My Dream Computer… Assembled

I am in the last stages of assembling have assembled my dream computer. The final hurdle is a DVI to VGA connector which turned out defective. I wanted a strong Java development system with reasonable costs and high quality tested components. I also have plans for am also using it for high throughput data processing. Here is the specification:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4 GHZ X 2) LGA 775 Processor (4 MB shared L2 cache). While it can be seriously over-clocked I prefer not to in Indian climate and without a powered CPU cooler.

Mainboard: Intel® Desktop Board DG965RY Classic Series (supports four 240-pin DDR2 SDRAM Dual Inline Memory Module (DIMM) sockets; 6-channel (5.1) audio subsystem using the SigmaTel* STAC9227 audio codec; Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3000 (Intel® GMA X3000) onboard graphics subsystem; Gigabit (10/100/1000 Mbits/sec) LAN subsystem using the Intel® 82566DC Gigabit Ethernet Controller; Ten USB 2.0 ports; Four Serial ATA IDE interfaces; One PCI Express x16 bus add-in card connector; Three PCI Express* x1 bus add-in card connectors)

Chipset: Intel(R) G965 Express Chipset Comes with the mainboard

RAM: 2 x DDR 2 (667 MHz) 1GB (best I could get in Kolkata)

Graphics Card for Dual Monitor: GeForce 6200 LE with 256 MB RAM (reasonable for non-gaming system). It provides a VGA port as well as a DVI port (where you need to attach the DVI -> VGA connector mentioned above to get VGA output).

Display: 2 x 17″ LCD Monitor (Samsung SyncMaster 740N). Finally moving to a dual monitor! Currently I am waiting for a replacement DVI -> VGA connector so I am using a KVM with both my old and new machines using the dual display while sharing the keyboard. Even with that limited setup I have started realizing the benefits of dual monitor in increasing productivity.

Harddisk: 2 x 160 GB SATA Seagate ST3160211AS Barracuda (configured as software RAID 1). Hard disks always crash, trust me on this. A RAID-1 including my boot partition (with MBR on both drives) makes it possible to work seamlessly even if one of the drive crashes. Thanks to RedHat for making this (RAID-1 on boot partition) possible.

Optical Drive: LG DVD Writer (a reasonable choice by any standards). I have another Sony DVD Writer too on my old machine.

Cabinet: Zebronics LAVA It comes with an temperature sensor which controls two fans located opposite to the CPU. We have set the sensor as close as possible to the CPU. The fans starts as soon as the temperature reaches 38 C (can be adjusted). I have added an extra fan just to be extra-safe. With full load on both cores using TAT for 10 minutes, the Tj temperature as reported by TAT remained constant at 70-71 C. The room temperature was 31 C.
The only weakness is that the fans are not speed controlled. The display looks terrific.

Overall I wanted to get a high value for price without sacrificing quality and performance. However I didn’t want to get the top high-end system like with quad-core because the extra ounce of performance comes at a hefty premium which in my opinion is not justified for a development system. I wanted a system which will serve me for years and I think I have found one. What do you think? Is there anything you would like to change?

Update: The best part is that it runs on Linux (Fedora Core 6).