It's time. Time to say goodbye to the old and hello to the new! New ultimate development rig that is! My old rig was very kind to me. Six years of loyalty and reliance. It was fast. It was sweet. It served me well. But she (yes its she) would not install Vista even after every upgrade I could find under the Sun. This was a pivotal moment when I decided to go all out and build my new ultimate development rig.
I have read the Jeff Atwood and Scott Hanselman posts. I have studied the list of UDR's that Steven Smith posted on his blog. Here is my story.
The Old
My old rig has two physical (how passé) Pentium 4 Xenon processors, two sticks of 512 ECC RDRAM and three Ultra 160 SCSI drives.
Key Features
- Dual Intel® Xeon® Support up to 2.4 GHz
- Intel® 860 Chipset
- Up to 2GB 600/800MHz RDRAM
- 1x Intel® 82559 10/100 Ethernet Controller
- Adaptec AIC-7899W Dual-Channel Ultra160 SCSI
- 2 x 64-bit PCI expansion slots
- 4xAGP Pro slot
- Channel RAID Support
The colorful bits and bytes were displayed thought the MSI G4TI4600 video card and I heard the sounds through the SoundBlaster Audigy Platinum (aka Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS ) sound card.
The New
I have stripped the case bare and replaced everything except the case itself! I got new mother board, new video card and new hard disks.
The new motherboard is the EVGA X58 SLI. It has on board HD sound card and excellent choice of I/O options: 1 x UltraDMA133, 9 x Serial ATA 300MB/sec with support for RAID 0, RAID1, RAID 0+1, RAID5, JBOD and Floppy disk drive connector. I went with the 6GB DDR3 triple channel memory setup.
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Key Features .
- USB 2.0 Support
- PCI Express® 2.0 / 1.1 Support
- Serial ATA - II
- Solid Capacitors
- Active Heatsink
- 8 - Phase Power Design
- On-Boad Clear CMOS Button
- On-Board Power Button with Integrated Power Light
- On-Board Reset Button with Integrated HDD Activity Light
- On-Board Diagnostics LED Readout
- 2-Way SLI® Support
- 3-Way SLI® Support
- Windows 2000™ Support
- Windows XP™ Support
- Windows Vista™ Support
- DDR3 Support
- Triple-Channel Support
- Dual-Channel Support
- Intel® X58/ICH10R Chipset
- Intel® Core i7 Support
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If you did not notice this board has tad bit more options than my old one. Why this mobo? My previous mobo was the Supermicro. I found it very difficult to figure out on their web site what mother board I wanted.
I went to Newegg.com and looked for the mobo that supported the latest Intel processor (socket 1366) and had most reviews. Supermicro did not have enough reviews and Asus P6T was out of stock.
I went with the i7 quad core processor, which did come with a fan but I was not aware of it until I opened the box.
I have gone ahead and bought this monster, Vigor Monsoon III LT Dual 120mm Fan CPU Cooler. It looked good, had decent reviews and has a blue light when its on. Lights = happiness.
I think video cards have become monstrous since last time I got one. EVGA GTX 280 based on NVidia GeForce is enormous and requires you to use two of the PCIe power connectors. Why this video card? I have used the same process as the mother board.
I was looking for something cheap and 1GB of RAM. EVGA has step up program so I have requested to step up to 285 card.
EVGA part number for this card is 01G-P3-1280-AR.
The power plant of this monster is the Crossair 1000W power supply. Why 1000? Why not? I was pleasantly surprised how clean is the design of this power supply.
It came with tons of cables!
The Rig
This is the monsters cage.
Triple channel DD3 Memory
CPU fan - observe blue lights :)
The biggest video card I have ever seen!
Two 1TB in RAID1 and two 500GB RAID 1 (Mirror).
Parts and Prices from NewEgg.com:
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Qty
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Part
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Price Paid
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1
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Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601920
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294.99
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1
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EVGA 01G-P3-1280-AR GeForce GTX 280 1GB 512-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
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324.99
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2
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Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST31000340NS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
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339.98
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2
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Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
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129.98
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1
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Vigor Monsoon III LT Dual 120mm Fan CPU Cooler Socket 1366
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59.99
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1
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LG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model GH22NS30 - OEM
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23.99
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1
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EVGA 132-BL-E758-A1 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard
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299.99
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1
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CORSAIR CMPSU-1000HX 1000W ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply
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269.99
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1
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CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1600C8D
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229
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1972.91
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Bragging Section
Perfect score! 5.9 all across.
Visual Studio Team System install took less than 10 minutes!!!! SP1 less than 30 minutes.
Note: Some images are courtesy of Newegg.com