matthewthornton.info

My New Computer

I decided to take out an advance on my fun money (for the next 6 months or so + some patio furniture for Jess) and get a computer.  More specifically, the components to build a computer.  I’ve gotten a BS and MS in computer science and yet the one thing I never did was build my own computer.  There was a very simple reason for this.  I was always in school and, particularly my first couple of years of college when I bought my first compute, I was doing non-stop reports, etc. and my computer had to work.  After that, I had a laptop which are very hard to build on your own and then I went through my mac phase.  (Not to say I haven’t passed that phase but it’s particularly difficult (and against whatever license agreements OS X has) to build a mac machine.)  Now the opportunity presented itself so I thought I’d jump at it.  My plan is to get the components, build the machine, and install Windows 7 on it.  I have an older desktop that I can now use as a Linux testbed.  The following are the components:

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 Quad Core Processor @ 2.33 GHz –This is the slowest quad core, so I can take advantage of programs that make use of the added cores while not paying top dollar.
• GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P Motherboard — Just a nice, down the middle motherboard.  Don’t think it has any features that facilitate overclocking, etc. but I don’t really want them anyway.
• 8GB DDR2 1066 Memory — Ok…I overdid it on memory but what I researched, using a 64-bit with 8 GB is like 4GB with a 32-bit processor and 4GB is rapidly becoming the norm and don’t judge me. 
• Western Digital 75GB, 10000RPM  Hard Drive — This is for my boot disk and applications.  The OS should take around 20, leaving around 40GB for applications.  While this isn’t a lot it should be enough.  My only concern is if there are too many apps it could defeat the purpose of a fast hard drive.  This is a personal experiment of mine.  I have always been a evangelist saying that you should not buy the top of the line processors/memory because the hard drive ends up being the bottleneck anyway.  I’m wanting to see if this is actually the case or not.
• Western Digital 1TB, 7200RPM Hard Drive — For Data.  Newegg was having a sale and it 100 bucks for a TB!!! 
• Pioneer 20x CD/DVD Burner — Pioneer makes good burners, so I went with them.
• Samsung Toc T220HD Monitor — I’m pushing 30 and I am tired of lugging my 60 pound CRT display around.  This one is 13 pounds.  It is the Mini Me of our TV, so it should be nice.
• GTX 260, 896MB Video Card — I got a refurbished video card for a good deal.  This is the best of the value video cards, so I ran with it.

I left out a sound card.  I live in an apartment and when I’d be taking advantage of the sound system, there are nearby kids asleep and I don’t want to be blaring a video game or anything, so it really isn’t worth it.  I’ll let you now how things work out.