I realized my current main desktop machine is now 30 months old and while it still is decent I would like to upgrade it. I have had a terrible time with Windows Rot as of late because the machine hasn’t been reloaded since I first set it up… A new record for me, normally my machines are reloaded about every 6 months either because I really dorked something up or because I am just avoiding Windows Rot. While a computer’s OS, IMO, should get faster and faster as it learns how you work, we all know that Windows does not do that.
So… the world renowned FastMofo will be getting replaced with a whole new machine. Afterwards FastMofo will get reloaded either with VMWARE ESX or Windows Server 2003 R2 with VMWARE Virtual Server or Virtual Server 2005 R2. I haven’t decided yet. Then set up on the shelf next to 2K3UTL01 which houses a bunch of Virtuals running on VS2005R2.
The new machine, initially and tentatively named… SuperFastMofo is starting to shape up with the list of hardware below. Not really being a hardware guy I figured I would list the stuff here so people could say, wow joe, you moron, you really don’t want to do that because X. The X is very important, though I don’t have an issue with people just calling me a moron too. You will find though that unless X is supplied, I tend to blow by the moron comment pretty fast.
So basically I intend to keep my two Dell 2001FP’s on my main desk. Considering adding 1-2 more but that isn’t part of this conversation as I know I would have to get yet another video card to do that. I am also going to keep my Dell Clackity Clack(tm) keyboard; I hate quiet/soft key keyboards – I fell in love with the old IBM kickback keyboards a long time ago and I don’t see myself moving from this style. Oh yeah, keeping my Microsoft Explorer Optical Mouse and the “Where The Wild Things Are” mousemat as well.
So for the case, I am going with an annoyingly ugly Aspire X-SuperAlien MidTower case in neon Green with front temp LCD and 500W Power Supply. I want to know when I see someone walking down the street with a PC under their arm that it is mine. 🙂
The motherboard I am looking at is the ABIT AT8 32X Socket 939 ATI CrossFire Radeon XPRESS 3200 ATC AMD. Support for up to 8GB of RAM in 4 slots with 2x PCIExpress x16 slots, USB2.0, and some other slots. I swore I wasn’t going to use ASUS again after the support and issues I had with memory upgrades previously. Nothing says that ABIT will be any better but I won’t know for sure until I try.
The CPU is the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester 2000Mhz HT Socket 939 Dual Core. I really like the x64’s from AMD and dual core will be fun. 😉
For video I am looking at the PowerColor x1600Pro512MBDDR card. ATI 1600 chipset with 512MB of RAM. PCI Express x16 CrossFire ready. I probably could do with a $20 video card but who knows, I may want to play a game someday, plus I want no excuses out of Vista for not giving me a beautiful display.
I am finally upgrading my DVD Burner from the old Sony External I have to an Internal Dual Layer DVD burner. I actually have Dual Layer burning capability on my Media Center and my HP 17″ Laptop but I don’t do much DVD burning on either of those (especially on the laptop which has Vista and I am having tremendous burning issues under Vista). So the replacement burner is the HP DVD840i w/ LightScribe.
Hmmm what else… Oh yeah hard disk. I am finally submitting to SATA drives. I have been holding off and buying standard IDEs for quite a while but now NewEgg has some 250GB WD Caviars with 16MB cache going for $90 a crack which isn’t bad, so 5 of those to fill up all of the internal 3.5 slots in the Aspire case.
I don’t need memory as I have 4GB of DDR400 RAM just sitting on its thumbs since my ASUS Mobo fiasco and trying to upgrade to 4GB on those two machines running those boards.
The intent is to load XP64 or possibly Vista64 though the Vista Betas are starting to come a little too fast and furious now so I will probably just dual boot it for a while. I expect to run some virtualization software on it and run some Windows servers and some BSD on it as well.
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So where did I screw up? What did I miss?
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RAID? I didn’t look up those motherboards, but if you’re considering 5 disks, you need a good RAID controller. My ABIT mobo claims RAID support, but it is quite limited. Since I only have two 300GB disks, I use RAID0 and stripe them. (Risky I know.) I do daily backups of the important data via gigabit Ethernet to a disk in my basement.
The VMTN forums show that ESX works with some SATA RAID controllers even though it is not officially supported. Perhaps look into one of these? ESX prefers SCSI of course.
I don’t really have experience with any brands/models, but it seemed liked you missed this item. If only we could get a decent employee discount on an EVA8000 for the home office…
– B
I don’t see a modem listed there. The USR Couriers are really sweet. 🙂
Brendan:
Yes it has onboard RAID Support which I consider mandatory for getting the spindles combined for IOPS, not so concerned about fault tolerance. It is limited, but will do 0/1/0+1/5 with 4 disks. I thought about getting another controller but figured I would give the built in a shot.
Scotte:
MODEM? What’s that? 😉 MB ethernet to my LAN which routes to a switch with a firewall and then either off to another set of hubs/switches or off to another hub and then to a Cable MODEM and out to the Net. Two WAPS in there as well as two game receivers in there somewhere too.
Are you going to put neon lights inside your case, man that would really stand out.
The only think I would change is your video card but I also game and it looks like you don’t game as much so the x1600 should be fine for you.
Quad SLI… ok I’m dreaming now 🙂
Mike:
Nope I didn’t get any neon lights. In actuality, the PC will end up on the inside of a cabinet, the only time it is seen is if I need to throw in a DVD/CD. I am really not a hardware guy, I am all about the software and what the computer can do, what is underneath it all doesn’t matter as long as it does it well and quickly. The last piece of hardware I actually I got excited about was a PDP 11/84 and a set of RC-25s for it. 🙂 That lasted a few minutes and then I was back head down into the Runtime system and kernel internals.
I would think the video card is killer already… 512MB of RAM… sheesh.