Ok, just went through this kind of thing building a cheap low power, quiet reliable back up PC still capable of running vista for my father. He's a programmer, and thus knows little about hardware which for reasons that are beyond me is apparently the norm. Also, he is a man that is brutal on hardware. I don't recall the series, but their was a compaq laptop out about 5 years ago, that the entire internal frame and case was made of titanium. His brother bought him one thinking that it was just the kind of rugged hardware my dad needed and to demonstrate how much abuse the thing could take he actually drove over it in his massive lexus SUV, and it survived without a scratch.
Yet it was still no match for my father as he managed to somehow rip two USB ports off of the motherboard, along with the power connector.
I had given him my old DFI NF4 Dr expert board when i upgraded and since it wasn't overclocked it was extremely reliable and easy for me to work on, or remedy any problems he may encounter since that kind of thing always falls on me. After the destruction of the titanium laptop, it shouldn't be that suprising that he managed to overlook the fact the the little zero friction magnetic NB fan had gotten so clogged with dust that it would no longer spin, resulting in the spiffy little hologram sticker melting half off and being charred brown, the metal of the heatsink being heated to the point of getting blackened, the NB core itself actually becoming distorted and a couple of the bridges on the back of the board melting off.
Apparently the NB got a little toasty....finally destroying his OS Raid set set up with on board raid chip after hitting 110c. Though, to DFI's credit, the board still booted after i replaced the NB HS, and re soldered the damaged bridges.
I realize all that is completly irrelivent to the topic, but i wanted to put into perspective just how much faith i put in the forthcoming hardware i reccomend given what it has to stand up against.
At the time this happen money was tight, and while at one point i had access to a dozen and a half socket A board that would have suited an interm solution, they had been fried or were used by someone else. Also, since any half way decent 939 boards are almost impossible to find, and even if you can they are horribly overpriced, i used this as an exscuse to try out the new and shiny 780g chipset. Despite having to buy a new cpu as well as DDR2 ram, the trio of hardware pieces cost $145.....plus like $40 shipping to get rush delivery.
ECS A780GM-A AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard $79 (paid $69
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135075
Patriot 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) $39
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220091
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Brisbane 2.2GHz Socket AM2 65W $45 (paid $37 Obox special)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103214
I chose that motherboard mainly because it was the only ATX model available, and also the cheapest. Still a nice reliable board, suits my dad quite well for watching HD movies and working in Visual FoxPro. But despite my apprehension at buying an ECS board, still was enough to impressive me into building two more 780g boxes, one for my mother, and one for it's intended purpose as a HTPC box.
GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX $99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128090
G.SKILL 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231148 $99x2
AMD Opteron 1210 HE (WOF) Santa Ana 1.8GHz Socket AM2 65W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105146 $69
CFI B5253ERBB 5-Bay eSATA Port-Multiplier Storage Appliance $299
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816855011
Antec 0.8mm cold rolled steel/ Aluminum plate front bezel Veris Fusion 430 Micro ATX HTPC $199
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129029
HITACHI Deskstar 7K1000 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive $159x5
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145166&Tpk=HITACHI%2bDeskstar%2b7K1000%2bHDS721075KLA330%2b(0A35154)
Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFDRTL 74GB 10,000 RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive $139x2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136220
SAPPHIRE 100237L Radeon HD 3650 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire $103
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102725
Total cost $2040
Ok, i admit i went a little overboard with the HTPC system, but hey....my DVD-R collection has grown to over 2000 discs which is like 9 terabytes taking something around 200 hours worth of time to burn. Plus i already had the Enclousure and 2 750g drives =P.
The video card isn't really required, with the dual-core opty in there can play blu-ray discs fine CPU stays under 35% load with the NB/GPU overclocked. Runs 64bit Vista ultimate without a hitch. I love the gigabyte board though, i highly reccomend that as the basis of your HTPC, with an add-in gpu, can do some half way decent gaming as well.
The reason i went for the eSata raid enclousure on the HTPC is that well, the cases are small and not a whole lot of room for drives. Plus, if i want to be comfortable not backing up data like a speed freak with OCD, i want the drives in Raid 5, which means you lose a disk in gaining redundancy.
________
0 1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4 0
2 3 4 0 1
3 4 0 1 2
4 0 1 2 3
Basically what raid 5 striping looks like, 0 representing the redundant data blockIf one drive fails then it can be rebuilt from the other 4 drives. So 750x5= 3000 in raid5. Though $140 is well worth keeping your data in tact.
If you want to be cheap about it, then Stick to The board, 2gigs of ram, Dual core and a pair of 750gig drives to get you started, $440 to do it that way and still fully capable of running vista ultimate and playing 1080p video.
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