[plug] packaged brand-name PCs vs custom

[Bernd Felsche]

On Thursday 10 June 2004 12:01, Scott Middleton wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 11:22, Michael Holland wrote:
> > On Thu, 10 Jun 2004, Senectus - wrote:
> > > Because I've done it to death already.
> > > My last 10 years in buying PC's was hunting down the parts I wanted
> > > thinking

> > Fair enough. But one could just go to a single vendor, tick off the
> > motherboard, CPU speed, RAM size, HDD, etc required. Then the vendor
> > can confirm they are compatible, assemble test and guarentee it.

> That is EXACTLY what I do. I tell them what I want, they get it,
> build it and test it and it costs me $27 more. ...

There's a risk in that. I did that for a while and I found that the
assemblers not only routinely keep "spare" screws, etc, but also
substituted 40-wire IDE cables for the 80-wire ones that came
packaged with the mainboard. Never mind the practice of "neat"
folding of IDC cables which result in poor conductor reliability.
In term of EMI, it's actually better to have the cables "randomly"
placed.

Then there's the matter of systems the _just_ work... Almost every
machine I've put together required modifications to improve thermal
management. On one case type, for example, the fans were blowing a
large amount of hot air out through where I had the DVD burner
mounted. On many others, cooling for hard drives is sadly neglected.
And frequently there are simply too many holes in the wrong place
which allow cooling fans to draw air from the outside and expel it
without taking any heat out; and others where the cooling air is
blown into the box and short-cuts through a nearby hole; again
adding nothing but noise.

Of course it takes a couple of hours to do a good job of assembly;
maybe even a metre of duct tape to fix a poor thermal design. But I
consider those hours an investment in minimising problems down the
track.

-- 
/"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
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