Review This Build?

I’ve been thinking of building a new desktop… I was hoping for some peer reviews to see if I’m missing anything. I’m not positive what this will run, but I’m trying to favor OSx86 hardware in case. This machine will probably house some virtual machines, hence the quad core and generous RAM. I’m not going dual monitors yet, but I’m trying to find a video card that will support dual monitors.

  • Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3P motherboard. (Onboard SATA RAID, dual GigE, USB and Firewire.) It only supports DDR3.
  • Intel Q9400, quad-core 2.66 GHz, 6MB cache. It’s about $40 more than a Q6600, which I think is worth it.
  • 2x of these 2x2GB DIMMs, for a net of 8GB RAM. Substantially cheaper than some of the other RAM out there.
  • Zalman CPU Cooler. I’m not planning on overclocking, but I think a CPU heatsink is an area to pay for quality. Comes with thermal grease.
  • Asus EN9800GT video card, aka a Radeon 9800GT. On the OSX 10.5.6 compatibility list, and pretty fast. I know there are better cards out there, but I don’t intend to do much intense gaming. Looks like this card will support dual monitors at some point.
  • A pair of 640GB SATA disks, to be mirrored. I wanted RAID 1+0 across 1TB drives, but I’m trying to keep the price down.
  • The Asus 21.5″ LCD I blogged about the other day. 1920×1080 will be a nice step up.

I plan to re-use my old case and power supply (300W), along with the DVD drive, keyboard, and mouse. Thoughts?

5 thoughts on “Review This Build?

  1. Was chatting it up with Kyle the other day about building a new CPU… We decided that it would be best to wait for the release/maturity of Windows 7, and upgrade to x64 from the x32, this would allow more RAM utilization, etc.

    And, surprisingly, I got a nice Viewsonic at Costco for about $200.. I think it’s 22 inch, know it’s 1920×1080

  2. looks good but the asus en9800gt is a geforce not a radeon. im pretty sure it is compatible tho.i have a 9800GTX+. And you should check to see if the 300w power supply you have is enough to handle everything. my 450 is getting old 🙁
    1TB drives are not that much more expensive, you might want to think about it so you dont have any regrets later.
    good luck!

  3. The first time that i tried overcloking over a year ago, my CPU got overheated and got fried.;’.

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