Best laid plans

[unixronin]

Bought two 18GB Hitachi Ultrastar 36LPs (68-pin, 7200rpm) recently from CompuVest Corp. in Renton, Washington.  First one went into babylon5, and it's fine.  I started rebuilding the machine formerly known as llioness today around the other one, with a newer and faster SCSI controller and video card.  Only problem is, the second disk is DOA — the first DOA Ultrastar I've ever had.

Unfortunately they're now out of stock of the Ultrastar 36LP.  But they're issuing an RMA and sending a prepaid return call tag without any argument.  The next 68-pin SCSI disk they have is a reconditioned Quantum for $80, and I'll be damned if I'll spend $80 on a reconditioned disk.

I think I'm going to take this opportunity to consider whether to rebuild the machine around its existing core, or drop in a new motherboard ... the existing board sports an AMD K6-III/450 that's almost ten years old.  It surely can't cost much to drop in something several times faster than that.

(Update:  Yeah, looks like the biggest expense of a complete rebuld will be either memory or CPU, depending which options I go with.  I can get a Biostar PCI-E motherboard with SATA300 for $55, and a Seagate 80GB SATA300 disk for $45.  The smart move CPU-wise would probably be to drop more RAM an Athlon64 X2 into vorlon while Socket 939 CPUs are still available, and push vorlon's Athlon64 and RAM down to the rebuilt box.)

Comments

[bfudlmint.livejournal.com]

I am about to have $150 to spend at tigerdirect. I am already set for a case, PSU and SATA II drive.

That just leaves the minor stuff like the videocard, CPU and MOBO. Or I could sink the entire thing into a kick ass AGP video card or TV tuner card.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Pretty tough to get either a close-to-state-of-the-art motherboard and CPU or close-to-state-of-the-art video card for $150. Especially from TigerDirect, whose stock and pricing tends to be ... um ... not the best.

[bfudlmint.livejournal.com]

$150 is enough to get a pretty good video card. I think I would have to make too many comprimises to upgrade my mobo.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, $150 will buy you a 256MB or even 512MB GeForce 7600GS card. Try this one (http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=AA50080) for example.

[bfudlmint.livejournal.com]

I am thinking about the <a href="Http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp? EdpNo=1779348&CatId=318> BFG GeForce 6800 GS OC / 256MB GDDR3 </a>

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I'd go with a 7600 card over a 6800, particularly in light of the stability problems I've had with 6x00-based cards. A 7600GS should quite handily out-perfom a 6800GS card, and will support a lot of things a 6800GS won't.