The "In-Law" Computer

I guess, I'll have to count myself lucky that I don't have this kind of Father-In-Law relationship! However, we all know that, any sort of transactions with a family member is fraught with potential landmines. That's why there are all sorts of little rules like; "don't sell a used car to a family member" etc. Not too long ago, my father in law kind of off-handedly asked me to build him a computer. This was both a new thing and not; making it kind of weird. Let me explain. Unlike many folks his age, he actually knows quite a bit about PCs. He's worked the software end of it for the majority of his life as a higher ed administrator. Most of it with databases, but never-the-less, he has quite a bit of familiarity with them. So, there's that. Over the time that I've known him, he's always had laptops. In fact, over the years, I've helped him get several that he's progressed through, with the exception of this last one, a ThinkPad X61 tablet. It's now pretty long in the tooth and needed an update. What's weird about this is that he wants a desktop (after which I'm supposed to redo the laptop, but that's another story).

Doing things for the family is just not easy. That's why I get so nervous when I do a machine for my wife. A client is just so much easier to deal with. It needs to be inexpensive without being "cheap". It needs to be cutting edge, but reliable.....and inexpensive. It needs to be able to do pretty much everything, but......inexpensive. Did I say INEXPENSIVE? Like $400 range inexpensive. That's actually a little hard to do for a modern machine. Go buy a monitor and you've already knocked off $100. Now your starting point is $300!!!

If this was a "client", I'd look him in the eye and say; Core 2 Duo is what you can buy. For my father-in-law, I"m going to make his $400+ become a "Core" class machine running an SSD, with a 500Gb storage drive, 8Gb of DDR3 RAM displayed on a 19" monitor. This post is about how I'm doing it. .......and for my next magic trick........

I once told an opposing coach who's team, mine had just struggled to beat, that "I had to hand it to him". He had done an amazing job of "turning chicken sh*t, into chicken salad". We had played them earlier in the year and he had indeed done wonders with those kids! So, in my mind, I had to look over what I had sitting around and figure out how to turn all that into a decent computer for family.

After surveying the landscape, I came to the conclusion to start here. In my bedroom HTPC (aka Viking), was a Zotac H55 motherboard and i3/540 processor. It's a nice computer, but really........does an HTPC in our bedroom need an i3? Even if it's a few generations old, a Clarkdale processor is still very useable. Even the Penryn Core 2 Duos still run Windows 7 very well and this is the next full upgrade after that, complete with on-die GPUs. So, I decided that this wasn't that big of a sacrifice to make, since I found a Gigabyte Mini-ITX MB with an onboard Celeron 847 (which was derived from the Sandy Bridge mobile i3 processor) for $50. That meant, I needed to find a socket LGA 1156 Micro-ATX motherboard. I'll explain later.

After a laborious search, I finally came up with this. If you look up the Asus P7P55-M board, you'll find that it's a little weird, in that it doesn't take advantage of the Core chips' ability to do graphics, and of all things, has a serial port. However, it's it's got 4 (!) RAM sockets (which is a rarity for a Micro board), and has a serial port (!). Woohoo!!! Mostly, I was just happy to be able to get an Asus board at a good price ($59).

Now, the reason for a "micro" board......TA DA! I have a Cooler Master Elite 341 out in the garage complete with Thermaltake 500watt power supply! It was what I built my original WHS file server in about 3 years ago. So, it's had very little wear-and-tear after sitting in a cabinet for 2 years. For those keeping score at home, I've now spent $59 and have case, motherboard and processor.

Here is the actual key to this whole build.....any build for that matter. If you want your machine to feel fast, use an SSD. I was able to score a new 120Gb Intel 330 for $87. This puts us at $146 spent. From the metaphorical pile, will come a 500Gb WD Blue HDD, 19" Asus LCD, random keyboard and mouse and 8Gb of RAM.

......About that RAM. Since I'm robbing the processor out of the Viking, I figured I might as well take the 8Gb of Patriot G2 memory as well. This is going to cost me. I'll need to buy some RAM to replace it. What I'll probably do is to go ahead and upgrade my workstation to 16Gb and move it's 8Gb RAM of Corsair XMS3 to the HTPC rebuild. I'll send somewhere between $140 and $200 to replace the memory and board/cpu combo that I'll pull out of my HTPC. In the end, even the high side of the estimate, I'll be under budget.

In the end, what will matter is that my father-in-law should be happy with the results.