cheap and quiet pc readymade

souter

Hi, my cheap and quiet self build has failed miserably, I am now minus any working computer and our family are jonesing for the internet.
So swallowing my pride I need to buy a PC asap. Price c.500 mark, looking at the major retailers in Ireland.
Spec nothing to fancy, no gaming on it. Ideally would like to reuse my 1TB sata drive in a raid 0 setup.
Went to dell site and seized on xps 340 more or less arbitrarily, but no mention of noisiness, so would be presume it isn't particularly quiet.

When I say quiet I don't require ultra quiet - just something I can't hear when it is the far side of the room from me.

Any recommendations for manufacturers whose machines are generally quiet?

the_syco

souter wrote: »

Hi, my cheap and quiet self build has failed miserably

What were the specs, and how did it fail? May be cheap to fix.

leninbenjamin

souter wrote: »

Hi, my cheap and quiet self build has failed miserably,

what's happened with it? surely you can reuse some components to make that €500 of yours go further.

Btw, Dell are taking minimum 3 weeks to deliver these days. You could build one faster if you were to order of Komplett/Overclockers (i.e. places that ship pronto).

souter

Ok, I started off trying to quieten my ancient P4 PC. First thought was to upgrade the CPU fan with a scythe samurai, embarassingly enough I hadn't even realised CPUs came in with different sockets. So thus began the merry chase. I have accumlated to date:

AMD 939 twin core cpu (not particularly fast, not sure what)
2 Gb DDR
500w psu
asus a8v-deluxe mobo
1tb wd green caviar hd
pci-express graphics card (again, fairly low spec, can't remember off hand)
couple of old cases

Salvage able from old PC:
wireless card
firewire card
DVD burner
pci graphics card
(case).
ancient xp installation media

I never managed to get mobo to recognise hd, despite it being jumpered to sata 1500 - the serial number appears briefly during post but I can't figure out how to install anything on it. I had some success with installing on old ide drives, but they were very unstable (i.e. would sometimes just hard reset pc, currently comes up with splash screen, then goes blank and nothing else happens.

At this stage I'm scapegoating the mobo - bought it off ebay years back, it's been gathering dust since, and am so fed up with the process I'm thinking of buying a readymade. Plus the formerly working PC has had it'd drives cannibalised so time is running out.

My final throw of the dice may be buy a new mobo, ASROCK 939N68PV-GLAN is under 100, marxcomputers.ie have it, are right on my door and have a good reputation afaik.

At this stage my wife just want's me to go to swallow my pride and buy something from pcworld . Had a quick look there and nothing really floated my boat, certainly nothing is going to recycle any of the bits and pieces I have.



The o

leninbenjamin

souter wrote: »

I never managed to get mobo to recognise hd, despite it being jumpered to sata 1500 - the serial number appears briefly during post but I can't figure out how to install anything on it. I had some success with installing on old ide drives, but they were very unstable (i.e. would sometimes just hard reset pc, currently comes up with splash screen, then goes blank and nothing else happens.

It is recognising it then. My money is on you never having installed SATA drivers with the XP installation? Did you ever slipstream the drivers into the install disk?

souter wrote: »

At this stage my wife just want's me to go to swallow my pride and buy something from pcworld . Had a quick look there and nothing really floated my boat, certainly nothing is going to recycle any of the bits and pieces I have.

What is it with women thinking PCWorld is the bees-knees? lol

Anti

leninbenjamin wrote: »

What is it with women thinking PCWorld is the bees-knees? lol

As a former employee, i can tell you right now its the bellend purple shirts. the ammount of poon i got from working in there is out of this world.


.... I kid.

women+shop/shiney things=win

souter

yes, I'm sure it's something to do with the drivers, but this is where it becomes painful for me.
As you may have guessed I'm somewhat out of my depth here.
I've lost the original support cd. The floppy drive doesn't work and just to crown things, my emergency backup linux box has failed in sympathy, and as mentioned I can't bring up anything with the ide drives now.
I've spent countless evenings booting up, trying every bios option I can think, testing cable etc.
Various google searches suggest this mobo hasn't the greatest rep , though I may be jaundiced here.
I'm just sick to death of the whole business, at this stage I'm willing to pay 90e if it will make the pain go away and let me take an angle grinder to a few parts.

tbh, pcworld has the plus that it is a) open on sundays b) has ready assembled pcs rather than a multiplying scrap yard of components which seem to be getting further and further removed from a working PC.

Did you ever slipstream the drivers into the install disk?

What is this strange magic of which you speak?

Anti

okay, so you are out of your depth here. No worries. I wouldn't know how to hem a dress, and im man enough to admit it, best to leave that sort of malarky to them there wimin folk.

but in all honesty, forget about pc world, their warrentys are full of loopholes to stop them fixing your pc for you if anything goes wrong (and it will). And their staff really are bumbelling morons. 90% of which came over on the last bananna boat from fook knows where.

If your going down the route of buying a full made pre built PC its best to go look at dell to be honest. Nice friendly staff who wont try to take your wallet and feel up your wife when your back is turned. And their after care/warrenty is awesome

leninbenjamin

souter wrote: »

What is this strange magic of which you speak?

XP doesn't have the drivers for SATA installed. So the XP setup literally wont be able to see your SATA drive to install to. Normally this would be achieved by a floppy disk, however it's also possible (assuming you have another XP machine available to you) to simply burn a new installation disk with the drivers installed. I've never had to do it myself so I'm not sure how difficult the process is, but here is an example of how it can be done.

Anti

wasn't it just press f1 during the install process to load the sata drivers from a floppy?

leninbenjamin

Anti wrote: »

wasn't it just press f1 during the install process to load the sata drivers from a floppy?

but the OP doesn't have a floppy drive (at least there's no mention of it).

Anti

Good point. I still think going to someone like dell would be the quickest easiest thing. If he did this a few hours he'd have his new pc tomorrow !

souter

Yes, there is an option to install drivers during the xp install.
I tried putting them on usb but install would only look in floppy or cd (as mentioned floppy doesn't work).
Just twigged I have a set up cd that came with hd, haven't tried that yet during xp install.
Actually, I tried booting off that cd that (the one that came with the HD, western digital), yet nothing happens there. It clearly states it's bootable. Surely that would have the appropriate drivers?

One last try tonight.

Don't worry, I'll avoid pcworld.

Venom

OP your desire for a low noise PC along with your wish to use your existing HD's seems at odds with your level of computer knowledge tbh. Anti's suggestion of a cheep Dell box is probley your best solution and Dell PC's are pretty quite from the ones Iv encountered.

Also the Sata driver you need should of come on a floppy disk with your motherboard not your HD

leninbenjamin

Anti wrote: »

Good point. I still think going to someone like dell would be the quickest easiest thing. If he did this a few hours he'd have his new pc tomorrow !

Only if he went to a bricks and mortar (which are excessively expensive for desktops imo). As i said in my first post in this thread, a new purchase off Dell is taking about 3 weeks these days.

souter

Venom wrote: »

... seems at odds with your level of computer knowledge tbh

Not the first time and probably not the last - my initial motivation was to keep all the data and installed crap with minimal effort. Hah!

Also the Sata driver you need should of come on floppy dics with your motherboard not your HD

ok, that would make sense.

Would prefer bricks and mortar alright, 3 weeks is too long. Latest plan is try marxcomputers. They may not be the cheapest but they're at my door. Will have one more try with new mobo mentioned earlier, providing they'll take it back when if I fail to get it working in exchange for a pre-built.

Venom

souter wrote: »

Not the first time and probably not the last - my initial motivation was to keep all the data and installed crap with minimal effort. Hah!

ok, that would make sense.

Would prefer bricks and mortar alright, 3 weeks is too long. Latest plan is try marxcomputers. They may not be the cheapest but they're at my door. Will have one more try with new mobo mentioned earlier, providing they'll take it back when if I fail to get it working in exchange for a pre-built.

If all the components are working which you haven't stated that they don't apart from the floppy drive your best option would be to buy a floppy drive for 10 notes and try again. You could download the sata driver from your motherboard from a cybercafe and would be in business.

Anti

leninbenjamin wrote: »

Only if he went to a bricks and mortar (which are excessively expensive for desktops imo). As i said in my first post in this thread, a new purchase off Dell is taking about 3 weeks these days.

lolwut?

What number are you people rining to get in contact with dell. All i hear is people getting through to poland or india or some other inbred backwards lets eat some dogs country! I had to buy a few dell desktops about 3 weeks ago, ordered them on wednesday morning, and they arrived on thurdsay afternoon.

leninbenjamin

Anti wrote: »

lolwut?

What number are you people rining to get in contact with dell. All i hear is people getting through to poland or india or some other inbred backwards lets eat some dogs country! I had to buy a few dell desktops about 3 weeks ago, ordered them on wednesday morning, and they arrived on thurdsay afternoon.

Admittedly haven't known anyone who ordered a desktop recently, but all my families purchases in the past year (monitor, printer, 2 laptops) have taken over 3 weeks to get to us. This seems to be the trend on the rest of boards too...

What number do you ring?

souter

Ok, goaded on somewhat by venom I had another go and started making some progress. Bought another mobo, the asrock 939 n68 pv-glan. Got the floppy working (a combination of money stuffed inside it and cable the wrong way round).
The new mobo has drivers and hopefully idiot proof instructions for making the driver floppy, will be a couple days before I get the time to try it.
In retrospect I'm sure the asus mobo has nothing wrong with it but the new one fits my original case and supports sata2 so I'm sticking with it. Expect to see 1 asus a8v-deluxe appearing on for sale shortly.

This is turning out to be the most expensive cheap upgrade ever.

Thanks for the advice (and goading).

Solitaire

Anti wrote: »

If your going down the route of buying a full made pre built PC its best to go look at dell to be honest. Nice friendly staff who wont try to take your wallet and feel up your wife when your back is turned. And their after care/warrenty is awesome

You forgot to put in [SARCASM] tags.

Twice.

Although they won't feel your wife up. And the after care is pretty good... if you blow a few hundred Euros actually buying it

Off the top of my head deliveries from Dabs and Pixmania get bogged down a lot from this point onward. But they're nothing compared to how bad Dell get from the beginning of November on to around February or so, which is when they actually start shipping machines ordered in November :P Okay, that may have been Xmas '07 but still, you'd have more luck trying to get HWVS to ship a built system in a fortnight than that Dell lot! :P

I had to buy a few dell desktops about 3 weeks ago, ordered them on wednesday morning, and they arrived on thurdsay afternoon.

They probably mistook you for a business customer

Anti

Solitaire wrote: »

You forgot to put in [SARCASM] tags.

Twice.

Although they won't feel your wife up. And the after care is pretty good... if you blow a few hundred Euros actually buying it


They probably mistook you for a business customer

No they know im not, but ive spent about 10k with them since 2008. I think they just like me, maybe all the people bitching about long deliverys are bitchy as i probably took their orders/shat on their cornflakes

leninbenjamin

Anti wrote: »

...ive spent about 10k with them since 2008. I think they just like me

:rolleyes:

Seriously Anti there's a big difference in how they treat you because of that. I ordered a laptop off them in 08 from a family friend who would have been a fairly high spender. It's obviously flagged in the system because they were happy to throw in bluetooth and a free HDD upgrade. Tried same tactics since to no joy. You're experiences are not entirely comparable.

Anti

Its funny because its true

mgadget

Cheap, modern-ish and really quiet, the Dell Dimension...I have one and you would not know its there, it has integrated graphics so there is no additional fan noise, not good for games but grand for t'internet. Only available secondhand now though
Trawling adverts and there is one or two there, this is a nicely kitted out one on adverts.ie but with a graphics card for €250

Anti

Its a bit over priced at 250 though, if you can get it for 200 its a good deal.