Kicking Off Research

August 18, 2013

I've been researching the components to use for a couple weeks now. I think I've narrowed everything down, but keep going back and forth between a couple pieces (which processor? which motherboard?). It's been a struggle between cost (hopefully less than $1000), how long I expect to actually use this (hopefully 8+ years) , and how much future growth I might need in a couple years. Spending an extra $100 now could allow me to add more memory or support additional HDDs to use the computer for a couple extra years.

I've also been trying to sell all my old computer parts (~5 to 10 years old). I need to both clean up all my old stuff (I have several totes full) while making some cash for my future build. I've been spending a lot of time wiping all my old IDE HDDs with TrueCrypt with it's encryption / 7 pass option to hopefully keep any old data unrecoverable (I'd like to get $5 for each one). And with my old Cisco 2500 series routers, Digium FXS card, and numerous old motherboards / PCI / AGP cards, there's lots to sell. I'm hoping to get around $300 for everything.

A site that I found to be really helpful is PC Part Picker (http://pcpartpicker.com). I've only begun to start using it, but it's seems to be helping with compatibility checking as well as finding the cheapest parts from multiple vendors.