Building a PC Isn't Hard

[Chong Yu Meng]

On Sun, 2008-02-03 at 18:18 -0800, kwall at kurtwerks.com wrote:
> ...or expensive.
> Next time I need a new computer, I'll build it.

I've had the opposite experience recently, when I decided to try a
Gigabyte motherboard, instead of the usual MSI motherboards that I
almost always buy. This particular motherboard has just two problems:
the built-in network interface causes IOMMU errors on Linux, and the
built-in ATI Radeon causes reboots in Windows. After quite a lot of hair
pulling and more than a week troubleshooting in between my projects, I
finally got the network interface (RealTek 8110SC/8169SC -- don't buy
any motherboard that uses this!) to play nice. But the reboots in
Windows still continue, despite updating/downgrading the ATI drivers.
Thankfully, no such problems for Linux. 

The problem in my part of the world is that there is no return policy,
so if you get a motherboard that doesn't quite work like you want it to,
or a casing that is the wrong size, you can't just return it and get
another one. 

I'm sticking with Nvidia and MSI or Asus from now on...

Regards,
pascal chong