Build A PC
A custom PC configuration guide.
© 2000,2001,2002 by Jef Poskanzer.
Reference Systems
Here are a few sample systems based on the info presented here.
First, some examples based on current architectures -
aside from the CPU/motherboard/memory these systems are the same.
Then some servers, and finally some obsolete designs.
Some prices are only approximate.
[Dual Athlon]
[Athlon]
[Pentium IV]
[Low-Power Dual PIII]
[Quad Xeon]
[Web Server]
[Compute Server]
[Gigabit Server]
[Dual Celeron]
[Old Web Server]
- Dual Athlon DDR system
-
It took a while, but there are finally boards supporting two Athlons.
You have to get the special MP version of the Athlon to use them.
- Tyan Tiger MPX (S2466) dual Socket-A AMD760MPX ATX motherboard with ethernet, $203
- Athlon MP 2000+ 1.67GHz, $202
- Athlon MP 2000+ 1.67GHz, $202
- 512MB PC2100 DDR ECC SDRAM, $111
- 512MB PC2100 DDR ECC SDRAM, $111
- Maxtor 100GB 5400 RPM disk, $124
- CD/CD-R, $100
- floppy drive, $12
- AGP video card, $120
- Creative Labs sound card, $40
- speakers, $80
- ATX medium tower case with at least 450W power supply, $200
- 17" monitor, $250
- optical mouse, $20
- keyboard, $20
- TOTAL $1800
- Athlon DDR system
-
A very fast single-processor system.
We can use faster memory here than on the dual-Athlon system.
- Soyo SY-KT333 Dragon Ultra Socket-A KT333 ATX motherboard with ethernet and audio, $150
- Athlon XP 2100+ 1.73, $194
- 512MB PC2700 DDR ECC SDRAM, $152
- 512MB PC2700 DDR ECC SDRAM, $152
- Maxtor 100GB 5400 RPM disk, $124
- CD/CD-R, $100
- floppy drive, $12
- AGP video card, $120
- speakers, $80
- ATX medium tower case, $40
- 17" monitor, $250
- optical mouse, $20
- keyboard, $20
- TOTAL $1400
- Pentium-4 system
-
Another fast single-processor system, this time with a P4.
- AOpen AX4G Pro Socket-478 i845G ATX motherboard with ethernet, audio, and video, $150
- Pentium-4 2.2GHz, $256
- 512MB PC2700 DDR ECC SDRAM, $152
- 512MB PC2700 DDR ECC SDRAM, $152
- Maxtor 100GB 5400 RPM disk, $124
- CD/CD-R, $100
- floppy drive, $12
- speakers, $80
- ATX medium tower case, $40
- 17" monitor, $250
- optical mouse, $20
- keyboard, $20
- TOTAL $1350
- Low-Power Dual Pentium-III system
-
Intel recently came out with a
low voltage / low power version of the Pentium-III -
800 MHz at only 11.2 Watts.
These are intended for use in dual-CPU 1U "blade" servers where the
small physical space means it's hard to get adequate cooling for
higher-power CPUs.
However it seems to me that in a regular case with good airflow,
these guys might actually run without a CPU fan.
You'd use a big copper heatsink instead.
There would still be a fan on the power supply, but one less fan means
a quieter system.
If you're interested in experimenting and want to try this idea,
let me know what you find out!
The AOpen DX37 Plus-U or the Iwill DVD266u-RN are good motherboards for this
project, since they have DDR memory as well as dual FC-PGA sockets.
The AOpen board has SCSI which we don't need, so we'll go with the Iwill.
- Iwill DVD266u-RN dual FC-PGA2 Pro266T ATX motherboard with audio and ethernet, $180
- Low-Voltage Pentium-III 800MHz, $200
- Low-Voltage Pentium-III 800MHz, $200
- 512MB PC2100 DDR ECC SDRAM, $111
- 512MB PC2100 DDR ECC SDRAM, $111
- Maxtor 100GB 5400 RPM disk, $124
- CD/CD-R, $100
- floppy drive, $12
- cheap no-fan AGP video card, $50
- speakers, $80
- ATX medium tower case, $40
- 17" monitor, $250
- optical mouse, $20
- keyboard, $20
- TOTAL $1550
Next, some server systems.
- Quad Pentium-IV Xeon server
-
The ultimate, a fast four-processor super box.
SuperMicro just came out with a board that supports four of the
mPGA603 P4 Xeon MP chips: the
P4QH8.
They sell it pre-packaged with a case / power supply / fans, $4200 as
a 4U rackmount and $4500 as a full tower.
Since rackmount is k00ler as well as cheaper, we'll go with that.
The board takes PC1600 registered memory, but it's interleaved so it's actually
faster than PC2100 or PC2700.
Since the board has SCSI and already costs so much, we might as well
use a SCSI disk too.
Also, we might as well pack in 2GB of memory too.
And be sure to get the Xeon MP CPUs, not the regular Xeons.
- SuperMicro P4QH8 quad mPGA603 GC-HE WTX motherboard with ethernet and video, $4200
- Pentium-IV Xeon MP 1.4GHz mPGA603, $1200
- Pentium-IV Xeon MP 1.4GHz mPGA603, $1200
- Pentium-IV Xeon MP 1.4GHz mPGA603, $1200
- Pentium-IV Xeon MP 1.4GHz mPGA603, $1200
- 512MB PC1600 DDR ECC registered SDRAM, $135
- 512MB PC1600 DDR ECC registered SDRAM, $135
- 512MB PC1600 DDR ECC registered SDRAM, $135
- 512MB PC1600 DDR ECC registered SDRAM, $135
- Seagate 180GB 7200 RPM SCSI disk, $1277
- CD-ROM reader, $30
- floppy drive, $12
- WTX 4U rackmount case, $0 (included with motherboard)
- TOTAL $11000
- Co-Located Web Server
-
This is a web server for a medium-busy web site, co-located at an ISP.
It doesn't need a mouse, keyboard, monitor, sound card, or speakers.
During setup and debugging, you borrow a keyboard and monitor from
another system.
The current price/performance leader in CPUs is the Duron, so we'll
use that.
However, a web server doesn't need a whole lot of CPU power - only 200MHz
is enough to saturate a 100Mbps ethernet.
So we'll use the cheapest Duron currently available.
Getting a motherboard with embedded video saves a few bucks too.
- MicroStar KM133A Pro5 Socket-A KM133a uATX motherboard with audio and video, $57
- Duron 900MHz, $36
- 512MB PC133 non-ECC SDRAM, $55
- Maxtor 100GB 5400 RPM disk, $124
- Netgear FA311TX 10/100 ethernet card, $10
- CD-ROM reader, $30
- floppy drive, $12
- ATX medium tower case, $40
- TOTAL $364
If you run Apache you'll need more memory of course, but with a
more reasonable web daemon the 512MB will be more than enough.
The disk should be big enough for most web sites.
While it's not the fastest disk available at the moment, its
speed is about four times more than is necessary to saturate the
network interface directly from disk.
The main thing I like about this disk is its reliability, a big
plus for a co-located system.
But if you think you need more speed, then you ought to look at the
gigabit server.
- Compute Server
-
This is intended for sticking on a shelf along with a dozen similar
boxes, to provide massive parallel computing power.
Here again you don't need a mouse, keyboard, monitor, sound card, or speakers.
You also don't need a lot of memory or a big/fast disk.
The main design criterion is to maximize MHz/$$$.
Currently this means the Athlon, and putting two Athlons in one box
means you pay less for the auxiliary components.
- Tyan Tiger MPX (S2466) dual Socket-A AMD760MPX ATX motherboard with ethernet, $203
- Athlon MP 2000+ 1.67GHz, $202
- Athlon MP 2000+ 1.67GHz, $202
- 512MB PC2100 DDR ECC SDRAM, $111
- Maxtor 60GB 5400 RPM disk, $73
- CD-ROM reader, $30
- ATX medium tower case, $40
- TOTAL $860
- Gigabit Ethernet Server
-
Gigabit ethernet has approximately the same bandwidth as the PCI
bus, so if you expect to use most of that gigabit bandwidth you
will also be using most of your PCI bandwidth.
That's a bottleneck you'd like to avoid.
The solution is to use 64-bit 66MHz PCI, which most gigabit
ethernet cards support.
However, this limits your choices for the chipset and motherboard.
Intel has some chipsets which support fast/wide PCI - the i860, i840 - but
they use RDRAM, which I prefer to avoid.
All of the
ServerWorks
chipsets do fast/wide PCI; SuperMicro and Tyan make
some very nice boards based on these chipsets.
And the dual-CPU Athlon chipset from AMD does fast/wide PCI.
We're going to use that, but with only one CPU.
- Tyan Tiger MPX (S2466) dual Socket-A AMD760MPX ATX motherboard with ethernet, $203
- Athlon MP 2000+ 1.67GHz, $202
- 512MB PC2100 DDR ECC SDRAM, $111
- 512MB PC2100 DDR ECC SDRAM, $111
- Maxtor 100GB 5400 RPM disk, $124
- NetGear GA320T gigabit ethernet card (copper), $72
- CD-ROM reader, $30
- floppy drive, $12
- ATX medium tower case, $40
- TOTAL $900
The motherboard comes with onboard 100baseT ethernet, so if you need that
in addition to the gigabit ethernet you are set.
The motherboard can take two CPUs, add a second one if you'll need the cycles;
if you're just shoving raw bits out the ethernet, a second CPU will actually
hurt performance somewhat.
Obsolete Designs
Here are a few systems we used to feature here, which are now
obsolete for various reasons.
- Dual Celeron-A system
-
This was a nice el-cheapo hot rod, in its day.
There was only one motherboard with two Socket-370s, the ABit BP6, so
we used that.
It was based on the rock-solid 440BX chipset, so stability was not
a problem.
The 440BX only goes up to 100MHz FSB, but Celerons only go to 66MHz so that's
ok.
- ABit BP6 dual Socket-370 440BX ATX motherboard, $127
- Celeron-A 533MHz, $88
- Celeron-A 533MHz, $88
- 256MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, $39
- Maxtor 60GB 5400 RPM disk, $111
- Netgear FA311TX 10/100 ethernet card, $10
- CD/CD-R, $100
- floppy drive, $12
- AGP video card, $120
- Creative Labs sound card, $40
- speakers, $80
- ATX medium tower case, $40
- 17" monitor, $250
- optical mouse, $20
- keyboard, $20
- TOTAL $1200
Note that the BP6 uses Socket-370, which is physically the same as
the newer FC-PGA but electrically, slightly different.
This means you must use the older Socket-370 Celeron-As,
which only go up to 533MHz.
FC-PGA Celeron-IIs go up to 733MHz but they will not work in a Socket-370 board
without an adaptor, and will not work in a dual-CPU configuration at all.
The older Socket-370 Celeron-As are becoming hard to find now,
and prices are up.
- Old Co-Located Web Server
-
This is a web server for a medium-busy web site, co-located at an ISP.
It doesn't need a mouse, keyboard, monitor, sound card, or speakers.
During setup and debugging, you borrow a keyboard and monitor from
another system.
This is more or less the box that www.acme.com ran on from 1999 through 2004.
- Asus P5A super-7 ATX motherboard, $75
- K6-2 500MHz, $48
- 64MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, $29
- Maxtor 20GB ATA/66 5400 RPM disk, $90
- Netgear FA311TX 10/100 ethernet card, $10
- CD-ROM reader, $30
- floppy drive, $12
- cheap AGP video card, $40
- ATX medium tower case, $40
- TOTAL $375
[Intro]
[CPUs]
[Sockets]
[Bandwidth]
[Chipsets]
[Motherboards]
[Motherboard Forms]
[Memory]
[PCI Types]
[Disks]
[Other Components]
[Assembly]
[Links]
Back to ACME Labs.