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What should I do with this free computer?

N

neokeelo

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Jan 23, 2009
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Basically this nice lady at work just said here, you can have it. its a prebuilt Compaq but hey, its free.


It has no hard drive but has the following specs.
A8AE-LE - Asus - Motherboard with
Athlon 64 (V) 3500+ 2.2 GHz Socket 939
1GB DDR 3200 (I might be able to find some more for it... maybe)
ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset (64MB) but it has free PCI express slot
smile.gif

OEM 285watt PS
DVD-RW

I have access to multiple operating systems and am wondering what to do with it. I want to use it for a file server and\or HTPC along with general internet and whatever.


Is it better suited for XP pro, Windows Home Server, or Windows 7? Any thoughts?
 





Meatball

Meatball

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Buy a large Hard drive for it, give it Wireless (N) components, upgrade your network to (N) components, Download Linux, and stream all your music throughout your house.
 
VW

VW

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Meatball said:
Buy a large Hard drive for it, give it Wireless (N) components, upgrade your network to (N) components, Download Linux, and stream all your music throughout your house.
Click to expand...
Linux sounds good to me... Maybe upgrade the graphics and run Compiz Fusion, you wont regret it!
 
Flaminpyro

Flaminpyro

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The best thing you can do with that brand of computer is pull the power supply and make your self a bench supply with it and you would want to pull an good heatsinks off the processor but other than that the rest is junk it was junk from the day it left the factory ! imho LOL :crackup:
 
N

neokeelo

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wow... that's kinda harsh.. seems like a waste to just pull a few parts from it when i can add a hard drive and have a fully operational PC.
 
photonaholic

photonaholic

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Sometimes reality is harsh.....

I would use it while investing the absolute minimum of money, if it works out, great, if it takes a dump, oh well... Recover your hard drive, pull the memory and CPU, grab up the cooling fans and IDE cables, throw away the motherboard and order a nice micro ATX MB that uses the same CPU/Memory and rebuild the machine.

Nearly all Asus (OEM) motherboards are junk. Retail packaged boards are OK, but the OEM ones are crappy.

The power supplies in most HP/Compaq machines are garbage.

But I really like using BIG heavy duty supplies.

I wouldn't just throw it out because other people don't like it.

Even Dell has manufactured certain models that are junk........
 
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ZheolD

ZheolD

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if you want to set it up as just a file/email server you can get a free copy of Linux off the net which would work nicely and hay you cant beat the Price a free OS to go with a free PC ^^

Cheers
Josh

Keep us posted on what you decide to do ^^ im a PC freak
 
N

neokeelo

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Linux is ok but , Im more familure with Windows, I found another 1GB of ram so now that I have 2GB, I think ill put the Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit on it and use it for ...something, not sure yet.

So far I really like Windows 7 though.
 
Rob

Rob

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Go with Windows 7 then. I'm a Mac guy personally, but I really think Microsoft did a great job with 7. I've also found that it runs great on older and lower spec machines. It's no Vista in terms of resource hogging.
 
kiyoukan

kiyoukan

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Never throw out (almost) any part of a computer.
Case is a great source of sheet metal.
Powersupply Make it into a bench supply capable of 3.3v, 5v, 8.3v, 12v, 15.5v 17v, 24v (even if small like 200watts still great to have)
Heat sinks from north and south bridge as well as CPU.
Hard drive even if broken you get surface mirrors. and motors.
All drive have goodies in them
As far as the MOBO and graphics card goes i strip them i desolder everything. you can get lots of useful things power terminals and caps to say the least.
I have bins and bins of completely desoldered computers (got to take a full truck load of cpus from a recycling plant.)
I also set them up as small servers using Ubuntu .
Broken power supply make it into a soldering fume sucker easy mod with a carbon filter.
I have yet to find a use for the processor and ram but i always save them just in case one of my old servers goes down i now have 50+ back ups.
Ubuntu Has very low needs just 128 ram and a over 1.8ghz processor.
 
N

neokeelo

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Well.... it turns out I thought I could actually play 1080P files with the following system...
confused.gif


I added a gig of ram making the system now


A8AE-LE - Asus - Motherboard with
Athlon 64 (V) 3500+ 2.2 GHz Socket 939
2GB DDR 3200
ATI 4650 512MB low profile with HDMI output
OEM 300watt PS
DVD-RW
Win 7 Ultimate 32bit

It can play 720P but even stutters a little bit with that using VLC media player. It stutters alot at 1080P with 100% CPU all the time. Video card is showing 35% activity on 1080P video so I know it is working somewhat. It says this motherboard can handle a Athlon 64 X2 4800+ But my power supply can't handle that right? Should I shoot for a used 4400+?
 
vk2fro

vk2fro

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Like the rest said, turn it into a slave machine. Hook it to a stereo and make it the music box. Control it from your iphone over wifi (if you have one), or just gut it and use the parts - about the only thing I would toss is the mobo. I would keep all the drives and cables; *stares at box full of PC cables and PSU's*.

If it has a good but wierdo supply with decent amp ratings, make a bench supply for driving diode drivers - you wont run out of current in a hurry on the 5v line, even if your running several watt IR diodes.

The case can be used as a nice box for an Argon laser supply.

LEDS in the front panel aready have wires attached to them - use them in projects.

But seriously, dont scrap it, just coz its a comcrap - use it as a server of some kind. :)
 
Tabish

Tabish

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Throw in 3GB of memory, add a PCI-E graphics card, get a decent power supply (~450W corsair is nice)
Install windows 7 on it.

Head over to thepiratebay for windows 7 :beer:
 
J

jwc

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Oct 20, 2008
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You would be surprised at how many users thrive with hardware that's nowhere near as good as what you have listed.

Gentoo and Arch are famous for being distributions that run well on even old systems because they have very few services running in the background. I know of people who use Pentium III's still and have no issues with speed.

Before my current set of computers, I ran an Athlon XP 3000+ (that's 32-bit, single core) for a long time. With a decent graphics card (6800), I was able to run Compiz Fusion with all the flashy effects. UT2004 had over 120 FPS at all times with full quality settings. (On Windows, even the UT3 demo worked fine.) Except for its inability to do a lot of stuff in parallel (which is not a problem of the processor's speed, just the number of cores), the system was great.

Think twice before throwing "old" hardware out. You can easily use stuff like that to produce excellent media centers with a little work. Or you can spend money. Your choice.
 
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