Gettin’ jiggy with the new home PC

So… our “old faithful” Dell PowerEdge 400SC box at home is finally beginning to show its age.  For a 5-year-old machine, it’s really faired quite well, but it’s making it known that it would prefer to be put out to pasture.

That’s the call I was waiting to hear.

I initially found a pretty sweet deal on a PowerEdge T105 box from Dell – and I even ordered one! – but there were some issues around upgradeability that I didn’t take into account.  Specifically, just getting a decent video card and sound card was proving both difficult and expensive.  All of a sudden the “sweet deal” was looking less and less sweet.  😦

I cancelled the order and started over.

Given that we were already looking to spend about $540 on a box, I had my price-point to shoot for.  (Note that we aren’t needing an OS, monitor, keyboard or mouse.  We’re good there.)  It finally dawned on me that I could simply do what I always use to do: build my own PC.

I headed over to NewEgg and began my research. Intel or AMD?  What kind of case?  How much RAM and at what speed?  Onboard video or an add-on card?  For a pretty awesome price/performance ratio, I chose a top-of-the-line AMD Phenom II Quad-Core CPU.  Once that was decided, I could research some compatible motherboards with good onboard gear.  We don’t “game” on our PC anymore, so I really only needed a video solution that could handle the Win7 “Aero” interface.  Most motherboards these days also come with very good onboard sound, video, tons of USB ports, firewire, and so forth.  I also needed an easy-on-the-eyes computer case to put everything in.

Here’s the gear I decided upon:

• AMD Phenom II 940 3.0ghz CPU “Black Edition”
• This is their (current) top-of-the-line quad-core processor, boasting 8mb total onboard cache, great overclockability, and very good performance.
• Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-UD4H Motherboard (catchy name, eh?)
• Quite honestly, this motherboard is amazing.  Not only does it look great, but it supports 16GB RAM, SATA RAID, 8-channel onboard audio, gigabit ethernet, ATI HD3300 onboard video, HDMI, DVI, firewire, optical-out audio, and more.  The pipe-cooled chipsets are pretty awesome too!
• Kingston DDR2 1066 RAM
• Pretty basic stuff here.  4gigs (2 x 2gigs) of DDR2 1066 memory, for dual-channel support.  Good looking RAM with a nice heatsink.
• Antec NSK6580B Mid-Tower Case w/ 430W Power Supply
• Finding a “normal looking” computer case these days is like trying to find a normal looking pair of running shoes.   Sheesh!  This Antec case, however, is very subdued with cold-rolled steel edges (no finger slices!), front ports, plenty of internal expansion, and a very decent power supply.
• Samsung SATA 22x DVD Burner w/ Lightscribe
• Pretty basic SATA DVD burner, but the Lightscribe functionality is nice to have.

All this gear is then matched up with our current 19” Samsung LCD monitor, 74GB Western Digital Raptor drive, 74GB Western Digital secondary drive, and the latest version of Windows 7 64-bit.  How much did I spend?  The full purchase was just $519.49 – shipped.  Thanks, NewEgg!

So… my son and I put the box together last night, and I brought it into work to run through a test install of Windows 7 “Beta 7000” 64-bit.  The install went great, and the box is running wonderfully!  For giggles, I also increased the CPU multiplier and bumped from the stock 3.0ghz core speed to 3.42ghz – no voltage change necessary.  That’s a combined 1.6ghz overall bump to the CPU!  No issues so far.  This machine is also amazingly quiet.

Here are some (not-so-great quality) pictures of our new home PC sitting next to my desk at work…

Sweet, sweet Compaq monitor with 1024×768 resolution! 😉

 

(No… I won’t leave the harddrive there!)

Look at all those drive bays!

Here’s hoping that the “RC” build of Windows 7 is released very, very soon!

Thanks for reading 🙂

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