I am a geek. Plain and simple. And I have over a decade of professional IT consulting and support experience. I want to share my opinions about certain aspects of technology through this blog. I will review software, hardware and share tidbits of experiences from my past.
As an IT consultant who specializes in hardware, I often come across various components or branded computers. However nothing, in my opinion, is as exciting and challenging as building a PC for my use. And this time it was a dandy!
I had not built myself a new computer since 2006 and even if I did a few upgrades on my previous machine, nothing quite beats a fresh build. Especially when one decides to build a rig that integrates many changes. How so? I used to be an AMD and NVidia fan, as strange as a pairing it may be. However due to the evolution of the hardware market in the last two years or so, many things have changed. And since I was building a value oriented computer, I had to keep this in mind. So without further delay, here is a list of the new components.
Video Card: ATI Radeon by Palit 3870 512MB GDDR3 PCI-e
Optical Drive: Samsung SATA DVD burner
Storage: 1 x Seagate 320GB SATA II and 3 x various 500 GB SATA II hard drives.
Backup: Iomega 1TB external USB 2.0 Hard Drive
Monitors: 1 Samsung 21.5” LCD and 1 Acer 22” LCD
Sound: JVC Micro Shelf stereo with aux in.
So, what inspired those changes? First I went with Intel due to the sheer improvement in value that their processors have gained over the last two years. It used to be that AMD units were the winners in the band for the buck contests but current Intel offerings offer unmatched performance. My only issue was debating between a faster dual core and a slower quad core for the same cost. I ultimately chose the quad as I am more of a multi-tasker than gamer. When it came to chosing the motherboard, it was just too easy. This specific model is simply the best socket LGA775 board for under $150 and competes well with boards costing more than $200. Its rich feature set and durable construction and design make this the easiest component decision I took. The video card was chosen due to its attractive price. Since I don’t play many games and most of the ones I do are older, a top of the line card was unnecessary. I decided on 8GB of RAM in order to have efficient multimedia and photo editing capabilities while running other applications. The case and Power Supply were natural selections and the remaining hardware was salvaged from my previous PC.
The second major change came with the operating systems that are installed. I decided on Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit and Ubuntu Linux 9.04 64-bit in a dual boot. I will be writing about my Ubuntu journey in more details in a future post. These variants of both systems allow to fully benefit from the 8GB of RAM, where as the 32-bit OS’ limit RAM to 3.25GB.
In the end, I spent about 800$ CAD for a significant overhaul. It is well worth it and the performance gain has been substantial. I plan on keeping this rig for 3 years and I feel that it will live up to the challenge.
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