Newegg bare-bone pc's?

obieone

I want to move my htpc back to it's rightful place at the other end of the house, so I was thinking of getting a bare bone sys. from Newegg.
It'll be used for scanning, photo's and emailing stuff for work, downloading pdf files etc.
My concerns are:
Which mb/ proc. combo will allow me to utilize my 22 lcd?
Can I use an external hdd as THE hdd?
Any other concerns I should be aware of?

Thanks

concealer404

Pretty much anything with a VGA/DVI output will let you use your LCD. I wouldn't worry about that, it's a non-issue.

You CAN use an external HDD as THE hdd, but i wouldn't recommend it. Typically they use a USB bus, which is a bit slower than the ata/sata bus that is usually used by internal HDDs. I'd use the external for storage only, and run all your bootables at the very least on your internal.

Sami

Just get an internal HD. After $25 MIR you could get a barebone system with 1TB HD and 1GB of RAM for less than $200. No CD but you could use a USB flash drive to install OS.

You can install your OS into a USB drive too, that way you save that $65 on HD but your system will be slower and you won't have much space to save stuff.

MacLeod

Hard drives are relatively cheap nowadays and you can pick up a 320 GB Western Digital drive for $50 shipped usually off Newegg which would be plenty. You can go smaller but you wont really save anything as the 250 GB is only $5 cheaper.

As for which proc, Im an AMD fanboy. Intel are faster and better performers clock for clock but dollar for dollar AMD is top of the heap. You can get the Phenom II X3 720 for $120 shipped which is an excellent CPU and will hang with any $200 chip Intel has. Its a Black Edition also so it just stupid easy to overclock and will run up to 3.8 GHz on the stock cooler and itll be a LONG time before you outgrow it. Another thing with AMD is that all their newer AM3 chips will fit on current AM2+ boards so you can continue to upgrade chips for several years without having to replace your motherboard. Intel uses a new socket with ever new line they come out with so if you get the current 775 board and want to upgrade to their new i5 line youll need a new board and when you move up to a i7 youll need a new board AGAIN!

Gigabyte are generally considered the best built motherboards but Asrock is also a very solid board that is usually a few bucks cheaper without sacrificing quality.

If youre not going to play any games on your 22" monitor then you can get away with using the integrated graphics on the motherboard. AMD's 780G chipset has ATI's HD3200 integrated graphics which is the best IGPU on the market. Im using it now and Im able to play Bioshock, Half Life and Painkiller games. Im only using 1064 x 780 resolution with graphics set from low to medium but its still pretty impressive considering its an IGPU.

The thing Id look for most tho is the power supply. 85% of PSU brands out there are total crap! PC Power, Seasonic and Corsair are pretty much the best. The cheaper ones may be a whole lot cheaper but they likely wont put out the power their claiming (think Sony receivers) and theyll likely crap out on you within a year. Getting a $70 PC Power 500 watt unit will ensure youre getting 500 CONTINUOUS watts and a build quality that will last for several years.

obieone

Thanks for all the feedback. I've got a copy of vista from when I built the htpc, but was having so many problems, I just ripped it out and installed an old XP disc. Hopefully I can use that, without any issues.

What I was planning on doing was upgrade my current dvdrw, to a either a bdrom, or bdrw, and install the dvdrw into the barebone system.
I just wish I HADN'T chucked my old emachine out. I could have used that hdd.
Oh well, shouldn't be 2 painful.

Sami

obieone wrote: »

Hopefully I can use that, without any issues.

Based on the task description, you could also give this a try: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

Here's the budget barebone system for less than $200:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16856167032
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16822145233
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16820227058

obieone

Wow, thanks Sami. You did my shopping for me.:p
I'll just order all that and be good to go.:)