Vacillation

By James Gaskin, NetworkWorld.com, 10/29/04

The decision to build or buy didn't come quickly. It's easy to sit and watch auctions, and it's fun to go to Fry's and look at tons of components. At least it's interesting for a little while.

When I look at 40 motherboards, how can I make sense of them? Engineers with extensive experience argue about what makes a good motherboard design, and I'm supposed to become an expert after an hour at Fry's? I didn’t make huge leaps of knowledge, I just got more confused.

The same overload happens when scanning the Internet stores and auctions for an assembled computer. Of course, the motherboard details are hidden, so the decision between 40 competing motherboards can be avoided. All I needed to do was juggle the type of processor (Intel or AMD), amount of memory (few have 512MB of RAM, meaning an upgrade, and the one or two with 1GB of RAM already installed were priced as if made of gold), hard disk space (40GBs to 250GBs), and case type. Would the video chip handle the high resolution (1600x1200) I like? Name brand or not?

I sat down at Fry's and priced a motherboard and AMD XP 3000 chip, figured $200 for RAM, estimated $50 for the case, and was told I needed to spend at least $30 on the CPU fan assembly. Budget blown, I went home with empty hands.

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