Development Computer

Ok, so I've gotten my home PC up and running.  Seems to be going great.  Here are the requirements I set forth when building the thing:

  • Cheap.  I ain't made of money.
  • Respectable proc speed, make sure it will be upgradeable to the 333mhz FSB AMD procs.
  • Loads of RAM
  • RAID 0
  • Big monitor
  • Nice keyboard.

I'm not too concerned with processor speed.  I don't play too many games, so I don't need the latest and greatest CPU and vidcard.  I've found most of the time my current PC struggles is whenever it writes to disk.  RAID 0 has helped treemendously there.  Now, RAID 10 or even RAID 5 would be nice, but I don't believe my control card (Promise Fasktrak 100) supports it, even if I could afford it.  The loads of RAM are there because I tend to have open at once: VS.NET, Internet Explorer, Enterprise Manager, Query Analyzer, Books On-Line, MSDN.  Not to mention the resources the SQL Server service and ASP.NET take up.  Now, I still haven't reached 512mb, but you never know :) Oh, one more thing.  My videocard software from nVidia supports multiple desktops, so I'll put my SQL stuff on one "screen" and everything else on the other screen.  Once I get a second monitor, I'll be set.

So far it's much nicer than my 1.2GHz laptop, and I attribute most of that to the HD response time.  If you find VS.NET trashing about on you, I'd take a look at grabbing two of those special edition WD drives w/ the 8mb of cache and throwing them in RAID 0.  Just make sure you keep backups handy because if one of those drives goes, they are both useless...Keep in mind, this is just for playing around at home.  If I was building something for work, I'd go with RAID 1, and I sure as heck wouldn't be overclocking.  One of these try this at home, and only at home type of deals.  I'd probably go with a P4 w/ 512k of cache too, to make up for the little tweaks I've been afforded w/ the AMD.

Overall, I spend about $900 bucks including a 19" monitor.  Not bad for a PC that according to benchmarks competes and sometimes beats the $2700 dell and gateway machines.

No Comments