[dba-Tech] Desktop recommendation

John,

I bought a bunch of stuff from NewEgg recently to build a new machine and upgrade an existing one. I've been buying pairs of drives for the past several years to allow for a Ghosted backup. A pair of 160 GB drives from NewEgg was $192.

One caveat: if there's something flaky with your motherboard you've got to do the RMA yourself. I bought a Gigabyte board for my wife's workstation. Everything works fine EXCEPT that when the machine is started cold it doesn't recognize the 2nd hard disk. My wife is now used to going into Setup and having the motherboard detect the 2nd drive automagically. I didn't want to hassle with sending the board back to Gigabyte -- NewEgg doesn't do any product support; thus their low prices.

It might be the drive; but all I'm saying is that if you assemble these things yourself then you don't have the luxury of pulling another motherboard or hard disk off the shelf to replace a bad one.

Steve

P.S., Steer clear of Enermax cases.

> ------------Original Message------------
> From: "John W. Colby" <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com>
> To: "'Discussion of Hardware and Software issues'" <dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com>
> Date: Tue, Oct-19-2004 6:07 PM
> Subject: RE: [dba-Tech] Desktop recommendation
> 
> Building is always a good idea.  You might not be able to put a new mb 
> in
> that chassis (HP used to design their stuff to prevent that) but if you 
> buy
> an inexpensive case you can use the drives and stuff from the old 
> machine in
> your new machine.  You already have a monitor / keyboard.  The new
> motherboards have almost everything else.  You can even find 
> motherboards
> with a video chip on the mb.  Good enough to get you by, perhaps 
> forever.