Wanted: One of these

Journal cK-Gunslinger's Journal: Wanted: One of these 3

Journal by cK-Gunslinger on Friday April 23, 2004 @12:03PM

Updated edition of my fantasy home PC. If you have a fat wallet/purse and feel so inclined, please, don't hesitate to send me one of these! Or maybe 2, if you are feeling extra generous! (Gotta keep the wife happy, too!) =P

This one is about $6.5k.

: -- $460 AMD Opteron 246 (2.0 GHz - 64-bit - 1MB cache) -- $460 AMD Opteron 246 (2.0 GHz - 64-bit - 1MB cache) -- $210 MSI K8T Master2-FAR K8T800 Dual 940-pin -- $660 2048MB (1024MBx2) DDR PC-3200 (Registered ECC) -- $420 AGP - ATI Radeon x800 Pro 256MB w/ DVI --- $80 PCI - ATI Radeon 9000 64MB w/ DVI --- $80 PCI - ATI Radeon 9000 64MB w/ DVI -- $210 Creative Labs SB Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro -- $280 Logitech Z-680 (5.1 surround w/ THX & Dolby) -- $190 74 GB - WD Raptor - Serial ATA / 10K-rpm / 8MB (raid0) -- $190 74 GB - WD Raptor - Serial ATA / 10K-rpm / 8MB (raid0) -- $120 200 GB / 7200rpm / 8MB cache (data) -- $120 200 GB / 7200rpm (backup) --- $80 NuTech DDW-082 8X DVD+/-R/RW --- $30 Lite-On 16X DVD / 48X CD -- $900 20.1" Dell 2001FP LCD - 1600x1200 / 16ms -- $750 19" Samsung 193P LCD -- $750 19" Samsung 193P LCD -- $110 CyberPower OfficePower 1100AVR --- $35 1.44MB Floppy + Media Card Reader --- $60 Logitech MX700 Optical Wireless --- $40 Logitech Cordless MX 104-Key --- $95 ATX Mid-tower -- $120 Antec 550W True550

Well, with this installment, I went ahead and jumped aboard the Dual-Opteron bus. (woo-woo!) Since the price of this PC is only about $500 more than the last one, it seemed justified. I mean, it is *my* fantasy, after all. ;) I also jumped up to 2GB of RAM. I just can't personally justify anything more for what I would use this PC for. Perhaps if this was going to be some kind of high-traffic server, but not as just a personal workstation.

I'm still a little overboard on the video/monitors. Like I said before, I'm tired of my cheap 17" CRT, and I've always wanted a multi-monitor configuration for programming and general desktop usage. The 20.1" LCD was about the best one I could find with a 16ms pixel response time and 1600x1200 resolution. Since I'd probably play quite a few games on this, I'd want something that worked pretty decent. I've seen lots of good reviews on this Dell. Perhaps next time, I'll consider one of those nice Sony 22- or 24-inch CRTs. I upped the main AGP video card from a Radeon 9800 Pro to the new x800 Pro. I considered the nVidia card, but decided to keep all 3 cards from the same manufacturer. Should make for less driver headaches. I also upped the second displays from 17" LCDs to 19" for the left and right monitors. They'd mainly be used for web browsing, documentation/reference, or debugging anyway.

I think those 10K rpm drives in a RAID 0 config would probably speed up disk access quite a bit. Maybe it can speed up those horrible level-load times from which most games seem to suffer. I moved from the 36GB drives to the 74GB drives for this edition. It gives me a more respectable ~140GB of space, and that should be plenty for the OS, applications, and games. The 200GB can hold just data (music/video/graphics) and the other 200GB can serve as backup.

I still splurged a little on music hardware, as well. I've always had cheap sound cards and cheap speakers. For once, I'd like to have something a little better. This combo should be great for music listening, DVD watching, and gaming.

The rest is pretty standard, quality stuff. I topped it off with a heck of a Power Supply, simply because of all the drives in the system and perhaps in anticipation of these new power-hungry video card coming soon.

And yes, I probably will run the *dreaded* Microsoft WinXP on here. Why wouldn't I? That would let me run a *lot* of games. I'd probably dual boot Linux (Mandrake) as well, just to see if I can get it setup to use all the hardware. And I'd get to play with some actual 64-bit stuff. Also, I enjoy progamming in a *nix environment moreso than in win32.

Comments/suggestions always welcome...

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