Sunday - April 08, 2007

Vista System

I’ve been promising to give you some tips if you want to run Windows Vista and get all the new features working at blazing fast speed for as little cost as possible. What I will be describing below is one monster system and it all fits in a tiny1 foot by 2 foot case that you can easily hide under your desk.

First, you need to start out with the microATX case shown below from Ultra. It’s a small box but everything can be squeezed into it with little or no trouble. I like it because it is compact, easily disassembled and well ventilated.

Second, you need a power supply that is SLI ready (I’ll explain that later) and with enough power to handle everything we’re going to put into this box. The Ultra comes with a 400W power supply which is the bare minimum we need and it is not SLI ready - so the first thing we do is snatch out the power supply that comes in the case (three screws and it’s out) and replace it with the Ultra X-Finity 500W power supply shown below.

Third, we need to add a motherboard to this little case. There are about eight screws that mount the motherboard onto precisely laid out spacers in the bottom of the case. You can’t get them wrong. The motherboard fits nicely on top of the spacers and you simply screw it down with the provided screws. Plug in the power supply to the motherboard in the special ATX power supply connector on the board. You can’t miss it. It’s a big molex connector at the front of the motherboard. Just plug in the power supply (it’s keyed to only plug in one way so you can’t get it wrong).

Fourth, we need to add our CPU. I have chosen the top of the line AMD 64-bit Athlon 2.60GHz Dual-Core beastie. Follow the instructions carefully to insert it into the CPU socket on the motherboard (there are markings to tell you which way to orient it), lock it in with the locking bar and finally clip on the provided heat sink (which already has silicon heat sink compound on the bottom, so no messy gunk to play with). Make sure it is firmly seated and oriented the correct way before proceeding.

Fifth, next we have to add memory to our creature so it can remember stuff. Again, I have chosen top of the line DDR2, dual-channel, 800MHz memory. It doesn’t get any better than that. The two DIMM sticks are keyed to go into the slots only one way and the slots have locking bars at the ends. Make sure you have inserted them properly and locked them down. You now have 2GB of RAM and room to upgrade to 4GB later if you wish. More than enough for Windows Vista Ultimate.

Sixth, you need a hard drive to store all the goodies and with today’s multimedia deluge you need a big hard drive. I have chosen the Seagate 750GB SATA drive which is plenty enough for now. The hard drive cage that comes with the case has space for two SATA hard drives so you can add another later if you really need 1.5 TERABYTES. Simply remove the cage from the case (one screw), install the hard drive in the cage (four screws), mount the cage back in the case and connect the hard drive power cable and data cable. They are plainly marked on the motherboard and only go in one way.

Seventh, of course no system is complete without a DVD/CD drive and I have chosen the Sony because it is a burner as well as a reader so you can create your own DVD’s or CD’s. This model handles both single-layer DVD’s (4.7GB) and dual-layer DVD’s (8GB). It is also fast. Mount it into one of the two 5.25” drive bays in the front. Four screws is all it takes. Connect the power and data cables (use IDE0 primary - marked on motherboard).

Eighth (and last) we install the one critical component that will give you all the bells and whistles of the new Vista Aero video display and DirectX 10 for awesome video and really cool game play. The motherboard has a built-in video chip and a VGA port on the back but it is not nearly powerful enough to give us the rich video that a dual-GPU (graphics processing unit) SLI (scalable Link Interface) can give us. The geForce 8800 video adapter I have chosen is the most expensive component in our system and darn well worth it. It is PCI Express, blazingly fast and takes two adapter slots because it is actually two video adapters in one.

Of course you’ll still need to shell out a few hundred bucks to get a really cool LCD monitor if you wish and Micro$oft will tag you for $200-$400 for Vista but this is the basic system you need to enjoy all the bells and whistles in the new operating system from Micro$oft. The prices I’ve quoted below are all from TigerDirect (except the motherboard), an online computer shopping store. They have great prices and a good reputation. You may be able to beat some of these prices if you shop around a little. Prices may fluctuate over the next few months and will drop significantly by Fall (as they always do - first adopters always pay more than those who wait a little while).

If anyone out there has any suggestions to improve this little system drop some shopping goodness on us in the comments. There are bargains out there. Shop around. Let me know what you think. Enjoy your new system and don’t forget to bookmark this web site as soon as you get it up and running. Hehehe ...

P.S. You may have noticed that I did not include a floppy drive. Who in heck needs one nowadays anyway? If you insist, the case has a special mounting point just below the 5.25” drive bays. You can pick up a 3.5” floppy drive at CompUSA or Best Buy for about $10, complete with cables.

P.P.S. If you’re wondering how you’re going to get audio from this box, I kept that for a surprise. The Gigabyte motherboard has a built-in RealTek 6-channel audio system that is top of the line. Surround sound plugs for six speakers are all on the back of the motherboard. All you need is speakers.

P.P.S. The motherboard also has gigabit LAN built-in so you can connect to a network right out of the box, along with plenty of USB and firewire ports for external goodies.

Ultra Black MicroFly Aluminum Micro ATX Tower Case with Clear Sides, Front USB,
FireWire and Audio Ports and Ultra V-Series 400-Watt Power Supply
$69.99

- TigerDirect

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Ultra / X-Finity / 500-Watt / ATX / 120mm Fan / SATA-Ready / SLI-Ready
/ Black / Power Supply w/ Ultra 10 Outlet Surge
$59.99

- TigerDirect

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GIGABYTE GA-M51GM-S2G AM2 6100+430 2000FSB DDR2 PCI-E SATA RAID MATX
$79.95

- ATACom

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AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.60GHz Processor (Retail) and a FREE 512MB USB 2.0 Vista Boost Flash Drive
$234.99

- TigerDirect

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Corsair Dual Channel TWINX 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Memory (2 x 1024MB)
$189.99

- TigerDirect

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Seagate / Barracuda 7200.10 / 750GB / 7200 / 16MB / Serial ATA-300 / OEM / Hard Drive
$289.99

- TigerDirect

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Sony DRU-120C Multi-Drive / 16x DVD±R Burn & Read / 8x DVD+RW / 6x DVD-RW / 5x DVD-RAM / 8x DVD+R DL / 4x DVD-R DL / 48x24x CD-R/RW / Black Only / Internal DVD Burner - Retail
$39.99

- TigerDirect

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EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS / 640MB GDDR3 / SLI Ready / PCI Express / Dual DVI / HDTV / HDCP Enabled / Video Card
$359.99

- TigerDirect

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TOTAL COST . . . . . . . . $1,344.88

Posted by The Skipper     on 04/08/2007 at 01:02 AM   
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