I was considering getting this from Portswood Computers:
case with 500W PSU
Gigabyte GA-F2A55M-HD2 motherboard
AMD Dual Core A4-5300 (3.4GHz) with integrated HD7480G graphics
1 x 4GB DDR3 memory 1333MHz
500GB SATA hard drive
SATA DVD+-RW
which they are selling for 320 pounds. They said this would be
cheaper than buying the parts separately as they do a discount for
complete machines.
I have been checking the prices of those bits. I don't know what
make of case, hard drive or DVD writer they use, but I reckon a
reasonable total cost from Amazon would be no more than 200 pounds.
So, I am thinking that I will have to assemble the machine myself.
According to Portswood Computers, the motherboard would give me a
VGA socket for the monitor. According to Gigabyte's web site, it
would not (although a note suggests some sort of additional board
might supply that). A more serious problem is that they say that it
would require a special driver for Linux. I don't see how I could
make use of that, I would need the motherboard working in order to
add a driver.
Is there a web site that lists boards that are good for Linux? Or,
can someone make a recommendation? So far, searching with Google has
done nothing but make me think that getting/building a computer that
runs Linux is becoming more difficult.
I would be prepared to spend 200 - 300 pounds on this, and would
like to make use of my existing case (ATX, 300W PSU) and monitor
(VGA only). At least 4 USB sockets on the back of the machine would
be useful, more if I need to use one for the keyboard. Present
keyboard is PS/2, but I could get another. Also required would be a
hard drive (500GB would be sufficient), a DVD drive (which are
readily available and not too expensive) and maybe 4GB RAM. The
problem I have is choice of motherboard + CPU.
Peter Alefounder
--
Please post to: Hampshire@???
Web Interface:
https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
LUG URL:
http://www.hantslug.org.uk
--------------------------------------------------------------
