As I mentioned in my previous post, I am looking for a new workstation. The primary use for the new PC will be Visual Studio 2008 development, SharePoint, BizTalk and Windows Mobile development.
I had in my mind to buy 15.000 rpm (rotations per minute) SAS disks because of their amazing performance. Dell was the only big PC manufacturer offering this in workstation PCs, but other online computer stores offer it separately. Last Saturday I went to Alternate. This is a big and leading computer store in The Netherlands. They have a show room in Ridderkerk (map). Turns out that SAS disks are also hard to get and that I have to go to more specialized companies for that. With this in mind, I canceled my idea about SAS.
Now I've made a new configuration and I will order it soon by Alternate. The sales guy was very friendly and had lots of knowledge about the product's he's selling. Bravo!
This will be the configuration (and explanation):
| Case | Cooler Master Centurion 5 Black/Silver | Good cooling options, enough space for main board, 4 hard disks, 5,25" bays. And works with 'click-system' (without screws). Good airflow. Looks OK |
| PSU | Zalman ZM600-HP | With this I'm sure I have enough power for a while. The 600-W unit is temperature controlled. Supports cable management :-) |
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (4x2400 MHz) |  I was in doubt about this one. Should I take a dual or quad core. This depends on the application I use. Most of the time I'm a real multi tasker and also VMWare or VPC are in use most of the time. That's why I choose quad. Reviews tell me its super fast and doesn't get very hot. |
| Memory | 8 GB (4x2048 MB OCZ) CL4-4-4 | Nice CAS legacy times. I choose DDR2-800 over DDR2-1066 or DDR3 because the CAS timings of those are much higher. DDR3 will be interesting with speeds over 1600 MHz. Right now, DDR2-800 gives the best price/value. Why 8? It's the maximum of the main board and will be enough for now (and the virtual machines) |
| Main board | Gigabyte EX38-DS4 | Supports DDR2 667 to 1066 MHz, RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 and JBOD, sound, networking, 8x USB, FireWire and more. Uses Intel X38 chipset. |
| Hard disks | 2x Western Digital Raptor 150GB | With an access time of 4.6ms and placed in a RAID 0, I hope this will give me a great performance. This will be a 300GB NTFS disk for the OS, used by the OS and Program Files. Connected via SATA interface. |
| | 1x Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB | Superfast and superbig hard disk of 1 terabyte. The disk operates with 32 MB cache memory and with 7.200 rpm. I choose this one because of Tomshardware.com. It's the fastest HDD in File Write Performance and Average Read Transfer. My VM data files will be on this disk. Connected via SATA interface.
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| Graphics card | Asus NVidia GeForce 8800 GT, 512 MB | Great card. With this I can show up at LAN parties.  |
| DVD ReWriters | 2x Samsung SH-S203P | 20 / 8 / 16 speed, 20 / 6 / 12 speed, 16 / 40 speed. With SATA connection. Supports Lightscribe. |
| Floppy disk | Mitsumi floppydrive+7 in1 card reader | I haven't seen this before. It's a floppy drive with a built-in 7 in 1 card reader. The floppy drive is there because I expect to use it 1x per year. The card reader is more useful. |
| Monitor | 2x Samsung SyncMaster 223BW (22") |  I was in doubt about this one. I already have a nice 19" Dell screen but I don't like the 4:3 aspect ratio. I prefer to work with a high resolution, but with 1920x1028 the letters get a little small. And I don't like 24" screens so much (I have it @work). They are so big that I have to move my head instead of only my eyes. I decided to buy 2 screens. It's proven that a multi monitor setup improves productivity. Each screen has a resolution of 1650x1050 pixels. Maybe a little overkill :-) |
Now I'm googling to check if I made the right decision and reading more info about the hardware. And I'm also looking for a bluetooth device with a (really) working and stable driver. The plan is to confirm the order tomorrow.
Update: I'm looking for donations... (it's ordered)