Will this be okay?

[stevo1210]

I am currently gifting a good friend of mine a PC. Well at least parts of it.
Anyway, I am giving him a GA-8IDX motherboard that has been recapped with a few Sanyos, graphics card, HDD and PSU.
The PSU is a Deer one that I have recapped with high quality japanese caps by Sanyo and Panasonic.
I've even added a second fan to that Deer PSU. The main fan in there has also been replaced with a Sunon one.
My friend will provide the CPU, heatsink for the CPU and ATX case.

Anyway, here are the system specs which we are going to have. All parts have been ordered and are waiting for arrival.

* Intel Celeron 2.4Ghz 400MHz FSB
* Cooler Master CPU HSF
* 4.3GB Fujitsu MPC3043AT IDE HDD (Bit small but space aint important)
* 256MB PC133 SDRAM ( One stick made by Nanya, the other one by Micron)
* 32MB nvidia RIVA TNT2 M64 AGP 4X graphics card
* CDROM drive
* Creative Sound blaster 24 bit sound card.

My worry right now isn't the components being used to build it. But it's the PSU that's concerning me.
Is a recapped Deer PSU alright for this kind of system? or do I have to find something more decent? (pretty impossible for a PC under a $100AU budget).
The computer is not being used as a gaming PC, but an internet computer. My friend has another desktop, a much more powerful one for photoshop and gaming, this one being built is only designated to the Internet.

Thanks.

[willawake]

Re: Will this be okay?

at the sort of level of desperation i think the crap psus are ok as long as they are behind ups or at least spike protector cos they dont have any protection whatsoever inside

i just pulled an L&C out of a pc here...lol.....I was doing the 500.000km service quite a few leaky caps there

i would be more worried about that obviously ancient hard disk......

[zandrax]

Re: Will this be okay?

AU$ 100 is the cost of a decent PSU, such as the ubiquitos VX450, so I understand the choice is between the recapped Deer or another cheap noname psu: the whole system draws less than 100 W so the recapped Deer is viable, anyway I'd prefer a better psu with RFI filters and a few protections (over/under-current and -voltage and thermal shutdown at least; overload protection is a plus but very few psus have it).
If I remember correctly, you have some old 300 W Dell-branded Liteon psus waiting for a recap, haven't you? They are far better than the Deer
Suggestion: I think your friend won't care much about performance, but the 4 GB Fujitsu is even slower than a pen drive! You should get an used 30-40 GB for few bucks if not for free (doomed Matrox ones and old IBM Deskstar nicknamed Deathstar, keep away from them). If you can, get another ram stick: 256 MB are the bare minimum for XP SP2/3 and recent Linux distros.

Zandrax

[stevo1210]

Re: Will this be okay?

If I remember correctly, you have some old 300 W Dell-branded Liteon psus waiting for a recap, haven't you? They are far better than the Deer

I do have a Dell 350W one made by Lite on, but that is one that I personally own for myself. It is currently powering my P4 1.7Ghz server. It hasn't been recapped yet, but it seems to work with the older systems. The caps in there are OST, but none are physically bad. Besides, I am a lazy butt at the moment so I can't be bothered recapping it at the moment.
To be honest, I have a box full of recapped (and replaced fans as well) Deer "so called 400W" PSUs that were used before I could buy some higher quality PSUs.

Suggestion: I think your friend won't care much about performance, but the 4 GB Fujitsu is even slower than a pen drive! You should get an used 30-40 GB for few bucks if not for free (doomed Matrox ones and old IBM Deskstar nicknamed Deathstar, keep away from them). If you can, get another ram stick: 256 MB are the bare minimum for XP SP2/3 and recent Linux distros.

I am building this PC from whatever parts I can find lying around my house. The Fujitsu 4GB drive is the very last one I have, same goes for the 2x 128MB PC133 sticks of SDRAM.

My friend doesn't mind about disk storage at this moment because he wants to get the 320GB HDD from his desktop for this one once he can find a 500GB drive.
Only problem is that the 320GB HDD is a SATA drive so I think we need to buy a SATA controller card once he decides to upgrade the hard drive. He also has an external HDD so I think he can use that for storage space at the moment.

I have found 40GB HDDs on eBay and they cost approximately $40AUD. Something that I can't put into the <$100 budget. So far we are at $80AU (this includes CPU, case and HSF).

As for the IBM Deskstar HDDs, do they really fail a lot? I have an IBM Deskstar 40GB IDE HDD in the desktop I am on now. The deskstar has been in at least 4 different PCs and is 7 years old now.... so far I see no issues and my PC is on practically all day. Maybe I am just lucky??

Thanks.

[sofTest]

Re: Will this be okay?

As for the IBM Deskstar HDDs, do they really fail a lot? I have an IBM Deskstar 40GB IDE HDD in the desktop I am on now. The deskstar has been in at least 4 different PCs and is 7 years old now.... so far I see no issues and my PC is on practically all day. Maybe I am just lucky??

Unless your drive is of the "Deathstar" 75GXP-series (DTLA 307-015, 020, 030, 045, 060, or the 075), don't worry. None of my IBM-/Hitachi Deskstar-drives has died on me yet, and some of them predates the 75GXP-series from around year 2000.

[zandrax]

Re: Will this be okay?

I do have a Dell 350W one made by Lite on, but that is one that I personally own for myself.

Sorry, I remembered a stock of psus, not a single unit: I was wrong.

To be honest, I have a box full of recapped (and replaced fans as well) Deer "so called 400W" PSUs that were used before I could buy some higher quality PSUs.

Put new stickers on them: "Stevo's Moose: 200 true W, 250 if you like to gamble, 400 chinese W, 1200 lunar W [yeah, moon gravity is a sixth of earth one so people can jump six times higher and cheat six times more ]". Then have a lottery: the 1000th customer wins a moose head.

My friend doesn't mind about disk storage at this moment because he wants to get the 320GB HDD from his desktop for this one once he can find a 500GB drive.
Only problem is that the 320GB HDD is a SATA drive so I think we need to buy a SATA controller card once he decides to upgrade the hard drive. He also has an external HDD so I think he can use that for storage space at the moment.

Forget the 40 GB drive and buy a decent sata controller: avoid like plague those with a Via VT624x, they're bugged. I recommended to a friend those with the Sil3112: low price and decent performance. Silicon Image has released a firmware update due to some Seagate drives not being recognized, so make sure the controller is up to date.

As for the IBM Deskstar HDDs, do they really fail a lot? I have an IBM Deskstar 40GB IDE HDD in the desktop I am on now. The deskstar has been in at least 4 different PCs and is 7 years old now.... so far I see no issues and my PC is on practically all day. Maybe I am just lucky??

As sofTest wrote, the series are the 40GV and the 75GXP: IBM released a firmware update that softened but not solved the issues (unstable magnetic layer and heads prone to crash).

Zandrax

[willawake]

Re: Will this be okay?

i second those with sil chipset. used a whole bunch of cheap ide ones from sunix http://www.sunix.com.tw/ the 3710. zero problem. never tried raid though, one shopkeeper said it doesnt work on those...