[tech] Combtail issues

[Chris Squire]

Hi list,

Combtail has a number of hardware issues that have it on the express route 
to death. After some testing, it appears the motherboard is on the fritz. 
The ancient GPU is not faring as well as it could either, it appears. The 
case, screen, psu, etc are all fine, so only the main parts need be 
considered.

A good option is to get a few new parts and rebirth the machine. This can 
be done rather cheap these days, as we've seen with recent PC purchases. A 
pricing of potential parts as follows..

http://www.netplus.com.au/product/CP1/CPAMM2-6-P2Q955/CPU/AMD-Phenom-II-X4-QUAD-Core-955-3.2G-SKT-AM3-8Mb-RETAIL-125W-X4-Black-Ed
http://msy.com.au/product.jsp?productId=3156
2x(?) http://msy.com.au/product.jsp?productId=6866
http://www.netplus.com.au/product/VD5/VDGIAT6850-04/Graphics-Card/Gigabyte-ATI-AMD-HD6850-1Gb-GDDR5-Dual-DVI-HDMI-Radeon-GV-R685D5-1GD-6850

total - $595

Includes the new shiny of USB3, SATA 6Gb and 2 16x PCIe slots. Seeing as 
it's an AMD board, these are just nice extras rather than spending extra 
(thanks, market pressure!).

Hopefully this could be approved for purchase at tomorrow nights committee 
meeting and procured over the weekend. Any thoughts, tips or suggestions?

[CJS]