l e w k . o r g : tags/hardware

Wed, 30 Dec 2009

My dream machine

In an effort to optimize my home office, I recently donated my server rack to a local Boston record label, to hold their Red Hat servers. I'm also in the process of donating all of my computer hardware for re-use/recycling (~10 or so frankenstein boxen).

So, once I clear everything out, I'm going to replace it with a new machine. I usually sit in front of 1-3 laptops (thindpads and XOs) on the daily, and I absolutley love them, but I need something beefier. I do most of my work on remote machines, but I have found that I still spend too much time waiting on computers.

I'm not much of a gamer, so I probably don't need too high-end of a graphics chip, let alone SLI/Crossfire. The extent of my gaming these days consists of the occassional wesnoth, open arena, nethack, and my current favorite Cube 2: Sauerbraten. I just want a card that will work well in Linux, ideally without having to install proprietary drivers.

Anyway, I haven't built a desktop machine from the ground up in 12 years, and I've been out of the hardware game for a long time, so let me know what's good! Here is what I've been looking at so far...

Intel DX58SO Extreme Series X58 ATX Tri-Channel DDR3 16GB SLI or CrossFireX LGA1366 Overclocking Utility Desktop Board

ASUS Rampage II Extreme LGA1366 Intel X58 DDR3-1600 ATX Motherboard

Intel Core i7 975 Extreme Edition 3.33GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366 Desktop Processor

Cooler Master V8 Nickel Plated Copper Base Aluminum Fins 8 Heatpipes Core i7 1366 CPU Cooler - (RR-UV8-XBU1-GP)

Corsair 6 GB Dominator GT PC3-16000 2000Mhz 240-pin Triple Channel DDR3 Memory Kit

Corsair CMPSU-1000HX 1000-Watt HX Professional Series 80 Plus Certified Power Supply

Intel X25-E Extreme SATA Solid-State Drive

Corsair 256 GB Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CMFSSD-256GBG2D

DELL ULTRASHARP 3008WFP - 30-inch Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor

EVGA 01G-P3-1180-AR GeForce GTX285 1024 MB DDR3 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card

Endurapro

Cooler Master HAF 932 High Air Flow ATX Full Tower Case

Also, if you appreciate my software and want me to write it faster... donations are accepted ;)

posted at: 19:05 | link | Tags: hardware | 14 comments

Mon, 07 May 2007

RIP T43

So my laptop finally shit the bed. Whenever I move it even a little bit, the display flips out and hardlocks the whole machine. Sometimes during POST it will give me the 'bad memory/mobo' beep code as well. Running memtest86 yielded this disaster.

Has anyone seen anything like this before? I've tried swapping out two different sticks of memory between the two different slots, with no luck -- so I'm thinking that the mobo is toasted.. but then why/how does the physical motion cause it to flip out? Suggestions/donations welcome :) Needless to say, I've been doing most of my hacking recently from my 100mhz Indy that was formerly my living room nethack console.

posted at: 18:25 | link | Tags: hardware | 0 comments

Mon, 02 Oct 2006

toast.

So I've been known to steer pretty clear from TigerDirect, due to their blatant sketchyness, but last week I gave in and decided to pick up a 500G Seagate disk and an external USB enclosure. Upon arrival, I had everything setup and running in under 2 minutes, and started rsync'ing my home directory. After a ~20 hour rsync, 3 chips on the board were toasted, and the enclosure was fried.