Posted 04/18/2009 at 05:55:59pm

My New Work PC

I spend 8+ hours at work using a PC so I wanted a killer PC for business applications. I am also my company’s hardware architect so I wanted a PC that was a “conversation piece”.

I chose with an Antec Skeleton Case so I could show off the hardware.

I went with the EVGA X58 motherboard, the 920 i7 processor, and 6GB of RAM.

I chose 2 10,000 RPM 300GB Western Digital VelociRaptor hard drives, configured as a RAID 1 array. These drives are pretty much as fast as SCSI drives. I have more or less unlimited network attached storage for file storage so "only" 300GB is not a limiting factor. Having really fast local storage (for the apps) was what I was after.

I bought two GeForce 9500 GT as “place holder” graphics cards until I could decide what graphics cards that I would ultimately go with. I run a 3 monitor system with a 24” monitor in the center, flanked by two 19” monitors to the right and the left.

As the 9500s don’t pull all that much power, I went with a 680 watt power supply. I chose the APEVIA ICEBERG as this supply looks especially cool in the Skeleton case. If I upgrade to better graphics cards in the future, I may have to upgrade to a 1000 watt power supply.

I had an issue with the 1^st motherboard being DOA and I also had an issue with some unstable drivers. But after I corrected the driver issue and flashed the motherboard with the latest BIOS, my system is rock stable.

When I initially bought this system, I was thinking about overclocking but all my apps are running so fast (even Autodesk Inventor 2009) that I am not sure I am going to explore overclocking.