New Pc For Grandparents

[venney]

Hey all. Well my grandma and granddad use their pc for the internet basically, but they are tired of the pc loading so slowly. To be honest, its well old and needs booting out the window. I would just find them a good pc from a retailer, but they are just about used to XP so im not going to throw vista at them.

I have decided to buy them the components and fit them together, this way they will get a pc in a short space of time and much better value for money. I Have compiled a list of components and i would like your opinion on them before i go ahead and purchase. At this point i will say that they already have a nice monitor + keyboard + mouse. So I’m basically buying everything from new except that. Well with the exception of the two cd/dvd drives they have in the pc at the moment, i see no good reason to not recycle them, so what’s the point in wasting money on them when they have two perfectly good ones already.

So here goes:

Case:
Casecom 6630 Black Midi Tower Case With Front Panel USB2.0/Audio - No PSU
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119589#
£13.99

MOBO:
Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H GeForce 7100 Socket 775 onboard VGA 8 channel audio mATX Motherboard
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139780
£51.49

CPU:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping (2.4GHz 1066MHz) Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache (2x4MB (4MB per core pair) Retail Boxed Processor
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/131950
£159.99

RAM:
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800Mhz/PC2-6400 GOLD XTC Memory Kit CL5(5-5-5-18)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146049
£34.99

PSU:
Arctic Power 500W PSU With PCI-E 2x SATA, 20+4 ATX12V 8pin +12V Connectors - Retail Boxed
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124922#
£28.98inc vat

HDD:
Western Digital WD3200AAKS 320GB SATAII 16MB Cache 7200 RPM - OEM
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124735
£38.68

SATA CABLE:
Plexus Serial ATA 2.0 7-pin Cable (Red) 61cm / 24"
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/151962
£2.64

OS:
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition-SP3/SP2- Licence and media - 1 PC - OEM - CD - English
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/114048
£69.99


That’s it. Unless i have missed anything out. Its my understanding the MOBO has 'Integrated DVI/ HDMI interface with HDCP ' so i don’t see the need to waste money on a gpu unless someone thinks its a good idea to get one?
I will be using the two optical drives from the pc they already have, will the PSU and MOBO accept IDE?
That all comes to a total of £400 which lets face it, is amazing for what they are getting. It should be lightning fast and just generally work much better than the one at the moment. I would love to hear any suggestions or alterations. £400 pounds seems a good deal to me. The other good thing about it is, if the decided they wanted better resolution (i doubt, they have it huge atm lol) i could always pop in a GPU for cheap, and i could also buy optical drives if i find theirs don’t work. I would also blank their current HDD and whack that in as spare storage too.

I really look forward to hearing your opinions, i want to get on and order it for them.

[Psymon]

My thoughts:

Case: get one that's 'tool free' since it'll save you some fiddly effort. possibly try for one with 120mm fans, front and rear. even if it doesn't come with the fans see if it has space for them then buy the fans separately. bigger fans means quieter pc. might have to look into a fan controller. since the mobo you chose is microATX it should fit in something like http://www.ebuyer.com/product/129891

CPU: I've bought that quad core for a friend, cracking purchase, but I'd suggest dropping the 2 cores and going for a higher clock since they'll notice that will make a greater difference. This is 2.8Ghz, the quad was 2.4, and its £100 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152177
Or this one, 3Ghz and has more cache than the other I linked but costs more http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139971

GPU. get one!!! if you use whatever on board chip, it'll be weak, and borrow RAM. both bad. your CPU will do most of the rendering, slowing EVERYTHING. I know you're a fan of ATI, and I'd recommend a passively cooled GPU so check this http://www.ebuyer.com/product/161559

RAM: only bother getting then 4GB if they're going with 64bit XP. I'd suggest against 64bit XP since there's less support, and so I'd suggest dropping back to 32bit and 2GB. Just to save money really. They'll never even use 1GB of it I reckon...

[venney]

Thanks for the suggestions Psy, i also thought the same about the gpu. I guess a cheap one wouldnt hurt.

As with the ram, i dont mind wacking in 4gig, they want it as fast as possible, so i may as well just let them have the maximum. its not really very expensive.

Im not sure about the CPU, i have the quad core one and its lovely. But i do take your point. Id be more tempted to get the 3GHZ dual core than the cheaper one. I will ask them what they would prefere (which i assume they will say up to me lol).

[icecube]

Hi Venney

Why not just save their data and wipe the drive and do a reinstall? Don't do a factory reinstall with their CD. Do a full install with the XP cd. That way you don't load the bloatware.

I think you'll be amazed at how fast the new install will run. You will get rid of all the the goodies that has been added to slow the machine down. Spyware, toolbars, weather indicators, coupon shopper. Every time you add a program and then delete it, it stays in the registry. And it gets bigger and bigger.

Speed shouldn't be an issue with XP if all they are using it for is the Internet.

If that doesn't speed up their system, then you could have a bad hard drive or power supply. Plus it's always good to look for leaking capacitors on the motherboard they are a real speed killer.

[venney]

Hey Icecube, thank you for your suggestion. I may actually give that a go first as they dont really have any important things on their pc (nothin more than a dvd's worth at the moment).

Their pc is over 5 years old i think, and its the start time that seems to really get on their nerves. Ive disabled like almost everything i can from starting up but it still takes a good while.

I suppose if i do a clean install and they arent happy i could always just go ahead and order all this.
Thanks buddy

[venney]

Well i did both, i did a clean install of xp on the system they have at the moment and i ordered a whole list of parts.

I changed the cpu added a gpu and changed the case for another i liked. i spent a total of £430 which includes everything to be delivered next day. I will upload progress of the build with pictures etc.

Thanks for both your advice

[liljim]

sry for missing out on this one man, been busy and let a build post slip right by me..lol

[venney]

Ok so good news, new motherboard arrived and i got it all working hunky dory. I dropped it round to the grandparents this evening and they seemed very happy. The only thing i noticed was it took a while to boot up, but when i came home i did some research on 'ide detect time out'. It is set in the bios to 35 seconds, and my research/understanding is that this option is for if you are using an old IDE hard drive, it makes it wait 35 seconds so that the hard drive has time to spin up. As i am not using an IDE hard drive, is it ok to disable this, and would this defiantly be the reason why it is taking longer than i thought to boot up?
Its the only option in the bios i can see that would make it boot slower. When windows starts loading its quick as chips, which is another reason why i believe this to be the case, it just takes some time on POST.

Only thing left now is to make sure i get my refund on that first motherboard

[venney]

refund obtained

[Psymon]

Good news!

Glad you managed to resolve everything.

I'd think you can disable that option. I guess if a HDD took especially long to spin up, then without that wait it won't see any HDD and fail to boot into an OS. If it's booting from the SATA HDD anyway then there's definitely no need for it.

[venney]

Ok so another update, i changed the option and it still boots slowly.
I don’t understand because sometimes when i turn the pc on it boots up very quickly, goes through POST almost instantly. And other times it just sits there doing nothing until all of a sudden windows starts to load.

I have removed one stick of ram to see if that changed anything, but nothing. I am going to take the ram out of my pc and test it in this one to see if we do have dodgy ram.

Does anyone have a clue why it would be booting slowly sometimes and not slow other times? Would a bios update possibly help?

[icecube]

Hi Venney

You might check the BIOS for a memory setting of ECC Scrub. The process writes zeros to each memory location. It is used primarly for servers and can take quite a bit of time to complete.

[venney]

Hey icecube, thanks for your advice, i will check it next time i pop round. What should i set it too? Disabled?

[icecube]

Disable it. Its pretty much for people that are calculating out Pi to a couple of million decimal places.

I've got a system here that really lags on boot with dual in line memory. There is no setting on this one to set. Its a real fast machine once it is up and running. We just leave it running