[Techtalk] Asking for new PC recommended specs

[David Merrill]

Hey everyone!

I haven't been around for quite awhile. Lots going on in my personal life, 
including a new job which has me working crazy hours and leaves no time for 
Free Software work, dagnamit.

I am spec'ing out a new PC and am nowhere near up to date on the latest 
hardware (although I tried to bone up today) so before I make a poor decision 
I want to run some specs past you all. I'd appreciate it very much if any of 
you could prevent me from making a poor decision.

First I'll try to explain what I need to get from the system so you all have 
some information to go by. I'm the typical "power user" and this will be my 
personal workstation. This PC has to last me for some 3-4 years. I want as 
much speed as possible within my budget, which I've set at $1800. I want to 
select components on the "sweet spot" on the price/performance curve, if you 
know what I mean. :-)

I'm running Gentoo these days, so one objective is fast compiles. But it 
should be well-rounded rather than optimized for any particular function. 
After 3-4 years as my workstation, it will probably be repurposed as some 
kind of server, so I want it to be flexible. And I don't do much gaming, so 
3D speed is not terribly important.

That gives you a general idea of what I will need from the system. To narrow 
things down a bit and give you a base of reference. Here are the specs of the 
system I'm currently considering:

POWER:  480 watt power supply (extra quiet model, woo hoo!)
MOBO:   Intel D875PBZLK 875P 800MHz FSB 8xAGP Hyper-Threading SATA Gb LAN
CPU:    2.80GHz P4, 800MHz FSB, 512K cache, Hyper Threading
MEMORY: 2 x Corsair 512MB PC-3200 DDR400 C2 XMS (MOBO has Dual-DDR400)
DISKS:  2 x Seagate Barracuda 120GB 7200RPM 8MB cache SATA (ATA150)
VIDEO:  Sapphire Radeon 9600 128MB DDR VGA/DVI/S-Video, 8X AGP
CD/DVD: Lite-On 16x DVD-ROM (48x CD-ROM)
DVDRW:  Sony Model DW-U10A-10 DVD-R/RW, CD-R/RW
FLOPPY: Mitsumi 1.44 MB Floppy Drive
AUDIO:  Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 (no ALSA support yet, alas!)

I'll be running the two SATA drives in RAID 0 (striping) for the performance 
gain. I'm willing to accept the higher risk on this machine, since it will be 
a workstation and not a server. When it is repurposed as a server, which will 
be when I buy a new workstation, I might add an addional SATA controller and 
two more drives, then go to RAID 0+1, but I don't want to spend the money 
right now.

Retail Price for a machine with these specs from www.abspc.com, who my S.O. 
dave reports two good experiences with: $1,812, less $50 mail-in rebate. 
Which just squeaks under my budget at $1,762! Warranty is 1 year on parts and 
lifetime on labor and tech support, which seems quite reasonable.

I'm pretty happy with the performance specs of each of the individual 
components, so that's not really what I'm looking for advice on, unless you 
know something I don't. The big hole in my understanding of current PC 
hardware configuration is, simply put, where is the bottleneck? I don't want 
to waste money on the wrong part of the system yet leave a bottleneck in some 
other area. I'd rather have a well matched system, so I get my money's worth 
from each component.

So, does this look like a smart way to spend $1,800 on a workstation? TIA for 
any help and advice!

Regards,

-- 
David C. Merrill                         http://www.lupercalia.net
Linux Documentation Project                   david at lupercalia.net
Lead Developer                                 http://www.tldp.org


O Seas of Caladan,
O people of Duke Leto --
Citadel of Leto Fallen
Fallen forever...
	-- from "Songs of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan