With the recent fall of prices on Intel’s Core Duo processors, it’s that time of the year when I upgrade my hardware. I’ve been reading literally everything that I can find on the net about the recent hardware: reviews, blogs, articles, magazines, you name it.

And here’s the line-up:

• Intel Core 2 Duo 6600
• Scythe Infinity SCINF-1000 CPU Cooler
• Coolermaster Stacker STC-T01 Case
• Asus P5B-Deluxe Motherboard
• 4 GB of DDR2-800 memory
• Any recent video card with Dual-DVI outputs
• Westen Digital “Raptor” Hard Drive (10000 rpm)

Processor choice was easy. You can’t go wrong with the Core 2 Duo CPUs, they are much faster and more energy efficient then AMD offerings. The 6600 was the cheapest CPU with 4mb of cache, and I really wanted to get as much cache as possible - my (unfounded) theory is that big cache should be nice for various build/compiles that I do all the day. Note: Intel recently released lower-end CPU models with 4Mb cache too, if you want to be cheap.

Core 2 Duo is extremely overclockable, from 266Mhz front bus up to 400Mhz! So, the great cooler is in order. And the Scythe Infinity seems to be in the sweet spot - it cools great, especially with 2×12cm low-speed coolers and it’s very quiet. The only downside - the cooler is huge!

Well, with huge Cooler one needs a huge case! Personally, I selected Coolermaster Stacker STC-T01, it looks nice, it has lots of space, and I can use quiet power supply and 12cm low-speed fans in it.

So, the plan is to have highly-overclocked PC (up to 400Mhz front side bus), and for this I need a very solid motherboard. Based on all the reviews, the Asus P5B-Deluxe is the king! This board, it seems, is de-facto standard for seasoned overclockers. And, personally, I always loved Asus boards.

Next, the memory. Obviously, 4GB is the bare minimum now. Java IDEs can be quite a memory hogs, and running various OSes in emulators very quickly eats up all the memory. A warning: in WinXp and WinVista (32-bit), only about 3GB can be used, which is funny - we reached yet another memory barrier. Hopefully, there will be no “memory expanders” and “emulators” like the last time with 640kb in DOS. Seriously, the faster everybody switches to 64 bit the better. But based on various reviews, it seems that 64bit versions of Microsoft OSes are not the best option right now - too much quirks and incompatibilities. I’ll go with Linux/Solaris dual-boot, thank you.

The next thing - a hard drive. I’m still debating this. The RAID support in the latest motherboards (and in Intel 865 chipset, in particular) is good, and probably it’s the time to start seriously using it. As for the “Raptor” hard drives, I’ve been using them in the past, and they work great. Obviously, it’s not that easy to notice ANY performance improvements between 10000 rpm drives and the rest of 7200rpm drives, but it gives a nice warm feeling…

Video card. Since I don’t plan to play games much, there is no point to buy expensive video card. Any decent card would be fine, as long as it has two DVI outputs. Dual monitors with DVI out is the _only_ way to go for software developers. I’ve been using this setup for years and can say that switching from one monitor to two monitors was the most successful upgrade for me. I can see more, I can have more windows, editors, browsers, consoles, etc. Seriously, if you have just one monitor, do yourself a favor and buy a second one, the rest of hardware upgrades can wait!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 27th, 2007 at 3:04 am and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.