I've been getting a bit sick of the junk boxes I'm working on, and finally broke down to get a new box.

• CPU - Intel 3.2 GHz C
• Motherboard - Gigabyte - Intel 865PE800
• RAM - 2 x 512 MB Samsung DDR SDRAM PC400
• Drives - 2 x Seagate S-ATA 200 GB
• Case - GMC Pung - 3 cooling fans
• Power - 350watt power supply (DAO)
• NIC - 100 Base-T
• Video - Geforce 4 FX5700
• Sound - Onboard AC97 (Go figure that one for those that know me)
• Monitor - Samsung SyncMaster 927DF - max 1920x1440 @ 65Hz, 1600x1200 @ 75HZ, 1280x1024 @ 85Hz
• Optical Drives - None - I have several at home
• Floppy - None - Why would I need one anyways?

It won't make for a decent DAW or NLE, but I'm only worried about raw speed at the moment for development.

The video card was just so I get a dual monitor setup happening. I don't play games, so that didn't factor in. If I'm in a serious pinch, I can always get my mom to do stuff for me IF I can get her to learn how to use FTP. (She's got one wicked nasty mother NLE - but lives on the other side of the planet...)

I'm going to stick in a DVD burner I have, so no other optical drives are necessary.

Sound - well, I won't be sampling in much, and most will be computer generated, so I can still maintain 24/96 quality for most things, and I'm going to release a new professional quality sample rate converter sometime soon, so anything that is 16/44 or whatever, I can just convert. I've already got some of the best software available, although there is no end to my wish list when it comes to sound...

Monitor was a tough call. I wanted 1600x1200 @ 85Hz, but they were a lot more expensive - almost double what I paid.

Hard drives are always easy to choose as they have a distinct sweet spot. Went with S-ATA for speed because SCSI is still way expensive and only justifiable on servers, DAWs, and NLEs.

For the CPU, I just wanted to stick with Intel because I've been burned by AMD systems before, and don't want to experiment further with them. I stayed away from Xeon because of cost and compatibility. Northwood seemed to be a decent choice.

So, how'd I do for a new system?

A good system, but it seams you overshot it just for development.

Until sometime ago I was developing on an old 486 DX4 100Mhz laptop for a few days of the week when I was in my other house up north, no problems.

Well, I got a call, and they were having trouble getting the CPU, so it's coming tomorrow.

As for overshooting, I do want to do a few other things of course, but they just aren't the main focus. The speed will be nice when it comes to encoding there.

And I'm crossing my fingers hoping that Notepad fires up ok...

asus mainboards sucks!!

they always have strange problem like keyboard not working during POST but workin in the OS.

mouse behaving drunk.. and so on

michael wrote: If you develop Notepad maybe but vs.net aint gonna run on that.

When I used my 486, was for development without an IDE off-course. For development you don't need a super duper machine.

I built mine a year ago. When i bought the parts i next day shipped them because i wanted them so bad lol.

Thermaltake Xaser 3 case (http://www.thermaltake.com/xaserCase/xaser3/v1000a.htm)

ASUS P4P800 Deluxe Mother Board (http://www.asus.com/products/mb/socket478/p4p800-d/overview .htm)

P4 2.Ghz 800FSB

2 GB's of ram

ATI Radeon 9600 Pro video card (thinking about upgrading for HL2)

Audigy 2 6.1 sound card with 6.1 Creative speakers

1 19inch CRT (dell) and 1 19inch LCD (gateway; dual monitor setup)

Wireless Logitech keyboard and Mouse and one IntelliMouse Optical mouse for gaming

1 CD-RW 24x and 1 DVD-R/CD-RW combo

XM Satellite radio for music (yes, Satellite radio on my computer!)

XM is now 100% commercial free. When i signed up it was only like 20 stations like that, but now its all of them.

However there are a few stations that still have commercials like stations that are from TV. Like news stations such as CNN.

The music stations i listen to have no commercials.

Cool... i didn't know there was.

BTW, i am using a home stereo kit and just hooked it directly to my comp speakers. It doesn't actually go through my computer but rather my computer speakers. That way i don't have to have my comp running to listen to XM.

Cool thanks, ill take a look at it.

I was going to get the PC hardware thing, but i never heard anything about it being released so i just bought an extra home stereo kit and got some hook ups to work on my comp. It works really good.

The funky thing is, the antenna does not work in the windows, yet it works best in the middle of my computer room! Cant figure that one out considering if i even go under a tree with my car the XM goes out

Bluefrog wrote: ...I'm only worried about raw speed at the moment for development...

It obviously depends what kind of development is that, if it's game dev than yes raw speed is very important otherwise, it's not that important. It appears I dind't understood the original post, I though Bluefrog was building a development station and it turns out it's a multi-purpose computer.

Mart wrote: For serious development you do - a lot of the time you need the power of VS.NET in your apps

You can run VS.NET on any old PII 450Mhz just fine, beleive me we still have 2 HP development worksations at work with this processor and it runs just fine, you wouldn't notice the difference at all, unless you are compiling something really big, in which case it would finish faster on a faster machine, but most of the time when you are .NETing, the computer is idle, you are typing or reading, even if you run a preview, it won't need that much power, by your logic all good applications were developed on chained mainframes and all the rubish ones on slow machines.

xeerex wrote: theSCIENTIST wrote: For development you don't need a super duper machine. You gonna do high-end video or graphics development on that? What about compiling software code? Oh wait, you meant HTML or ASP development. I'm sorry...

High-end video? Graphics? Bluefrog's computer may not even be suitable for this, remember that's a custom build computer, with average mass produced components, for these tasks, you may need to look for proper workstations, ECC memory, workstation motherboard with a proper chipset supporting chipkill and many other high-end features, proper high-end graphics card, this is a graphics workstation, server like technology. He can run photoshop alright, but I want to see him doing non-linear video editing on (just) 1 hour of video, applying layer effects, masks, transitions, run previews, then render, it will most likely fail.

Compiling software? Ok, the faster the processor, the faster the compilation, but that was not the point, generally speaking, a development station does not need to be that fast (like his P4 3.2), it's actually more important good quality components, and the OS truly optimized for development, no fancy visual effects poluting your memory and stealing processing cycles.

Oh wait, you meant HTML or ASP development. I'm sorry. Right, so what the hell do we talk about here in these forums? Is it not, HTML, ASP, .NET, databases, CSS, JS, and all the rest of it?

lol. I have a comp in my comp room with 400 watt speakers. Sound better than the $2000 stereo in the living room

(btw, the stereo in the living isnt mine... i wish it was)

I save a lot of money by buying good - not great - speakers. I'm totally tone deaf - couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. Know quite a few other people that can't carry a tune but insist of great speaker systems - all they need is loud. -

My wife's family all are very musically talented with fine ears and put a lot of money into sound systems - they ask me to see the difference between system A and System B and they all sound about as good as AM radio to me - lol.

it is right.. pc speakers never gave much quality.. rather i exprimented with a amplifier extracted from crappy PC speakers hooked with HiFi Stereo speakers and sound was 10 times richer ..

the crappiest speakers from HiFi yield much much better sound then most expensive pc speakers..

in my case i can get some good kenwood, sony or pioneer speakers from the salavaged electronics sale shop.. hook them with a simple amplifier from car stero system and there we go. Best thing abt using the inline amplifier from automobile is that i can hook it to 12V of my PSU and run one standard stero jack as an output to speakers..all mess hidden in the case.. i control the sound from the PC :)

theSCIENTIST wrote: High-end video? Graphics? Bluefrog's computer may not even be suitable for this, remember that's a custom build computer, with average mass produced components, for these tasks, you may need to look for proper workstations, ECC memory, workstation motherboard with a proper chipset supporting chipkill and many other high-end features, proper high-end graphics card, this is a graphics workstation, server like technology. He can run photoshop alright, but I want to see him doing non-linear video editing on (just) 1 hour of video, applying layer effects, masks, transitions, run previews, then render, it will most likely fail.

Bluefrog, I didn't meant any disrespect with I have said above, you have a great and fast setup for a multi-purpose home computer, also becareful with hardware incompatibilities, if one component don't likes another, that's all it takes to have an unstable system, but keep up with new drivers, and always read what they improve before installing, don't just install, trust me on this.

Gullanian wrote: Yeah but it's fun to have an Uber computer

No doubt about it, always buy as fast and future proof as one can afford, I just though Bluefrog was saying he got a new development computer, which it isn't, but if it was the case, he would be better off with a compromise of a slower processor in turn for ECC memory and motherboard supporting it, GPFs are a pain, not to mention the lost code.

theSCIENTIST wrote: theSCIENTIST wrote: High-end video? Graphics? Bluefrog's computer may not even be suitable for this, remember that's a custom build computer, with average mass produced components, for these tasks, you may need to look for proper workstations, ECC memory, workstation motherboard with a proper chipset supporting chipkill and many other high-end features, proper high-end graphics card, this is a graphics workstation, server like technology. He can run photoshop alright, but I want to see him doing non-linear video editing on (just) 1 hour of video, applying layer effects, masks, transitions, run previews, then render, it will most likely fail. Bluefrog, I didn't meant any disrespect with I have said above, you have a great and fast setup for a multi-purpose home computer, also becareful with hardware incompatibilities, if one component don't likes another, that's all it takes to have an unstable system, but keep up with new drivers, and always read what they improve before installing, don't just install, trust me on this. Gullanian wrote: Yeah but it's fun to have an Uber computer  No doubt about it, always buy as fast and future proof as one can afford, I just though Bluefrog was saying he got a new development computer, which it isn't, but if it was the case, he would be better off with a compromise of a slower processor in turn for ECC memory and motherboard supporting it, GPFs are a pain, not to mention the lost code.

YEAH~! The new box just arrived~!

And yes - it is multi-purpose. I want to do different kinds of things on it - graphics, audio, development mostly though. I'll do some video encoding, but not editing, or VERY little editing and only very short clips.

It will work for medium audio work and I can get high-end quality for the type of stuff I want to do, but it isn't a DAW. Hell... I don't even have a sound card in it.

For video - forget it. You've got to shell out 5k for a half decent low-end NLE to start. I can do some video stuff on it, but nothing intense or even approaching serious. Most low-end NLE's start at 10k+. It's NOT difficult to put 75k into a video workstation.

I've got an AMD 1800+ box and it sucks horribly. Other boxes are a 500MHz intel, 600MHz intel, 300MHz Intel, 400MHz intel, 1.1MHz intel laptop, and another broken laptop.

I usually work with about 20 ~ 30 windows open, and that slows things down. At the moment I have 24. 8 explorers, outlook express (please don't hate me), 6IE (please dont' hate me again - I heavily plug firefox on http://renegademinds.com - my site  ), 1 Firefox (which is usually all you need), EditPlus, 2 VS, WMP, Music Match, and a few others. Also have a few services running etc. Things get slow real quick. Hopefully the new box will keep up a bit.

A friend of mine is keeping his eyes out for a cheap mac for me as well. I want to start developing on them. A few months ago he bought every last box of 1 model of mac in the country (Apple isn't very popular here). He offered me one cheap, but I wasn't too interested then. He still hasn't found me one yet... Got to ride his case a bit...

Well, back to getting the new box secured before plugging it into the internet...  

It's a good thing I got a new monitor... my old junk one just died on me unexplicably...

Luckily I have several other smaller ones, so I'll be able to get the dual display happening anyways.

sounds a little bit better than my computer...

• 800mhz PII
• 512mb RAM
• 8.4gb HDD (note that MSDN for vs.net takes up 1.5gb of that)
• 100Base-t ethernet connection... i'm thinking about upgrading to gigabit, but i won't see the speed unless i put it on my other computers

800Mhz p2

never heard p2 ever came in 800mhz speed