Buy yourself a heap of Sun kit for next to nowt

FOR THOSE like me who are looking to build up a Micro ATX Athlon 64 SFF, finding a standalone motherboard is quite difficult in the UK. There are apparently only four types of motherboards on sale. The most interesting one is the Foxconn K8S760MG-FRS which retails for only £55.23, a very appealing price for an Athlon 64 motherboard.

The chipset used is a SIS760 which is an excellent product according to reviews found on the internet. The board comes with an integrated graphics module codenamed Mirage 2 - which AMDboard considers as a Xabre80 - which is basically a reworked SIS315 module. >[?On top of that though, you will find an AGP 8x port. Two DIMM sockets and three PCI Slots allow you to upgrade the board easily. You will also find two ATA133 ports and two SATA150 ports which have RAID capabilities. The Realtek ALC655 5.1 integrated 5.1 channel sound module complete with SPDIF headers.

Additionally, you will get an integrated LAN as well as two Integrated Firewire ports and six USB 2.0 ports. On top of that some additional features include a Super set of utilities which offer similar functionalities as software found on other brands boards. Interestingly, the SIS760 overclocks and generally performs well, at least on par with K8T800 chipsets. A similar product, the Gigabyte GA-K8S760M, which costs £18 more, offers a wide range of overclocking including VCore, Vagp and Vdimm as well as a FSB range extending to 250MHz.

As an end note, SIS offers at least on the Gigabyte board, the possibility to have what it calls LFB memory - Local Frame Buffer, in addition to the usual UMA. 64MB LFB memory is provided, which is basically soldered on the board. The LFB on its own manage to double the score of Quake III for example or 3DMark 2001SE.

Ever heard of those weird sales on Ebay where hundred of thousands of pounds of components could literally be yours for a hundredth of that sum? That is about to become true for you provided that (1) you have the necessary space to stock all this stuff (2) you have a truck - not a van - to carry those items around from Preston in Lancanshire (3) and you have enough time on hand to sift through all this. If you are one of those rare pearls, then this auction is for you. Thirty seven units of Sun SparcStation 20, Silicon Graphics Indigo2 workstation and from photos, loads of PCs as well including midi tower and desktop PCs. You also get quite a lot of printers like the Colour Laser printers OKI C7200n with spare drums and cartridges. FYI, each new drum is worth more than £150 while each cartridge retails for £186. On top of that you get two Magicolor Laser printers, five various HP deskjet printers and loads of OEM ink cartridges.

Also in the lot is 44 monitors ranging from 15-inch to 22-inch coming from various manufacturers - SUN, Viglen, SGI etc. I've also noticed a digital camera albeit an old one, a fax machine, some Tape backup units, at least two laptops,two large UPS/servers, microfiche readers, one plasma screen, five Dlink 16 port hubs and much much more. Frankly speaking, the cost of transporting and stocking all this stuff will probably cost more than the final auction price by itself.

But if you are ready to take up the challenge, you can end up with a very very good deal. Just steps away, what seems to be another bargain. 13,000 training CDS for sale. Selling each of them even for £1 would set you at £13K. These are original training CDs from BDG, DK and Pentamedia and cover mainly IT stuff like Linux for Beginners or Dreamweaver 4. The bid stands only at £560 four days before closure. The final purchaser can eventually, if he wants, open a training office.

This has to be the cheapest DVD writer in the UK. At £29.92+VAT from CCLonline, the New Universe - AKA NU - DDW-081 is an 8X DVD+R/RW writer with a two MB buffer and 40x CDR/40X CDROM and 24x CDRW. Additionally, it reads DVD Rom at 12x. It comes bundled with Sonic MyDVD, Sonic RecordNOW DX and Sonic Cineplayer as well as DLA. Features include an intelligent writing speed adjustment mechanism as well as a dual suspension mechanism. The newest firmware, BX32 finetunes the write strategy for DVD+R and improve readability ability. However on specialist websites, you might get even more information about other firmwares that happen to improve the DDW-081's performance dramatically while adding DVD-R compatibility to it. The B375 seems to be the suspects.

What's more, that drive gets rave reviews from the majority of websites which have tested it - from Anandtech to CD Freaks and atruereview. They all point to the fact that it has a very cheap price and does provide with honest performance. At that fantastic price, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for you to buy a DVD/CDRW combo. That kind of product signals the end of both CDRW and DVD/CDRW combos. Long live to DVD writers.

Want to get a cheap laptop, a very cheap one? How about a sub £400 Dell laptop? A new one without any tricks or whatsoever. The Dell Inspiron 1000 costs only £397.32+VAT, £524 including vat and delivery when you enter the following coupon number, 4PL?40D50J6KL4. You get a heck of lot of power for that smallish price. An Intel Celeron 2.2GHz processor with 256KB cache, Windows XP home edition, 256MB shared DDR SDRAM and a 30GB hard drive. On top of that you get a eight cell NiMH battery - not Li-Ion. A DVD ROM drive and Microsoft Works 7.0 are also included but no floppy disk drive. The chipset built on is strangely a SISM650, not the usual Intel chipset found in most Dell systems. A large 14.1" clear TFT screen lights up this bargain-bin laptop as well as three USB 2.0 ports, one analog modem and the now ubiquitous ethernet connection.

Overall a very good deal, especially when you look at the competition. Tiny's cheaper E2400 laptop might offer a larger hard disk and a CD writer/DVD combo but it is based on the Via C3 processor, a much slower CPU which will make you crave for something better. µ