On Mon, 25 Jul 2016 11:49:41 -0400 Giles Orr via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
My suggestions: - build it yourself. If you're comfortable mucking around inside a PC, you already have the skills. From my first build I think the only thing that got somewhat alarming was having to get and apply thermal paste to the main processor, and getting the clips on the processor in place. It's a very good way to get to know the PC, and you'll do a better build than any paid tech because it's _yours_. - if you really need the dial-up modem, install it (although I suspect Linux support is poor - check it thoroughly). Otherwise, don't bother with it. - you didn't mention a video card. If the motherboard has one onboard and you're planning to use that, the power supply sounds like overkill (even given the later addition of SCSI stuff ... which I'd suggest avoiding if you can, it's another justifiably dying breed like the modem). Buy a smaller capacity (500W?) and better power supply ... although I admit I'm going on years-old memories, EVGA wasn't one of the best suppliers "back in the day". Something for you to research a bit more perhaps. - BluRay support on Linux is ... limited. You can probably use it for backup, but you won't be able to play back commercial movies. You might use it under Windows. - go with 16G of memory if you can afford it: it's not critical, but you'll probably enjoy it - and it will help a lot with running VMs. But it's also the easiest thing to upgrade later.
Giles, I have a BluRay burner here. It did not play my Game of Thrones BluRay disk. It does an excellent job of backups. The BluRay disks are cheap. When I replaced my motherboard, the new AMD processor had the thermal paste on it. I just installed the thing as per the instructions. -- Howard Gibson hgibson@eol.ca howard.gibson@teledyneoptech.com jhowardgibson@gmail.com http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson