A Three Hour Tour

I’ve recently embarked on a mission to build my own PC, which is disappointingly less technical than it would seem.  I opted for a middle-of-the-road PC, trying to get the most for my money (ie. no $500 graphics cards, sorry).

I am now typing this on the new PC, it’s up and running.  Some specs:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6400: 2.13 GHz, 64-bit, virtualization support (the OS developer in me is drooling about now)
• Gigabyte GA-965P-S3, 6 SATA, plenty of USB, 3 PCI, 3 PCI-X x1, 1 PCI-X x16, serial port (for OS debugging), high-def audio, up to 8GB RAM.
• 2GB of RAM
• 300GB 7200RPM SATA hard disk
• Antec Solo case, Antec Earthwatts 80+ 380W PSU
• eVGA GeForce 7200 fanless video card
• SATA CD/DVD-RW drive
• 3.5″ internal USB memory card reader

I’ve installed Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit on this, and so far it’s running perfectly.  The provided Intel processor cooler seems to have trouble starting up - the fan takes a while to get going.  I have a feeling the motherboard isn’t providing enough voltage until the chip heats up a bit.  But the thing idles around 30C, pretty good.  The video card is another issue entirely.

The first video card I got was the eVGA GeForce 7600, which was only $20 more at my local Frys.  I stuck it in the motherboard and booted up, and was dismayed to find a snake in my computer.  The video card hissed like a snake.  Try clenching your teeth, opening your lips, and blowing.  For me at least, that’s what the fan sounded like.  It seems to be because the fan is blowing air through the narrow slats of a heatsink.

 Without the fan noise, the computer would be almost silent.  Given I didn’t need a super-high-power card anyways, I returned it for the 7200.  A fanless card obviously will be silent.  And I was pleasantly surprised by its performance, although it tends to run rather hot.  But that’s to be expected of something passively cooled.

Vista’s performace statistics are:

• Processor: 5.0
• Memory: 5.5
• Graphics: 3.6
• Gaming Graphics: 3.0
• Hard Disk: 5.7

Because I do also run Linux (now Ubuntu Feisty - sorry Dan!) I made sure to install Ubuntu on it and give that a try.  Didn’t have a chance to see if XGL would work, although with an nVidia card I’ve got a chance.  Maybe I’ll set up a dual-boot configuration sometime.

My only regret is that the case is shiny - I was expecting a matte black finish.  Oh well, it’s good enough and not worth the hassle of sending it back to Newegg.

As for dual-booting, I’ve got a few tricks about that (including how to keep Windows happy) that I don’t see anywhere else on the internet.  Expect a post coming up about that.