Gaming Rig Recap
A while back I posted about my new gaming rig.
Quite a few people have actually asked me how that turned out and I'm happy to say that it has been the single best computer purchase that I've ever made. I've never, ever, been happier with a box.
Other boxes/systems have been great - but nothing has been as fun as it was to research, buy, build, and then use my gaming rig. That, and the thing is an absolute beast. I used to spend a lot of time looking at task manager to see what was chewing up CPU and disk. With my new box I barely know how to use task manager anymore.
But the best thing is that it gives me much better flexibility in terms of upgrades and such than I ever could have swung from the likes of Dell or HP - at a fraction of the price.
Mikey needs a new box
Another box that I've been VERY happy with for the past year and a half (or so) has been my Dell PowerEdge SC1420. I got it as a refurb from Dell and got a killer deal on it. (A few weeks after I bought it I could have easily sold 2 GB of the RAM that came with it to cover the entire cost of the box - and still had 2 GB of RAM left.)
But I'm going to be doing a couple of projects with Microsoft's new Viridian Hypervisor shortly - and will need some serious power for virtualization. My PowerEdge could have handled the load pretty easily - with both of its hyper-threaded Xeon 3.0s. But those Xeon's didn't support Intel Virtualization Technology (or Intel VT), so I decided to swing for a new server.
Given my past success with NewEgg (I just can't describe how much I love them - they consistently have the cheapest prices and actually ship my stuff within a day or so every time), I decided that I'd build my own box again. (Though I'm cannibalizing the upgraded video-card from my PowerEdge.)
The new box
My new 'server' should be here on Friday (the case will be here Thursday), and will give me:
- An Intel Core 2 Quad. At 2.4 GHz it's literally 2 of the cores I have in my gaming rig glued together. But I'll get Intel VT, and the price is hardly much more than what I paid for my Core 2 Duo just a few months ago. (When the 1333Mhz bus processors come down in price in a while I can upgrade - and since both of my machines use the same 775 LGA socket I'll be able to share the love each time I buy nicer procs.)
- 8 GB of RAM. That's right baby: 8 GB. Which means that I'll need to spring for a 64-bit OS - though I'm just going to use Windows Server 2008 for now since it's _so_much better than Windows Server 2003.
- A slightly wimpier MoBo. Unpacking all of my EVGA stuff with my last box really did my inner geek some insane good. (2x vid cards, and a big honkin' mobo... I was in heaven.) But with this box I hardly need any video capability at all (I'll just be cannibalizing the 64MB PCI card that I slapped into my PowerEdge), but I did need a fast/dependable Mobo with some decent SATA and upgrade support. The 650i chipset fit that bill nicely.
- Disk. 1 TB spread over 4 spindles. Yippee.
- The same spiffy power-supply-unit (PSU) that I got with my last box. I really don't need as much power/wattage as this piglet supplies, but just LOVE how efficient it is, how clean the power is, and how insanely cool the modular cabling is. So I spent a bit more than I really needed.
- A fairly spiffy case. I really didn't want to spend too much on this piglet, but needed some decent fans and some *cough* eye-candy and blue lights. I'll probably add some more blue LEDs as well as a Cold Cathode Black Light like I've *cough* done for my gaming rig. (And I'll likely skin the cables for both boxes with UV reflective goodness as I've purchased the skinning and molex tools - but just haven't had the time to do yet.)
If you're interested, I've made the wishlist available over on newegg. As with my last system though, the contents of the wishlist don't represent a complete machine - as you'd need a video card with this box if you were interested in a similar configuration. It also doesn't have an OS, though you can usually swing Windows Server Standard for less than $700 if you do some shopping.
Love 'em and Leave 'em
That, and anyone know anybody that wants a well-loved PowerEdge that's in great condition? It's got 2x Intel Xeon 3.0 GHz (at 800 Mhz FSB), an IDE SATA RAID controller, 4 GB of RAM, and around .5 TB of disk. It's in awesome condition.
I'll likely put it up for sale on Ebay here in a while to help recoup some of my upgrade costs.
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