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Let me take a break on my audio system series and discuss something else while it's on my mind. The college student computer, since I'm working on this for a client.
Before this even happens, there's a lot to be done in the summer before your kid leaves. There's a ridiculous amount of stuff to buy ranging from the almost insignificant to the really important. In today's world, one of the most important is their computing device(s).
When they think of college, one of the first things that flashes into a parent's mind is this...... a tiny space where two people have to live, keep all their stuff and co-exist..... not necessarily in that order. I know, they may not all be this tight, but this is certainly not the smallest! Believe me, I know! In a former life, I've worked as a residence hall director/coordinator for some few years. I'm all too familiar with these rooms. I'm not even going to reference my days as a college student at Texas A&M University, because we didn't bring electronics (I was in the Corps of Cadets), and personal (versus PCs) computers for students pretty much didn't exist in 1980.
So, the next thing that jumps into a parent's mind is this..... How is he/she going to get all that stuff into his/her room, so the natural inclination is to go with......
..... and that'd be a mistake..... for the following reason(s). Not all students are alike and not all computers have the same capabilities. If your kid is an English/Psychology/Education/Nursing/Family Studies (the list goes on), then you're good. You can stop reading right here, and buy whatever the school is recommending (with one caveat) and mark that item off your list. There is one other little thing, but I'll address it later. However, if your pride and joy is aspiring to be an Engineering/Graphics Design/Animation (anything that's computing intensive), things get complicated.
This is what I'm recommending (in general), with a few modifications. Why, two computers for "Pete's Sake"!?!
Do you remember that old "college feel" that you were so impress with when you visited? The ivy covered walls, the quaint, late-1800s/early-1900s buildings, or even those big modern looking buildings that held the huge lecture halls that look like this? Go ahead, tell me what you see? Remember, falling asleep in the back of those like I did and knocking your spiral notebook onto the floor making everybody look at you? Imagine that spiral being a $1000 laptop notebook the size of a small briefcase. I'm sure you can image that off of those little tiny fold-up lap-desks right? Then imagine your kid throwing his (it's always the male isn't it) computer into his bag, then throwing that same bag down.... how many times over the course of just one week? The bigger/heavier the computer, the more mass and the great the impact. That's just one factor.
OK, now imagine your kid schlepping that same computer across this campus from class-to-class every day. You remember, the same one that you struggled to walk across when you guys visited?
Then imagine the laptop in his/her bag being one like this (the Dell Precision M8400 which was one of the top 5 best engineering laptops of it's year), roughly 8 pounds without the giant 1-2 pound power adapter, but that they'd have to carry because the "real world" battery life will be between 1 and 2 hours....... "silence" as the commercial says. Yup. Oh, but they could leave that one in their room and use their phone like they do all the time now, right!?! OK. Chew on this. On a regular basis today, profs will refer to documents that they've prepared and that students must reference (often in class), or a website, or last week's notes on a PowerPoint that he/she's not putting up because they have today's up there on the projector that you're already struggling to see because you're sitting 120 feet away in that giant lecture hall. So yeah, suffice to say that they need to be carrying a device that they can use all the time to access data at will.
In today's world, the there are three candidates for this job. A "convertible" computer such as Microsoft's Surface/Pro, basically a full UltraBook PC in a tablet form that the user can easily attach a keyboard for productivity use. The tablet, in iOS, Android or MS Windows that can do similar stuff, not quite as capable, but can be cheaper/lighter and in an amazing variety of sizes, prices and forms. And the "Clamshell" "Ultra-portable" (at or sub-3lbs) full laptop. These are typically around 12" screens making them OK to carry and use in the classroom. So, that's one computing device. The other?
That's a desktop PC? Yup. This one is the Cooler Master Elite 130 case, less than $50 to buy, about the size of the proverbial breadbox. Don't like the style, buy any number of those ones between $50 and $100, a Mini-ITX motherboard, other parts, build (or have somebody else build) a machine that's going to cost around $600. Spend another $400 to $600 on the other device, and you're done! There is one more option if you have $3000+!
This is an Asus, but Razer started it a year of so ago. What is it? It's an UltraBook, with built-in graphics (read, not good for heavy duty use), but connects to an external enclosure that houses a full-sized graphics card of your choice and therefore giving the notebook PC the muscle to do pretty much anything. Plan on spending around $4000 total to get yourself going. My plan proposes spending $1000. That's the price of a pretty nice laptop computer at Best Buy. There'll be more parts to this concept to come.
This is my favorite time of year..... when the days get cooler, shorter and the nights get chilly and longer. I can run the systems in my office as much as I want and it only serves to warm up the house! It's that time of year when we spend more time inside and hang around our electronic hearths. There's more time to plan/build systems and 'cus there's less time expended on the yard!
We also start thinking about what we can ask for, for Christmas as well. My Computer Club students are thinking about parts that they can ask for to upgrade their systems or actually build a system. The frantic aspect of the Fall such as the beginning of school and football season is over. Everyone is in a bit of a routine now and know when they can carve out time to work on their hobbies.
For me, it means that there'll be days during Thanksgiving week and Christmas break where I can work on and in my workshop. I have a list of things that need to get built. The unspoken thing down here in Texas is that there is a limited times that these things can happen. Other than time commitments, the main limitation is the extreme heat! If you think that we could get up early or stay up late to avoid that, you've evidently never spent time here in the eastern half of our lovely state where the "H" word have nothing to do with the devil. It's all about the humidity! We actually look forward to the heat of the day to get rid of the oppressive humidity (and I don't even live in Houston)!
On the other hand, our houses don't look like this from December to March either. So, that's when we can do what we want out in the garages. If you've never done it, you should come down to Texas between November and January. The weather is absolutely spectacular, with temps ranging from mid-50s to mid-70s! Plus it tends to be dry, so virtually no snow or ice. If you've never taken your family to NASA in Houston; that would be the time. Want to go to Six Flags Over Texas, River Walk in San Antonio, Big Bend..... come on down!
So, let's take a look at some of things on my docket. One of my Computer Club students wants to do a build on the Mini-ITX form-factor. While all that is pretty straight-forward these days, we still have to deal with costs. I've helped out a number of students in the past by donating various of my old parts to their efforts and this will be no exception. While looking at Mini-ITX cases during a planning session, she decided that she like the Cooler Master Elite 120 in white. I do happen to have the black version which sits in "the closet of doom", so we'll make that into a 2-in-1 project, where we'll paint out the case as well. Some of you might remember a previous student build from a couple of years ago where we transformed an older Alienware case by doing a faux carbon fiber look on it. While that one was just huge, this one will be the opposite!
Another project in progress is the conversion of a Dell PowerEdge SC440 from an old "enterprise" box to a home machine. I have another student who is in that process which will be an excellent "case study" for Linux, FreeNAS use.
Along those same line, we'll also be doing "case studies" on the stack of about 25 ThinkPad R60s that we have down in the "Batcave". These were some of our school district's old teacher computers that we were given. They're of course quite long in the tooth these days, but are also from the Core/Core2 Duo generation so can run relatively modern OS's. These should be fun machines for the kids to take home and play with! I'm certain that, like the others, this will turn into a post of it's own. Are all my projects having to do with the students?
Here's my project! It's kind of a big one. I need to clean out, streamline, update, organize; whatever you want to call it. This is the winter that I need to get myself ready to move forward. Before, I can do that, I have to "un-hook the trailer" from a psychological sense. There'll MUCH more to come on this topic as it progresses.
So; let's talk motherboards. This topic gets complex really quickly so, stay with me here.
To simplify things, I'm going to talk mostly in generalities and at least for this series, I'm only going to discuss Intel. Please understand that I'm not doing this because I'm an Intel "fanboy", or have it out for AMD, it's just that in the current state of the industry, if you can pay the difference, you'll go Intel virtually every time. They are just that far ahead.
And when you talk, Intel, all discussions begin with the chipset. There are actually 2 dynamics when you get into it though; the generation (as in Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Sky Lake etc.), and the actual chipset that's soldered on the motherboard. In the Intel world, there are performance chipsets, and for consumer boards, these range from the "performance/enthusiast" versions such as "Z" or "X". To further simplify our discussion, we'll eliminate the Ultra-performance "X" chips that are for workstations and people with too much money, to the much more commonly used "Z" lettered chips. Regardless of which manufacturer you go with (ASUS, Gigabyte, ASROCK, MSI.....), somewhere in it's name, will be a letter such as "Z", or "H". "Z" boards generally are "unlocked" meaning that if you put in the right hardware (e.g. CPU, RAM, etc.) the BIOS is set up so that you can manipulate the individual settings quite a bit.... bump the BUS speed, increase voltage, CPU clock-multiplier..... that list goes on almost endlessly. However, there's a catch! If you want to do those sorts of things, you have to buy hardware that's created for that! The CPU will have to be a "K" spec version or your choices will be limited, buy "performance" RAM with a greater range of acceptable voltages and BUS speeds. ....AND any combination there-of. It's hours of fun but often frustration as well!
However, if you are more this....
than this; Intel has chipsets for you as well. While gamers, or hardware geeks like me, are likely to "play" with their machines, seeing just what it'll do, most people do run-of-the-mill things on their machines. For them, there's are the "H" (probably for home), and "B" (probably for business) chipsets. The board on which these chipsets live are generally quite a bit less expensive than the "Z" versions. They are loaded with less features and there are a LOT less in the way of configurability as well. In today's world, virtually all of these different chipset versions are available in all of the major form-factors.
Therefore, the buying decision can be broken down into 2 questions to be answered. What do you want the machine to do? And how big (or small) do you want it to be?
Let's start with the "case study" that we started using in Part 1...that of a modern gaming machine that can be relatively portable so it can go off to college in a few years. So, that would typically imply a "Z" chipset such as this example from Gigabyte, the Z97N-Gaming. Even without the "gaming" part in the name and color, it's purpose is self-evident. The "Z97" means that it has a configurable chipset of the "9" (Broadwell) generation with has an onboard "N" type Wi-Fi card. Because it's 9 series, the CPU socket will be an LGA-1150. These specifications will dictate certain other buying decisions as well. It is also a Mini-ITX sized board, which will allow the buyer to install into very small cases which can sit on a desktop or tucked away. Why the "9" series, versus the "10" (Sky Lake) chipset? These are high school students in a middle-class suburb. For most games, the CPU is secondary to the performance of the graphics card. So, the $50 to $100 saved here can be applied to a better graphics card! So, if it was me, I'd probably go with the compromise as well. The price of these range down to $50 for "H" chipped boards up the around $200 for "Z" chipped versions.
Next time; CPUs and RAM.
