[conspire] Parts is Parts

[David Fox]

On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 1:17 PM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

>  Impressively cheap, I must say.  Note the users' posted comments that
>  the sticks don't necessarily reliably achieve the advertised 3-3-3-8

Kinda hard to believe you can get 1 *gig* ram sticks for $20. I won't
bore you with stories about how expensive RAM used to be :).

The RAM spec on these PQI units also bothered me. But for a "light"
user (Kai's Dad, specifically) this may not be (pardon the pun) all
that crucial.

FWIW, the ram currently in my system (1 stick gotten at date of build,
March 2001, the second stick maybe 2 years later) uses whatever brand
that Central Computer was selling at the time, and get this - they're
PC-133 - talk about old stuff. $150 I think is what I paid for the
second stick of 512 meg, the first being 256 meg. Short of pulling the
chips and examining them, I have no idea what brand they are, and
they've performed perfectly. I've even tried my hand, once upon a
time, running 'make -j' on the kernel, but I only went as high as make
-j 25 IIRC. I managed to ramp up the load average on this box once to
over 100, and it didn't fall over. :).


>  I have a cavil -- and it's really (as was the case with your PQI sticks)
>  the same one as in prior posts:  A well-designed workstation case is
>  designed specifically to control airflow and reduce turbulence inside

I managed to get one of those (I think it was Antec, not sure) kind of
dark blue cases (supplied with fans) when I put this box together. I
got the case at Central Computer as well. As a matter of fact, I paid
attention to getting a good case. My only issue with it is that the
power supply didn't come with enough connectors and so I have to get
or borrow a few spare Y-connector cables, but those are relatively
cheap.

(snipping a lot of useful cooling ideas).