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23 Feb 2009
I’ve got my new desktop birthday gift essentially planned at this point. I’ve been doing a lot of reading on Tom’s Hardware and Ars Technica, and both of them are pointing at Intel for solid mid-range desktops nowadays. There’s some disagreement over whether the Core i7 (Quad-core on one die! Triple-channel DDR3!) is worth the price premium over the Core 2 Duo. I’ve decided that, for me, it’s not. I don’t do enough video gaming anymore for four cores to be effectively utilized. Even two cores feels like a bit of a waste.
We’re still deciding on a case (although I really like everything Lian Li, like the PC-7B plus II) since the case is a part that I feel that M should have a say in. But the guts are going to be as follows:
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (Dual core, 3.16GHz)
- Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P (Intel P45 Northbridge. X48 was tempting, but I don’t need that much PCIe, and I probably never will.)
- Video card: Radeon HD 4850 512MB (This was a hard decision. The HD 4870 1GB would be so much faster, but in the end I don’t game as much as I used to, and another $100 for the performance is too much.)
- Memory: G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) (DDR2 800, Dual Channel, CAS 5. The Motherboard has four slots, so
ifwhen I need more memory, it’ll be simple.) - Hard drive: Western Digital Caviar 640GB (7200 RPM, SATA 3.0Gb. I’m a hard drive miser. I could splurge for a 1TB drive, but I’ve never even filled my current 160GB disk.)
- Optical drive: I’ll move the NEC ND-3550A DVD-RW from my current desktop. It’s still solid.
Update, Mar 3: I just ordered the parts, but not before a whole bunch of stuff changed.
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brian says:
Dude, when you’re building your own machine, you gotta at least get excessive in one direction. These specs are an exercise in moderation. Maybe you should take all the money you’re saving and put it in an IRA for 50 years.
Plutor says:
Holy shit, you’re right. I have a “this isn’t even high-middle-of-the-road” caveat for every single part.
Manish says:
I agree, get yourself that 1 TB drive, or a Blu ray Drive at least.
Rob says:
Or a Mac Pro! *ducks*
Plutor says:
(The Mac comment took longer than I expected.)
LogDaddy says:
That’s ok. Build one of these high-middle-of-the-road models for me.
New desktop, try 2 (a blog post on Plutor.org) posts:
[...] doing yet more research on benchmarks and prices, I’ve backed away from my revolutionary stance on Intel processors. The Athlon 64 X2 represents a fair approximation, and the CPU and motherboard [...]
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