...is that important?

[mneme]

I purchased a barebones system and some bits to put into it earlier today (well, Friday) -- the new Shuttle, well reviewed as a good mix of size (about that of a toaster), design, and power, I'd previously priced the full system as around 1k, but I avoided buying any of the "optional" bits I'd considered, figureing, that, frex, I'd worry about an add-on video card or sound card if the onboard stuff proved insufficient and not before. Price: $600.

Three hours later, I realized I'd neglected to purchase a dvd drive. Not a big deal, I could get once easily -- though it was best remedied, given the need to load an OS onto the machine. So it would be easy enough to get things running...at this point, my train of thought took a sharp downward turn, as I'd realized one little, minor component.

The CPU. (naturally, a followup purchase dealt with both problems. But it's amusing what you remember and what you don't).

Oh, and Mythcon is wonderful. And coming to Connecticut next August...

Comments

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Wow. How'd you build a barebones for $600 WITHOUT a CPU? Case, power supply, motherboard, RAM, optical drive: Total ~$400 tops. MAYBE $500. I'm impressed. (By me, "optional" = video card (since you said there's onboard video), sound (ditto), hard drives, secondary optical drive, spare fans, upgraded components (better cables, CPU cooler, RAM coolers, hard drive cooler, video card cooler if you add a video card), floppy drive (!), multiformat memory card reader, Firewire card, wireless card if you plan to place the box where wires are hard to run, etc. If there's anything else you're including in the list, I'd be interested, as I've clearly overlooked something)

Glad you've got it all together; is it up and running?

[mneme]

Shuttle Barebones: $320 (case, motherboard, power supply, cooling, with integrated sound, video, gigabit ethernet, etc)

Two 320 gig SATA drives: $180

Yeah, possibly too much storage -- but enough to not run out of space for a while with photos, video, etc, and a good setup for raid 0 striping.

[mneme]

Oh, and 2 gigs of memory, of course.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Ah. The drives are "the bits to put into it." Makes a difference. (So, too, does the CPU; Core 2 Duo (or Athlon equivalent?), or Quad Core? Either of those will be significant.)

Not even CLOSE to too much storage -- if I were building a new system, I'd probably want closer to 1TB of hard drive space, of which the first 75-100GB was devoted to the OS and applications, and the rest for data. As you note, though, a good setup for RAID (especially if you have a good external backup).

btw, Mythcon--

[lynn-maudlin.livejournal.com]

Joshua, your and your lady dancing to the Lord of the Ringos (and Broceliande, the next night) was one of my personal high points! That and discovering in the hospitality suite that you can sing! See you next year--

Re: btw, Mythcon--

[mneme]

Thank you -- it was fun!

And actually, I do a fairly large amount of singing! (It's one of my primary activities at SF cons, after all). Sadly, I realized during the concert that I knew, oh, about half the songs you'd parodied -- I've never been that much of a Beetles fan, true, but 16 years of filk (!) do end up giving you familiarity with a -lot- of tunes over the years, oddly enough.

Re: btw, Mythcon--

[lynn-maudlin.livejournal.com]

I remember that - we sang the beginning of "Some Enchanted Evening" in the hospitality suite! you have a terrific voice-- {big smile}