Building the Imperfect PC


Lane DeNicola
Last updated: April 7, 2008

Introduction

So I've been daydreaming for some time now about "building my own computer" (actually "assembling my own computer" is more accurate) and running Linux (rather than the Mac OS or Windows).  I'd read about this in many places, and allegedly you could get quite a bit more computer (particularly in terms of reliability and customizability) for fewer clams this way.

By pitching it as a "geoinformatics workstation" that I could employ in my own research, I was given access to the remainder of my research budget to subsidize this (about $1,600 left out of $3k for 07/08).  So I figured the time was right.  I picked up a copy of Building the Perfect PC (2nd edition) and spent a couple weeks poring over it when I could.  There are many flavors (or "distributions") of Linux available now-a-days, too ("Ubuntu" is probably the hottest one right now), so I read up a bit on those as well, eventually settling on Fedora (the home/personal version of Red Hat Linux).

A "Perfect" PC?

I realized as I was researching the components that, despite being labeled "the Perfect PC" by the manual writers, there's actually quite a bit all their configurations leave to be desired.  I'm currently teaching a class called iPod Politics: Technological Design and Everyday Life.  In that class we consider the social and political dimensions of the information technology that we interact with every day.  It struck me as I was unpacking the various components that virtually all of them were actually manufactured in Asia (the Samsung optical drive in Indonesia, the Intel motherboard in China, the ViewSonic display in Taiwan, etc.).  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that "the Perfect PC" was in fact only "the Optimized PC," or more specifically "the Economically and Technically Optimized PC" (i.e. fast, reliable, quiet, customizable, and inexpensive).

But a truly perfect PC would be not just economically and technically optimized, but socially and politically optimized as well, right?  I don't mean to trash the manual here (in fact I highly recommend it), but these things aren't trivial anymore (if they ever were)!

For example, each of the components I bought represents a significant potential release of toxic materials into the environment (both during their production and in their eventual disposal, quite probably in Asia or Africa).  While many whole-system builders (Dell, Apple) have begun to offer free take-back programs for responsibly disposing of products you buy from them, when you build your own system you don't really have that option.  A truly "perfect" PC (however ideal it might be) would create no harmful byproducts, require no toxic solvents in its production, and would either be produced very near the consumer or shipped to him or her via non-polluting modes of transport.

Further, those employed by the factories that build these components, the vendors who distribute them, and especially the groups who handle the resulting e-waste when they wear out, are often paid extremely low wages and/or exposed to very difficult or unhealthy working conditions.  A truly "perfect" PC would be made up of components exclusively from manufacturers who were confirmed as non-exploitative and socially responsible—paying fair wages, ensuring the health and safety of their workers, and so on.

Finally, some might argue that a truly "perfect" PC would be built entirely of "open" hardware and on "open" principles, providing easy access to schematics and specifications, unencumbered by ill-suited proprietary licenses or unreasonable patents, and designed so as to facilitate the creative commons of ideas (rather than enforcing commercial models of content ownership).  In part this last issue is addressed by running Linux and open source software such as Firefox and OpenOffice, and Intel is getting better and better at facilitating the open source community.

I've therefore reframed this project as "Building the Imperfect PC."

Designing and Building the System

The system I settled on includes the following, the total for which was about $1,200.  I also spent about $160 on an APC uninterruptible power supply (I've always envied my partner's laptop, which can handily survive the occasional power outage), $80 on a Linksys wireless router (that allows wired as well as wireless connections), $70 on books (and the Fedora 7 DVD) and $50 on burn-in software (which stresses out a newly built system to shake out any latent defects).  Not too shabby.
CaseAntec Sonata III (w/500 W power supply)
Motherboard Intel DG33FBC
CPUIntel Core 2 Duo (2.66 GHz, G33 chipset)
MemoryCrucial 2 Gb kit (DDR2, 240-pin DIMM)
Hard diskSeagate Barracuda S-ATA 500 GB
CD/DVD writerSamsung SH-S203
DisplayViewsonic VX2255wmb 22" LCD (1680 x 1050)
SpeakersLogitech X-240 2.1 Spkr System
KeyboardMicrosoft Natural Ergonomic Kbd 4000
Mousejust using the Kensington optical trackball I already had

Most of this stuff I got from a way-cool online vendor called Newegg, but some I picked up at Best Buy or Circuit City (the books came from Borders and the O'Reilly store).  Here's how the pieces looked as shipped or procured, minus the new router and UPS.  The display was an open-box item I walked out of Circuit City with (saving me $30)!
components


The build process begins (sometimes all ya got is the dining table for workspace).  My partner was making some beads out of polymer clay on the end there, thus the rolling pin.
Dining Table Build Space


Looking down into the case at the motherboard (big green thing).  The CPU (dark beige square in the center) and memory are in place, but this is shown prior to CPU cooler installation and cable connection.  The power supply (the gray box and red/yellow cable bundle at the top) and rear cooling fan (black thing next to it) came with the case.  The white and black strips on the lower center are expansion slots for a graphics card, etc.
Innards


This is the (upside-down) cooler for the CPU—basically a fan on top of a big hurkin' radiator mounted on a thermal patch (the three gray strips on the copper disk).  The whole thing sits right on top of the CPU cover.
CPU Cooler

Cover's off, but everything's in place.  You can see the hard disk in the bottom bay on the right (three empty bays above).  The optical drive (CD/DVD writer) is behind the metal grillwork on the upper right.
all together


In terms of looks anyway—a very snazzy system!  The top half of the case swings open to reveal the CD/DVD writer, etc.  Only thing missing from this shot is the speakers (which I was keeping in the box until I made sure everything else worked).
Fini!


After a "smoke test," I ran PassMark's Burn-In Test for about 72 hours—everything held up!  I then installed Fedora 7 (not the latest version, but a pretty stable one) off of DVD.  Once I got the ethernet controller working (only took me about 18 hours of research and fiddling) I downloaded/installed all the available updates off the Web.  Here's how the desktop looks:

screenshot

I'm still wrangling with some pretty basic issues: how to print, say, or getting it to boot from the optical drive, or getting the display to keep the same resolution even when the dang thing goes to sleep.  It's also clear that, even if I'm not going to use this thing for high-end games, I'm going to need a graphics card to run Google Earth (right now I'm just relying on the integrated video of the motherboard).

On the other hand, the thing is *way* faster than the G4 iMac I've been using for going on 5 years now (I'm going to try to turn that into a digital music server, hook it up to the stereo).  I'm also able to do things like pick up a used internal Zip drive for $2 (which I did just a couple weeks ago) and plunk it down into the case.  BOOM!  I'm now able to read obsolete media (so I get retrocomputing street cred as well).

True to the spirit of this endeavor, the images and other files that make up this webpage were composed and processed entirely using KompoZer and ImageMagick on—you guessed it!—the new Linux box (aka the "Imperfect PC").  I am harmonious.