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.

First Post

Current date, August 8th, 2013: I kicked off this blog so that I could organize my thoughts with what I currently have and what I would like to do. I've started a few top level pages to track major efforts. The other goal is to potentially assist other users in their endeavors.

Comments are welcome, but I can't guarantee that I can respond quickly. I usually only have a couple hours a week to work on my computer stuff. Thanks for reading!