installed on it. The PC was lightening fast with those fellas. This bad boy computer is going on 5 years now and still going strong.

This time around I bought a new vid card, 2 GB of RAM, and a 24" Dell Display and kept it for myself. I know, I'm greedy, but I like having a separate work PC at home that I can do my own stuff on and game on. Plus, I totally dig the dual screen setup with my 19" LCD to the left, and the 24" Dell as the main screen. I can actually watch shows on Hulu, NetFlix, or DVD as I work. And yes... I do whistle while I work.

When you look at the life of a PC from a developer's perspective, 1 to 2 years is a long time, but 5 years is almost unheard of. Just goes to show that most of the latency in a computer isn't the processor or the RAM (unless in extreme situations on both); instead it's the hard drive. Reading stuff from the hardd rive takes up the most time, but after it's loaded in memory, it's all cake from that point on. So if you desire, with a just a little bit of tinkering that old PC of yours can live on, avoiding an untimely death and a huge hit on the pocket book as well.