
Build a $150 Linux PC - czik
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Build_a_$150_Linux_PC
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BrandonM
A PC like that mentioned in the article should be free. A 533 MHz Celeron, 512
MB of ram, 80 GB hard drive? Don't you have any family? I know of several old
computers meeting or exceeding those specs that various acquaintances have
sitting around.

Personally, I would spend another $150-200 and get a processor that was top-
of-the-line a couple years ago (instead of nearly a decade ago), faster/more
RAM (512 MB is solid for Linux, but with 1 GB you'll never have to worry about
it), and a faster (if not bigger) hard drive.

In my opinion, advertising a crappy $150 PC is almost a disservice to the
build-your-own crowd, when you could get a similar-quality one for free from
someone you know or for cheaper from a used computer store. Noting that you
can build a _very_ solid computer for $300-400, though, is really something.

~~~
listic
It's actually a 1200 MHz Celeron with the Core 2 Architecture (Conroe-L), with
533 MHz FSB

~~~
BrandonM
I guess I was in error, then, but I don't see that 1200 figure noted anywhere
on that page, so I'm going to call it an honest mistake ;-).

But still, the machine mentioned is no better than the PC I bought 6 years ago
before my freshman year of college (and currently have sitting in the closet
because I have no use for it). It's a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB ram, 60 GB
hard drive, CD-RW and DVD drives, and a GeForce2 graphics card, and it was far
from top of the line when I bought it for somewhere between $600-800 (I don't
remember). Oh, and it came with Windows XP, which served me well for four
years before I replaced it with FreeBSD.

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jws
Fun (for a certain definition of fun) and economical, but not what you want to
do if you need to PC to work every day when you sit down at it.

PC power supplies, in general, are ticking time bombs the day you buy one.
Buying a used one just ensures your PC fails even sooner.

Used third party ram makes me queasy too. It is a good price, but consider
that at the RAM factory the lots go through statistical process control, lots
rejected at that point still contain mostly passable chips which are probably
sold at a lower price to the third party RAM suppliers. But there is something
about the lot that isn't quite right.

There was a time around 2000 that whenever a Mac user called me with a flakey
machine I used to say "Take out the extra third party ram you bought cheap two
years ago when you bought the machine." A near 100% fix rate without having to
ask any questions. It would work fine for months or years then start flaking
out. I don't need that in any machine for which I'm responsible.

One of our departments is building its own machines from low priced components
to save money. I think by any measure, the time it takes to find and remove
the flakey ram modules and replace the disk drives that start having bad
sectors 3 months into service has more than offset the cost savings.

~~~
ajross
I'm not sure I buy all of those arguments. Power supplies (cheap ones, anyway)
are, indeed, of pretty mixed quality. But their failure rates show (in my
experience, anyway) a distinct "bathtub curve", essentially failing within the
first few months or not for several years. For a part like that, a used one
can actually be _more_ reliable than a new one, because you're essentially
getting the "burn-in" for free.

And while, again, it's true that off-brand memory has higher error rates than
premium stuff (which, generally, is coming out of the same fabs but testing at
higher tolerances), the error rate is (1) still very low, I've only seen one
bad DIMM over the last 10 years or so, and (2) trivially easy to test with
memtest86. Got a bad stick? Yeah, it sucks, but you just replace it (for $20
or whatever) and move on. It's not a reason to triple your memory cost, IMHO.

And disk drives, in my experience, simply don't have a premium/bargain
distinction in quality _at_ _all_. Instead, these things fail in batches. Some
4500 RPM clearance models will churn for years, while some models of 15k RPM
SAS monsters like give up the ghost within a few months. You can't win with
drives.

~~~
Retric
You might be underestimating the amount of bad ram you have. I have often had
RAM that would pass memtest but the system still became far more stable after
changing the ram.

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noonespecial
I love those little intel boards. They actually have 1.33Ghz Celeron D cpus on
them. The whole system with a hdd clocks in at about 48watts. About 8 watts
while sleeping.

There is even a fanless version. Its nearly a complete working computer for
$70. I often use a 4 gig CF card with an adapter instead of a hdd as well. One
less power hungry moving part. They beat all but the fastest VIA mini-itx
hands down at many 3x less the cost.

One sidenote. I had trouble getting Xorg/XFree86 to run accelerated at higher
resolutions (than 1024x768) with this board. As of a month or two ago, they
were still having driver issues. Windows XP worked like a champ.

Also their popularity has caught up with them. Everyone seems sold out lately.
I've had trouble finding on the last few times I've looked

~~~
listic
You're right, except for Celeron D part. Celeron D was the last step of
NetBurst architecture, notorious for its high power consumptions and thus
screaming stock fans. This is Core 2 architecture, which runs much cooler and
has better perfomance/MHz

Also, for some reason the spec shows Celeron 220 CPU which is 1,2 MHz, not
1,33:
[http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d201gly2/configs.h...](http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d201gly2/configs.htm)

~~~
noonespecial
Ahh. Makes sense now. The first one I got, more than a year ago had a big fan
and ran quite hot. All the ones since then I've gotten without a fan. I
checked a recent one. Not D.

Looks like there may have been a short lived D version thats not as nice. Good
eye.

Also disregard my power measurements since I did them on the first one. The
consumption on more recent ones may well be lower.

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listic
An interesting article, I never saw the mentioned motherboard. It's by Intel,
but doesn't use the Intel chipset. And it has versions with passively-cooled
CPU (this alone holds much value to some of us silence fans) CPU is of the
latest Core 2 family (Conroe-L, 65nm process), but a lower-clocked Celeron,
with a TDP of 19 W.

Here are the board's specs:
<http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d201gly2/>

The chart of Intel Core 2 processors (search for "Celeron 220"):
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Celeron_microproc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Celeron_microprocessors)

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skarab
That's an interesting approach to building a machine. I haven't built my own
box in some years now, but I'm curious if the savings involved are still worth
it?

Idea: Aggregate compatible configurations and prices/coupons to yield
"complete system" pricing.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
I've found that it is actually cheaper to buy a prebuilt on sale strip out the
crappy parts and sell them to pay for upgrades.

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PStamatiou
I hate to nitpick but I wrote a very similar series of how to posts detailing
pretty much the same thing, with the same motherboard, a few months ago:

<http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/01/25/diy-200-dollar-pc>
<http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/02/01/diy-200-dollar-pc-part-2>
<http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/02/09/diy-200-dollar-pc-part-3>

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commandar
Wait. He's treating Crucial like it's some unheard of offbrand of memory?
Seriously?

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vide0star
I doubt the savings are that much, but it's still worthwhile to learn how the
innards of a PC fit together.

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nazgulnarsil
at the $200 price point you can build one htat is 3 times as fast.

spend an extra $50 on a video card with VIVO and you have a home media
server/mythTV box for recording and streaming.

