Dell Inspiron 531
I bought this in 2007. I'm going to convert it into a media center PC in May 2013. Current specs:
- 64-bit Athlon, well-suited for virtualization
- Primary OS is Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope
- Runs Windows Vista virtualized using VirtualBox
- Media file server served via NFS and VirtualBox Shared Folders
After doing some additional research, I decided to go with VirtualBox for virtualization. I installed two Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB drives
I experimented with running a virtual file server off of my workstation, first with OpenFiler (which I found to be overkill and also distasteful), then with Ubuntu Server. The setup was super cool, but realized that it was overkill, and it also affected disk performance. Since I'm running Linux as my host OS, I'm just using that as my file server as well.
Memory
4GB RAM.
PC2-4200/5300/6400 DDR2 SDRAM DIMMs. This site recommends maximizing the memory in each bank. Also see this site.
Hard Disk
Two 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black drives conigured as RAID1 using Linux Software RAID. Turned WDTLER on both drives.
The default max capacity was two 500GB drives. Upgrading BIOS to 1.0.13 (suggested by this piece) boosted the capacity. (This may not have been necessary. I discussed the issue with a guy at Central Computers in San Francisco, and he suggested the 500 GB "limit" was merely a stated limit back when those were the largest drives available.)
Video
EVGA GEFORCE 8400GS 1GB. Replaced a Nvidia GEFORCE 9400GT, which now resides in my Hackintosh. Used this post as a guide to help determine which video card to get.
History
- April 3, 2013
- Migrated to my Hackintosh as my primary machine. Swapped out my video card and my DVD-RW for a Blu-Ray drive.
- June 22, 2009
- Upgraded BIOS to 1.0.13.
