A new computer for me

After 5 years on my old desktop, I finally decided it was time for an upgrade. The old machine was a trusty Pentium 4 2.4GHz machine with 1GB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, and an nVidia GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8X graphics card (yes, still AGP!). Not too shabby for a machine purchased way back in 2003. That machine is now being retired as my primary desktop and looks to become some sort of home theater PC- the plans are still TBD.

Without further ado, the new machine:

• Case: Antec Sonata III 500
• Mobo: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400, 2.66GHz
• RAM: Kingston 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit
• Graphics: VisionTek 900241 Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3
• HDD: Two Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

I ordered just about all of the parts from Newegg, which seems to charge more for shipping than most online retailers but does offer the convenience of getting everything in one place. I’m pretty satisfied with their shipping speed as well.

I have software RAID 1 set up with the two disks going in my Arch Linux install. ‘/’, ‘/boot’, and ‘/home’ each have their own RAID device with corresponding partitions on the drives. There is also some room for a pretty minimal Windows XP install.

Pictures to come in a future blog post.

See Also

• New Computer Pictures - October 23, 2008
• Using your PC as a high-quality audio source - November 16, 2008
• Windows XP and AHCI on the ICH10 chipset - October 23, 2008
• My new toy, the Eee PC - February 28, 2008
• Heat Stinks - September 22, 2010