Hi guys, my current PC is currently dual booting into XP and Linux and I have had enough of it, incompatible filesystems etc are really ruining my day, plus this box is too loud for my liking for use as a workstation. My solution to this is to build a new Linux box, then revert my main PC back to single boot XP.
All I need it to do is basic office tasks, some low level programming and be able to do some Matlab stuff.
This means that while it doesn't need to be uber-l337 it does need some semblance of CPU power to do lots of nice matrix multiplication etc.
Currently I am looking at an ASUS AE1 vintage barebones:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=244397
I will stick a 754 sempron into this, I already have a spare 512 DIMM stick lying around, then I will just grab a cheap optical drive and a HD of around 160gb. Onboard VGA for the win.
I guess my first question is: does anybody have any better ideas than I did?
Things I am after are a reaonably small case (no larger than the one I linked), a reasonable amount of CPU power, and a HD of size no smaller than 160gb, the more the better as I plan to use some of this for network storage of media files, I would also like it to be fairly quiet as the volume of my "big box" can irritate me sometimes.
I reckon I can be all done on my plan for around £200 which after conversion would be a little over $300, I am willing to spend more if there is something worth getting or if somebody has a cool idea.
Also does anybody have particular experience with Semprons, I notice some have a larger L2 cache, but I am not certain how much difference this would make vs a 200mhz clock increase for instance. Also Celeron Ds have been suggested but I don't really know much about these, and I probably wouldnt run dual channel anyway.
Anyway, thoughts anybody?
All I need it to do is basic office tasks, some low level programming and be able to do some Matlab stuff.
This means that while it doesn't need to be uber-l337 it does need some semblance of CPU power to do lots of nice matrix multiplication etc.
Currently I am looking at an ASUS AE1 vintage barebones:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=244397
I will stick a 754 sempron into this, I already have a spare 512 DIMM stick lying around, then I will just grab a cheap optical drive and a HD of around 160gb. Onboard VGA for the win.
I guess my first question is: does anybody have any better ideas than I did?
Things I am after are a reaonably small case (no larger than the one I linked), a reasonable amount of CPU power, and a HD of size no smaller than 160gb, the more the better as I plan to use some of this for network storage of media files, I would also like it to be fairly quiet as the volume of my "big box" can irritate me sometimes.
I reckon I can be all done on my plan for around £200 which after conversion would be a little over $300, I am willing to spend more if there is something worth getting or if somebody has a cool idea.
Also does anybody have particular experience with Semprons, I notice some have a larger L2 cache, but I am not certain how much difference this would make vs a 200mhz clock increase for instance. Also Celeron Ds have been suggested but I don't really know much about these, and I probably wouldnt run dual channel anyway.
Anyway, thoughts anybody?
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