It was about 7 months ago when Scott Hanselman and CodingHorror built the Ultimate Developer Rig.
Let's see what the saving are for late adopters...
Part | Then | Now |
Antec P182 Gun Metal Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail | $154.99 | $139.99 |
MSI P6N SLI Platinum LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail | $144.99 | $119.99* |
$337.98 | $239.98 | |
Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM | $199.99 | $169.99 |
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3500630AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM | $120 | $120.00** |
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor - Retail | $531.90 | $279.99 |
$32.99 | $32.99 | |
CORSAIR CMPSU-520HX ATX12V v2.2 and EPS12V 2.91 520W Power Supply - Retail | $129.99 | $124.99 |
$216.98 | $89.98 | |
$33.99 | $30.99 | |
Totals | $1903.80 | $1348.99 |
There is enough headroom now to pick up an extra 2GB of RAM and still put out less than $1500. I call this configuration the Ultimate Developer Rig +2***.
* Price includes mail-in rebate
** Drive is now deactivate, but comparable 500GB drives are still ~$120.00
*** Not to be confused with the Ultimate Rod of Dexterity +2 by you D&D nerds.
Comments
This is a great post, good idea.
Thx 4 the info,
Catto
This is the most interesting post in months ... What is the lesson here? Rent one?
@mel: The idea (as Fritz explained to me this morning when I said two video cards might be overkill) is to hook up as many large display panels as possible. You put Outlook on one monitor, Visual Studio on a second monitor, some web browsers on a third, etc.
I'm currently using two monitors, but all the cool people have already moved to three or four.
@Harry: yeah, a business lease doesn't look too bad, actually :)
@Thomas: waiting is always an option!
It looks like Scott spec'ed out only 2GB. As Kevin pointed out in an earlier comment, 4GB is now a lot cheaper. So cheap, it should be illegal to go with anything less!
These are the prices I paid Newegg:
- Memory: Kingston value RAM KVR800D2N5K2/2G (4G total-2 X $49.99) $99.98
- Motherboard: MSI P6N SLI PLATINUM NF650ISLI $129.99
- Processor: CPU INTEL|C2Q Q6600 2.40G 775 8M R $277.99
- CPU COOLER: SCYTHE|SCNJ-1100P RTL $39.99
- Video: 2 X VGA MSI NX8600GTS-T2D256E-OC R (2 X $139.99) $279.98
- CASE: ANTEC|P182 BK RT $149.99
- PSU: CORSAIR|CMPSU-520HX RT $124.99
Total: $1102.91 + $9.30 shipping = $1112.21
The cooler is a different model because the one in the post was out-of-stock. I prefer the original one; it is more compact because the fan doesn't hang off of the side.
I scavenged the hard drives and DVD/CD drive from the dead machine: 2 Raptor drives in a RAID 0 array became my boot device and another 300G drive for additional storage. I also scavenged a floppy drive in order to load up the RAID driver for XP (not ready for Vista yet--long story).
Note: There is a known problem with the MSI P6N when loading 4 X 1G of memory. The machine would not boot into the BIOS (i.e. "black screen") unless I loaded just 2 X 1G. I built the machine using this configuration, flashed the latest BIOS (1.5), and then re-populated the memory. Voila!
I've only been using it for a couple of days, and haven't run through the burn in or overclocking that Jeff describes--yet. The machine "rocks" so far, and it is quieter than the machine I replaced even without the egg-crate foam.