Mark Breen
marklbreen at gmail.com
Fri Aug 22 04:55:49 CDT 2014
Hello All, I have mentioned it on here before, but because I love it so much, please endure me commenting again ;) A few years ago, I listened to a Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood podcast. They were discussing the ultimate developers machine. After almost an hour of discussion, they finalised it by saying "Jedi warrriors build their own light sabres". Well I am not quite a Jedi warrior but I decided to build a machine anyway. Had not built a PC in 20 years. Until then, I had presumed that buying Dell was good enough. I have since built about 20 - 50 machines for various friends, family and a very limited few customers. *Speed* The first thing that I did not know was that Intel sell their chips with a marked speed, eg i7 *3.5Ghz*. All the PC manufacturers supply motherboards that accept that speed and do not allow you to modify it. By purchasing an OEM motherboard, you can simply go into your bios and change the speed up to 4.3, 4.4, 4.5 and even 4.8GHz. Each chip has its own limits. These machines then become extremely fast. Here are some examples of processor costs just approx to give you a sense of the scale i3 €88 i5 €180 i7 €233 There are other overclocking tricks you can do to get even more, but I ignore them all. My overclocking process lasts not more than 30 seconds. *Quality* There are cheap and nasty cases and powersupplies. eg a case for €25 and a PSU for €15. There are even case and PSU combined for €25. However, there are cases for €50 - €60 and beautiful power supplies for €50. These are a pleasure to work with, to assemble and to own. *Silence* The higher quality components are virtually silent. That means, in a silent office, you cannot, or almost cannot hear the PSU fan moving. To add to that, I then use only SSD disks. My PC is then as noisy as my pencil. *Time Required to build a machine* Choosing components - Hours and Days Unpacking cardboard - 20 - 30 mins Building the machine 20 - 60 mins Fiddling with the cables to make them .1 % tidier - hours if you wish Looking at it afterwards with the love a father had for his son - a lifetime *Cooling* There is a lot of talk about cooling. I usually install a CPU cooler that costs approx €20. My processor almost never rises above warm. When I build silent machines, I disconnect the CPU fan and then monitor the temp. It usually rises a few degrees and then settles down and convection cooling works fine. With no fan connected, my CPU still never rises above 50 degrees Celsius. This is quite cool for a CPU. The limit is 100 Degrees Celsius. The formatting of the following text is horrible, but it is simple three tab separated columns. Examples of Costs *A budget machine* Ecomony Case Antec VSK-3000E Micro-ATX Black Case No PSU €25.06 Corsair High Quality PSU Corsair Builder Series 80+ Bronze CMPSU-430CXV2UK 430W Power Supply (PSU) €38.22 AMD Six Core Procerror AMD FX 6300 Black Edition Six Core Processor Socket AM3+ €80.04 Asus Motherboard Asus M5A97 R2.0 AMD 970 AM3+ Motherboard Socket AM3+ €68.79 8GB RAM 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 XMS3, PC3-10600 (1333), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.50V €68.57 1 TB Seagate Traditional Disk 1TB Seagate ST1000DM003 Barracuda 7200.14 SATA 6Gb/s 7200rpm 64MB Cache 8ms NCQ OEM €42.18 CPU Fan Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro v2 S775/115x/1366/AM3/AM2+/AM2/939 Up to 130 Watts €19.09 Case Fan 120mm AKASA AK-191BL near Silent Imperial Blue value case fan €5.17 Wired MS Wired Keyboard 200 for Business, USB Port, Black €7.61 Wired (option for Wireless) MS Basic Optical Mouse for Business Black 3 Button with Scroll Wheel PS2/USB PC/MAC €8.30 DVD Read/Write Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE 24x DVD±R, 8x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, x12 RAM Dual Layer SATA BLACK OEM €14.29 Total €377.32 *A large machine* High Quality Case Corsair Carbide 300R Mid Tower Gaming Case Black No PSU €63.21 Corsair High Quality PSU 750W Corsair Builder Series CX CP-9020015-UK Non-Modular, 80 PLUS Bronze, Single Rail, 1x120mm Fan, ATX v2.31 PSU €71.47 Top of the range Intel Intel Core i7-4790K Socket 1150 'Devils Canyon' (22nm) Quad Core Processor Retail with Heat Sink Fan €265.38 Asus Motherboard Asus Z87-K Intel Z87 Socket 1150 Motherboard €87.01 16 GB Ram Corsair Memory XMS3 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-10666 (1333) Dual Channel Desktop €133.54 4 TB x 2 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000 Desktop HDD.15, 3.5" HDD, SATA III - 6Gb/s, 5900rpm, 64MB Cache, 8ms, NCQ, OEM €114.62 CPU Fan Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO, 4 Heat Pipes Direct Contact, with 120mm Quiet Fan LGA775/1155/1156/1366/AM2/AM2+/AM3/FM1 €27.19 Case Fan 120mm AKASA AK-191BL near Silent Imperial Blue value case fan €5.10 DVD Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE 24x DVD±R, 8x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, x12 RAM Dual Layer SATA BLACK OEM €14.10 Total €781.63 Source of components www.scan.co.uk You can see how you can tweak the values to build the machine you need. I hope it is interesting to you. Mark On 21 August 2014 09:55, Gustav Brock <gustav at cactus.dk> wrote: > Hi Arthur > > I don't, but I do buy non-expensive workstations with Xeon processors and > 12+ GB ram. The trick is, that the built-in Intel P6000 graphic processor > is fast enough for me (no gaming), thus I can save the cost of an optional > graphics adapter and buy SSD drives. A marvelous combo - life it too short > for slow machines. > My home machine always runs the latest Windows preview (soon Windows 9) > while my office machine runs the latest official Windows (currently 8.1). > > /gustav > > > -----Original Message----- > From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto: > dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller > Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2014 9:08 AM > To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues > Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] How to revive an XP POS PC > > Good advice in general, Jim. Just one question: who spends $2k on a PC > these days? I bought a pretty serious laptop (Dell, with 8GB RAM and 1TB > hard disk) for $750 and that was almost a year back, so the same machine > should cost less now. I plugged in an old 22" monitor so it now has two > screens when it's at home, which is almost always. When I go out, I take > the Acer Iconia, which is also more than a year old but back when it was > new it was slightly more than $200. > > Arthur > > > _______________________________________________ > dba-Tech mailing list > dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com >