New Boxen
Posted July 1st, 2010 by Ben StoneCategories: Computing
It’s not that often that I buy new computer hardware. But, a few weeks ago, I felt the time had finally come to replace my ageing notebook with something a bit faster. Since portability isn’t really a big thing this year (as I use my computer at home only), I thought I’d build a desktop.
The parts:
- Intel Core i7 860 processor at 2.8GHz, though it apparently scales up a bit faster than that depending on system load.
- Gigabyte P55A-UD4P motherboard, powered by the Intel P55 chipset and with fancy features like dual gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, eSATA, and a floppy disk drive connector.
- 4GB DDR3 RAM at 1333MHz. Will probably upgrade to 8GB eventually.
- PowerColor ATI Radeon 5770 graphics card with 1GB of RAM. Not the best, but apparently better value than the nVidia equivalent in the same price range.
- 3×1TB Western Digital 7200RPM hard disks. The original plan was to RAID-5 these, but then I found out that RAID-5 performance is not that great with the lousy RAID controller that’s on my motherboard. So it’s just a bunch of disks for now.
- Pioneer BluRay Writer. Mmm, high-definition movies.
- Antec 900 case. I was originally going to go for the newer, more tweaked Antec 902, but MSY didn’t happen to have any in stock when I went to get my parts. Meh, this will do. It looks not too bad, and it’s much quieter than I expected it to be. This is probably because of the big fans (insert huge-fan-of-Antec pun here), and the:
- Seasonic M12-II 520W modular power supply. Apparently Seasonic are known for their quiet power supplies, and this one didn’t disappoint.
So, what does it look like? It looks like … well … any of the other millions of computers that use the Antec 900 case:
Is it fast? Absolutely. This machine has a Geekbench score three times higher than my old computer. The graphics performance is also much more impressive than my old machine: it’s powerful enough to render Portal at 1680×1050 at 200FPS, while my old machine struggled to play it at 20FPS at 640×480.
The best part of it is that now I can play hardware-accelerated h.264 and VC-1 video at 1920×1080p, which means I can connect it to my TV and use it as an awesome media centre. If I fire up a decent media player like Media Player Classic Home Cinema which makes use of DxVA, and start a high-definition h.264 video, it won’t use any CPU power to decode it – the task is delegated to the graphics card. I like this.
What about a monitor? Mouse? Keyboard? Well, I already have all of these. My last notebook was essentially docked, and permanently connected to my 22” LCD monitor, keyboard and mouse. Now they’re all connected to my new machine:
I am planning on buying two shiny new LCDs, as working on a machine with multiple monitors is great, but that’ll happen eventually.
Wait, you didn’t buy a keyboard? I’m glad you asked. Last year, I had the pleasure of buying a Unicomp Customizer keyboard. The Unicomp Customizer is a modern reproduction of the classic IBM Model M keyboard, which many consider to be the best keyboard ever. Unicomp bought the patents and the factory from IBM in the mid-90s, and continue manufacturing these keyboards today. The Customizer is essentially the last revision of the Model M design, but with a different paint-job and a USB controller instead of the antiquated PS/2 interface. Since I already have the best keyboard money can buy, why would I buy another? Sure, it looks like it should be connected to an IBM PC/XT, but it’s an absolute pleasure to type on, and typing is what I do.
But does it run Linux? I guess it does…? It at least booted from the Ubuntu 10.04 install CD. I am planning on installing some flavour of Linux on here fairly soon, and then alternating between it and Windows 7. If I have any trouble, I’ll probably rant here about it.
What did you call it? I’m still not exactly sure what I’ll name my shiny new machine. I’ve tentatively named it CoreBlimey, a combination of being quad-core, and “cor, blimey, that’s fast!”
So, what is it actually going to be used for? Eh, I’ll find a use for it. I’ll play some games. I’ll watch some high-definition movies. I’ll edit some video … maybe in high-definition. I’ll work on Instant Elevator Music 2. Etc. ![]()
–Ben








