Archive for year 2008

My last article about How to make an inexpensive & efficient Computer was praised by many readers. Now that PC was meant to be a one stop solution for everything you can think of. It was a gaming machine, music device, HTPC, all in one. But I was thinking, how low can you go?

In the market there are many people who want to buy a cheap PC for their home for kids or to get online once in a while or for the kids to study for school stuff like some HTML or C++ or to use in the office for Office suites. They don’t even open there computer every day, so they won’t require the previous configuration of PC I mentioned. This is another PC configuration for such use, office & cyber cafes where compatibility is required but high end components are not required & no one plays games on these PCs but still there is a small upgrade path. One thing for sure, this PC is going to be a looker in sleekness & style.

CPU = Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180 or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+. These CPU will not win any benchmarks or contest for number crunching but still at a very low price you will get a Dual Core CPU from Intel & AMD with enough horse power for your day to day tasks.

Motherboard = My personal preference is Asus P5N MX for Intel or Asus M2N-CM  DVI for AMD. These are very low cost yet stable motherboards based on nVidia 7050 chipset. They have most of the component ever required on board already like on board LAN, sound & graphics & people don’t even need to go beyond this. Whatever you need this small & cost effective PC to do, this motherboard will help you.

Another option if the above Asus motherboard are not available is Intel DG31PR motherboard.

CPU fan = No need to spend extra money, the Stock CPU fan from Intel & AMD are good enough. If you still want to spend some money on a good & silent CPU Cooler than simply get Cooler Master Hyper L3.

RAM = 2X1 GB DDR2 667 MHz RAM. Any cheap brand like Dynet, Simmtronics or Kingston Value RAM would do the job. It should cost you a maximum of Rs 1,600 for 2 GB RAM.

Cyber Cafe owners should just go for 1 GB DDR2 667 RAM.

Cabinet & SMPS = iBall Baby 306 is my preferred CPU Cabinet for this PC. Not only it is very small in size but also sufficient for this PC. Just get any 500W SMPS like one from Frontech or ColorSit. These SMPS aren’t very powerful but then you don’t require powerful SMPS and these provide adequate electricity for this PC. Install a 80 MM fan on the side & rear exhaust & keep the cabinet in horizontal position not vertical.

UPS = Get an APC 650VA UPS which can easily provide up to 10 minutes backup.

Cyber cafe owners should skip this & use a unified inverter.

Hard Disk = It depends on the user but 160 GB should be enough for such PCs to start with. Get a Western Digital WD1600AAJA SATA 2 Hard disk with 8 MB buffer, it should cost around Rs 2,000.

Cyber Cafe owners should look for old 40 GB or 80 GB hard disk which they can buy 2nd hand for Rs 800.

Optical Drive = There are many optical drives in the market right now but one Drive which is enough for this computer’s needs would be Samsung SH-S203D DVD Writer at Rs 1,200.

Cyber cafe owners need not to install any optical drive on the nodes. Just one at the server is sufficient.

Audio & Video = The onboard Audio & Video of this motherboard is all anyone will ever require in an office or home where computer is used once in a while only. The onboard graphics on Intel DG31PR which  Intel GMA X3100 & on the Asus motherboards are nVidia GeForce 7050 which are enough to run Windows Vista with Aero.

If you still want to buy a graphics card for home use then a low profile Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3450 based graphics card with 256 MB RAM should be adequate.

Onboard Audio is Realtek 5.1 channel which again is sufficient because most users will either use a headphone or 2.1 channel speaker setup with such computer.

TV Tuner Card = Buy it if you need it else leave it. I would recommend Leadtek Winfast TV2000XP Global Media Center with my eyes closed as this TV Tuner is by far the best analog TV Tuner card I have seen. It is compatible with Windows Media Center & even comes with a Media Center Remote. If you can find the PCI Express X1 based WinFast PxTV1200 Media Center Edition then buy that instead to use that idle PCI Express X1 slot to some good use. You can also use these TV Tuners with the DTH service such as Tata Sky or Dish TV

Speakers & Headphones = This is a completely personal choice & I would advise you to go to the market & check yourself after listening to some available models. Since you are looking for a Value PC then buying a 5.1 channel speaker system doesn’t make sense. Entry level Altec Lansing & Creative Models are what you should look for. My personal choice although is Creative Gigaworks T20 or Creative I-Trigue T3000 for Stereo Sound but they will cost you about Rs 4,000 easily.

Webcam = Buy it if you need it. These days webcam start for as low as Rs 500 in the market. Considering the state of Indian broadband, a Microsoft LiveCam VX-1000 should suffice or Frontek Webcam which are surprisingly good for the price at Rs 500.

Keyboard & Mouse = Again, this is a personal preference. Look yourself to judge which keyboard & mouse you find comfortable with your hands & posture. A good & low cost yet effective keyboard is Zebronics Desktop Commander Keyboard which has laptop like keys & is easy on the hands. iBall Laser Precise Speedster mouse is a good low cost laser mouse which works surprisingly well within Rs 1,000.

Cyber cafe owners should go for Logitech Internet Desktop wired edition. A very cheap combination of wired keyboard & Mouse.

Monitor = Despite of this PC being a Value PC I will not recommend a CRT Monitor due to their sheer size & power requirements. LCD Monitors are dirt cheap now so it makes perfect sense to invest in a LCD Monitor instead of a CRT now as monitors easily last for many years & is generally the last hardware component to upgrade.

For Home use buy the LG L206WTQ Monitor. It is 20” TN Panel based but HDCP compliant. You can easily upgrade to a Blu-ray Drive later & still enjoy all your HD Movies as Blu-Ray requires a monitor with HDCP connection. It has a native resolution of 1650X1080 pixels which is more than enough for whatever you want to throw at it, even 720p HD Videos play flawless on this monitor as 1080p will look different from 720p only when seen on a 32? or higher LCD Display. You can also connect your gaming console such as XBOX 360 or Playstation 3 to this monitor to play games on a wide screen LCD with real HD resolution.

Cyber cafe owners should go for 17" LCD from Samsung or LG with 4:3 aspect ratio. They won’t need a widescreen monitor in a cyber cafe. CRT monitors are also an option if you want to go dirt cheap but I seriously don’t recommend buying CRT anymore.

Operating System = For home use 32bit Windows Vista Home premium is adequate for this computer. Once installed & configured for which you can have a look at my article “Using Windows Vista: The MVP Way” & your setup will be like Set it & forget it. Just start the system, work on it & do whatever you want.

For Cyber Cafe, Windows XP SP3 is advised.

We all know that people in Cyber cafe or casual home users in home pirate the OS anyway so instead of going with Linux & a new environment they would rather prefer going with Windows XP.

About other software, most of the basic home related work can be done these days with free software available for Windows. Some of them are Open Source applications like OpenOffice which will do the work just fine instead of Office 2007. This will further cut software cost & you don’t even have to pirate stuff.