I haven’t blogged for a while, I know. I’m going to blame it on an unpleasant injury to my finger that has made typing a little difficult (at least I’m starting to feel my fingertip again).
Anyways, this summer, I’ll be working at BAE Systems doing various software and electronics work. :)
But, that’s not all. I have enough money saved up from working last year to do something that I’ve always wanted to do: build a top-of-the-line computer. It’ll roughly look like this:
- Core i7 920 Nehalem CPU – Apparently, the three versions of this CPU are all basically the same, with the only difference being the clock rate. So I’ll definitely be overclocking this up to 3.2GHz at least.
- OCZ Gold 6GB DDR3 1600 SDRAM – 6GB is more than enough for me because Arch Linux (and indeed most distros of Linux) has good memory management and a light footprint. I’ll get a motherboard with 6 slots, so if I need more RAM, I can add to the system easily.
- 3 WD Caviar 500GB Drives – They’ll go in a RAID5 setup. No, I’m not going to get higher capacity drives (see below for my reasoning). This should give me a decent amount of storage space. I have plenty of other drives at home that I can use for Windows or other operating systems. The RAID array will only be for Arch Linux.
- Viper Monsoon III 120mm CPU Fan – This is an expensive fan, but undoubtedly a good fan. Users of this fan have managed to overclock their i7 920 CPUs with some mixed success. I probably won’t go above 3.5GHz, so I won’t need to worry about the CPU running at 100 degrees.
- Antec 1200 ATX Full Tower Case – This is probably one of the best cases on the market. With 5 120mm fans (3 on the front, two in the rear) and a 200mm fan on the top, this case moves a ton of air. Being a full tower case, it can also hold big graphics cards and plenty of hard drives.
Okay, those are the definites. As for the motherboard, PSU, and graphics card, I’m still not sure. I was originally thinking of getting the ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution. However, though I’ll probably using SLI at some point, I probably won’t need 3-way SLI. Some reviewers reported that the board tends to keep the voltage on the high side when overclocking (thus generating unnecessary heat and wearing out the processor). Furthermore, there have been reports about failure to accept DDR3 1600 RAM properly and a few other issues. I’m not sure that all of this is worth $350. Then, there’s the ASUS P6T Deluxe, which is slightly less expensive, but more careful about overclocking. However, it has had problems with memory disappearing and time not being kept (though the CMOS battery is fine). All of the Core i7 (LGA 1366) boards are rather expensive, so I’m going to do much more research in the days to come
I’m even more undecided about the graphics card. Originally, I was going to blow $500 on a GTX 295, but with the possibility of the GTX 300 series coming out later this year, I might buy a GTX 285 for $200 less and then something in the 300 series later on and put the cards in an SLI configuration (now that it works on Linux). I have seen a few reports of the GTX 295 reaching some kind of capacity because there of a memory bottleneck. The GTX 300 series will use a new standard of GDDR RAM and will supposedly solve that issue.
Finally, there is the power supply. I was originally drawn to the Antec Signature 850W PSU because of the decent savings when combined with the case. But still, $230 for a PSU is pretty high, even if most of the reviews call it one of the best (and quietest) PSUs on the market.
My plan is to build the computer in early June and spend the rest of the summer setting it up and configuring it to my liking. I will definitely be running Arch Linux (x86_64) as my main operating system with maybe an installation of Windows on another drive, and maybe some other Unix-like operating system. This computer will definitely last me quite a while… the most resource-intensive tasks that I do include running virtual machines (finally… I’ll have hardware virtualization support!), Mathematica, and some games. The parts that I’m choosing have plenty of room for flexibility. I can add a new video card or more RAM easily instead of having to hunt for grossly outdated hardware.
As for why I’m not getting hard drives larger than 500GB: go to NewEgg and compare the reviews for the high capacity drives and the lower capacity drives. The failure rate of 1TB drives is absolutely astounding. David, who lives next door (and incidentally saved me from death by finger injury), bought a 1TB drive. The day after he installed it, bad sectors started showing up. If I were to buy a high capacity drive, I wouldn’t buy more than two, so I wouldn’t be able to use a RAID5 setup (3 minimum). So in that case, I wouldn’t have the failure protection that RAID5 offers. Instead, I think I’ll go with 3 of those WD Caviar 500GB drives and stick them in RAID5. If one fails, I’ll only be out $65 and not ${family photos/music/projects/etc.}.
Speaking of data, my backup server is running nicely now. At the end of every week, I perform a remote differential backup and at the start of every month, I start with a new base. The 320GB drive in there has plenty of space left on it, so the server also acts as a small fileserver for my temporary files. You can see random files I’ve uploaded at http://jwc.mit.edu/t/.
Whew, that was a lot of typing… and done almost entirely without having to use my right index finger. :)
