It’s been almost two and a half years since my post about hidden gems within the multitude of (often crappy) products found in CD-R King. Since that post, I’ve found a couple of new interesting finds worth a blog post.
No, there won’t be any obvious things here (e.g. the laptop, netbook, tablet, etc). I prefer not-so-obvious items that are mostly relevant to my interests.
Just a random dilemma I’ve been thinking about this past week.
There are 3 things I can buy with around 11,000 pesos. Sure, I can just buy all 3 at the drop of a hat, but that would take the fun out of this thought experiment. :p
Since I’ve been too busy recently to think thoughtful articles, I just thought “What the hell…” and came up with this one.
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Last time I looked at computer parts was two years ago. Since then, a lot of things have changed in the market.
Basically, it’s just Moore’s Law: prices go down, performance goes up.
Thinking up of a gaming rig, however, isn’t that all exciting. There are literally hundreds of websites out there with people discussing (and debating) which combination of parts will give you the best gaming experience on the PC.
So to shake things up, I’ve decided to think of a PC build for software developers. Of course, if you’re developing for iOS, this article isn’t for you. But for the rest of us, having a good set of parts can really make a difference, especially since you’re going to be working in front of that machine for 40+ hours a week.
One of the first things I asked myself when I left my job last year was “Should I get a Mac?” With the rise of the Apple App store and the lingering notion that the best developers work on MacBook Pros, I had to decide whether or not I’d shell out enough money to fulfill my needs for a year just to get such a machine for future work.
I eventually decided not to buy one. I did, however, buy a 2nd gen iPod Touch 8GB for 8k to make me think about building iPhone apps. After some months of use, I concluded that I didn’t have the proper skill set to make apps on such a platform, firmly cementing the idea that I didn’t need a Mac for my personal projects. (I still use that device, though, primarily for late night fanfiction reading to lull me to sleep.)
Lately, I’ve had the opportunity to try out using Mac OSX and see what all the fuss is about regarding the platform. After using it for a while, my decision still stands: there’s no reason for me to buy a Mac.
Let’s look at things from a historical standpoint: If you were a serious developer 3-4 years ago, Mac was the way to go. Windows XP was a security nightmare while Windows Vista just sucked. Linux was as user-unfriendly as they get. Mac OS X Tiger beat them hands down.
Fast forward to the present: Windows 7 is both secure and “shiny” while still providing most of the familiar Windows interface. Malware is a lot less of a concern thanks to the unobtrusive and free Microsoft Security Essentials. On the Linux side, Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx has gone a long way in terms of giving a clean and user friendly interface to desktop Linux. Driver support has improved a lot; you don’t need to recompile kernels anymore. You’ll probably even have more driver problems with a Mac than with a Linux box.
In short, I don’t see a compelling reason to buy a Mac if you’re not a graphics designer/you’re not building Apple-specific software.
More details below the cut…
continue reading…
For some odd reason, I missed this little gem in last year’s Notable CD-R King Items.
It’s a 64GB solid-state drive for only PhP 5,800.
Here are some of the follow-up questions my friend asked me after posting the previous two posts.
For those unfamiliar with the terms, Scalable Link Interface (SLI) and Crossfire are terms used by nVidia and ATI (now AMD), respectively, to call their method of allowing two or more video cards of the same to work on the same graphics rendering tasks at the same time. This should theoretically allow the computer to produce twice/thrice/etc the frames per second (fps) for games or other graphics-heavy programs.
In practice, however, the performance gains provided by both configurations are unpredictable. The performance might double in some applications, while the performance difference might be negligible on other applications.
Another downside to using SLI/Crossfire is that not all motherboards can support them. For example, none of the motherboards that I chose in the previous two posts support SLI, but all support Crossfire. If you’re planning to build an SLI-ready or a Crossfire-ready PC, you will have to make sure that the motherboard supports it.
The increase in the power requirement of your system from using multiple (energy guzzling) video cards might also require you to upgrade your PSU. You can go to this site to check if your (brand-name) PSU can provide enough power to your planned SLI/Crossfire system.
Speaking of PSUs, manuals usually ask the system builder to connect each video card to a dedicated line from the PSU to avoid overloading the line. You must make sure that the PSU has enough lines for your card as some PSUs only have one line for the 6-pin PCI-Express connectors.
There are cases where SLI and Crossfire make sense, though. One obvious scenario would be getting the absolute highest performance from the cards in the market. No single card would be a match to a system two or more of the most powerful video cards in the market working together in SLI/Crossfire.
Of course that scenario would only be applicable to the most hardcore of system builders. For the average enthusiast builder, SLI and Crossfire provides a way to beat the market sometimes. Recall what I said about the cards I chose being in a sweet spot:
…go any cheaper than the HD 4850 and you’ll get a large decrease in performance, but going for even a slightly more powerful card will give you a large increase in price.
Depending on the state of video card retail prices, there are times where SLI or Crossfire configurations would provide the same (or better) performance compared to their more expensive counterparts. This is currently the case for Radeon HD 4850 / 4870 and GeForce GTX 260 (that is, if you can find stores that sell those cards at those prices).
Another possible practical scenario takes advantage of the fact that prices always go down as new hardware gets introduced in the market. A system builder can therefore settle with just one video card first and just buy the second video card when the price goes down. This would allow him to “upgrade” his computer without having to buy a new (and more expensive) single video card.
First would probably be the motherboard. Some of the older motherboards do not support newer processors even though the processor sockets are compatible. There’s also the IDE ports: because of SATA, most of the newer motherboards do not carry more than one IDE socket so if you plan to carry over more than two IDE hard drives or IDE DVD-RW drives from your old PC, you’ll have to make sure that the motherboard you choose has two IDE sockets.
Another would be the PSU. As I mentioned above, you’ll have to make sure that the PSU has enough compatible connectors with your planned parts. It should also be able to provide enough power for your entire system.
Finally, there’s also the PC case. I’m sure you won’t make the mistake of buying a “micro-ATX” case when your motherboard is clearly labeled as “ATX“, but even the most well-informed computer user might not realize that some high-end video cards don’t fit in smaller cases.
Don’t.
By December the lists I provided will already be obsolete. Who knows whether nVidia would release a new chipset that would quickly dominate the sweet-spot in the video card market? Who knows if AMD would release far better processors than Intel’s proposed i5 line? Would SSD (Solid State Drive) prices go down low enough to make the average consumer buy one instead of the traditional magnetic platter based hard disk drives?
Nobody knows the answers to these questions. Because of this, you will have to re-conduct research on parts on December.
Fortunately, most of the rules of thumb I mentioned will still work by then. For example, focusing on the video card will still be applicable by December given that the speed of improvements in graphics card chips is faster than in CPU chips.
For additional information, some sites like Tom’s Hardware provide system builder guides and buying guides giving readers details on how to choose parts based on the current state of the market. You can also go to vendor neutral sites like TipidPC where you can ask members for suggestions on parts.
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And that’s it for this post. I’ll post another one if my friend asks more questions.
As promised, here’s the risky way of building a gaming system. For this part, I’ll be building gaming systems using parts available from PC Express and PC Hub.
A former co-worker/student/underling texted me out of nowhere late this afternoon. At first I thought he was going to inform me that one of my programs blew up and I’ll have to go to the office to fix it. Fortunately it wasn’t the case (on the contrary, he informed me that my program was bug free all this time… riiiiight) and he was just asking for suggestions on building a gaming PC with PhP 50k.
I’m bored so what the hell. Here’s my take on building a system with that budget.
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This first post will be partida*: I won’t be using parts from PCO, PC Hub or PC Express. Instead, I’ll be using parts from VillMan Computers. Their parts are more expensive and they have a narrower range of products, but as Lex mentioned, their customer support is better.
Think of this post as the safe approach in building the gaming PC.
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Everyone has their own CD-R King horror stories: the long lines, the unfriendly attendants, and crappy items that go boom after a week. But with so many items in their catalog, there’s got to be some hidden gems in there.
So to round out my series on the ZyXEL router hidden among the hundreds of CD-R King merchandise, I’ll be pointing out other items that I consider to be notable in their catalog.
Aside from PSUs another source of confusion for normal consumers buying PCs is the graphics card. For normal desktop use, any cheap graphics card will do as long as the card fits in the motherboard (AGP or PCIe) and monitor (VGA or DVI-I or both). For gaming however, the graphics card spells the difference between smooth and choppy gameplay.
When I try to explain in the past how to buy graphics cards, I’d mention the naming scheme used by both nVidia and ATI/AMD: the final 3 digits determine the intended market of the card (e.g. an nVida 8200 will be for entry level machines while an 8800 will be for gaming) while the rest of the numbers determine the generation of the card (e.g. an ATI HD4850 is 5 generations higher than an ATI 9800). While simple, I find that this is still confusing to many.
So for this post, I’ll just point you to Tom’s Hardware‘s Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart.
