A New PC

After months of learning and getting back up to speed it is time to buy a new PC. I like to get into the nitty gritty of what is on offer and where the technology is going before I commit to a purchase. I like to find that sweet spot between price and performance. It’s also good to brush up my hardware knowledge so I can talk to my fellow nerds.

It isn’t easy. My aim is to spend within a budget range and get the best performance and longevity. It has to be reliable and quite (my current desk top sounds like a wind tunnel facility). It will be my partners primary work station so office apps and ergonomics come heavily in to consideration. I also want a machine that will still be able to run the games released at least three years from now (may be not well, but still be enjoyable).

I started by winnowing down the processor. I do a lot of multi-tasking and flicking between apps, so does my partner, so a dual core CPU seemed to be the way to got. I know MS Vista will be optimised for dual core 64 bit but it is doubtful that I would upgrade the op system once I have the machine (XP 64 pro chosen). Best bang for buck equated to the AMD 64 X2 3800 processor ( I have only had Intel processors in one out of my past PCs (excluding the laptops).

Now the mother board was a no brainier the ASUS A8N-SLI hits exactly my price/performance expectation and has a heap of features that are appropriate to a moderate machine that will sit on a desk. It has been around for a while and has a good rep out there in the geekosphere. I have used either Asus or MSI in my previous machines with no issues. With that decision made the memory type was set (I would like to have gone with a pair of corsair 512M modules but the no name brand will suffice). It will be interleaved so the marginal performance boost through over clocking the RAM was not worth it.

Video card technology moves so quick and I have never followed developments so a fair bit of research was required. The ASUS board supports SLI and I discovered that a pair of NVIDIA 6600GT 256MB cards in SLI mode outperform a single 7800GT card at about ½ the cost.

Like wise I was going to go for a 400GB hard disk (in keeping with my tradition of increasing HD capacity by > 5x the previous machine) and found that a pair of 200GB drives was cheaper with the added advantage of being able to back up important stuff like my MP3 files between them (one person is laughing now). The dual SATA channels will support another two drives if video processing/storage becomes big in our house over the next three years.

The monitor was interesting, I have ended up specifying a 20” wide screen. My laptop has a widescreen format and I have found this very useable. The extra screen space and higher resolution allows you to spread out your open windows. It is a real productivity boost – even those dumb side panels in Office apps become useful. I also noted that the latest ergonomic research shows big productivity boost/reduced stress with larger screen sizes.

The sad thing was the sound card. I had my heart set on a top end Creative card. I like to fiddle with audio from time to time and the Creative X-FI Fatal1ty fitted the bill but the bill was too high so it was axed (for the time being). Again it was a good performance cost compromise but it would have blown the budget. The Asus board has an almost acceptable solution built in so I will live with that. I guess I will upgrade before I record and produce my sons Christmas album for his grandmothers later this year.

The rest of it is fairly much standard stuff with the exception of the Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse combo – got to keep the desk tidy and the keyboard got top marks for ergonomics (and my mark for economics).

Well it should be ready for pick up next week so next weekend it should be up and running. I hope it will be as reliable as the last four.