Decided to upgrade my old backup PC

Theophylact · May 7th, 2009, 02:30 PM

The Athlon 1500+ is getting a bit elderly, so I've ordered new innards. It's got a pretty good box, an Antec Sonata III with a 500W PSU. I have an effectively brand-new 1TB HDD sitting in my workaday machine without any data on it that I'll use for the main drive, and I have the usual miscellaneous bits: a ZIP-250, a floppy, a card reader, and a DVD burner. I use a KVM for my two machines so I don't need a new monitor, keyboard or mouse.

Here's what I'm getting:

GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-US2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail ($74.99 before $10 MIR; $7.59 shipping)

AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 Kuma 2.7GHz Socket AM2+ 95W Dual-Core black edition Processor Model AD775ZWCGHBOX - Retail (includes HSF; $59.99; free shipping)

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-8500CL6D-4GBNQ - Retail ($49.99; free shipping)

I think it looks pretty good for less than $200. Should be a decent test bed for the 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope).

qrs321 · May 7th, 2009, 10:44 PM

Looks very good for a $200 upgrade.
If you are not in to overclocking you may want to look into the Athlon X2 7850+, which is like $10 more or something.

Theophylact · May 8th, 2009, 09:40 AM

I'm not overclocking. But the 64 X2 7750 is actually a rebranded Phenom, with two cores disabled, so it's a pretty nice processor for the price.

qrs321 · May 8th, 2009, 04:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Theophylact

I'm not overclocking. But the 64 X2 7750 is actually a rebranded Phenom, with two cores disabled, so it's a pretty nice processor for the price.

Yeah, I know. The 7850 just has a higher clock, for $10-$15 more, I thought you might be interested.

Theophylact · May 8th, 2009, 07:24 PM

Too late; I've already received the package.

qrs321 · May 8th, 2009, 07:59 PM

Yeah, not a big deal. I'm sure you'll be happy with the 7750

Theophylact · May 16th, 2009, 04:29 PM

Okay, I set it up yesterday, and everything seems to be working fine. The onboard sound and network are functioning without problems. And it's nice and quiet.The two PCI slots are occupied by a card for the card reader and a dialup modem in case of emergency; I have the Zip-250, a DVD-RW, the card reader and a floppy in four of the five front bays.

I've installed 64-bit Windows 7 RC1 in a 500GB partition of the 1TB SATA and I'm planning to put 64-bit Ubuntu 9.04 in the free space. Wish me luck.

Atomic Rooster · May 16th, 2009, 04:59 PM

Nice setup Theo. I've heard good things about Windows 7. I have it downloaded and burned, just haven't gotten around to installing it.

You know, with a simple multiplier increase, that little Kuma will hum along easily at 3.0GHz.

Theophylact · May 16th, 2009, 05:33 PM

Oh, I'm just an old slowpoke.

But I'm posting from Jaunty Jackalope (Ubuntu 9.04) 64-bit right now.

Things look good...

Theophylact · May 22nd, 2009, 10:40 AM

The only minor issue is that the memory is running at 800, not 1066. This seems to be a known problem with this particular DRAM.