CPU
Obviously intel is on top, for the really all out pc, we chose 2 intel qx9775's , giving us 8 cores of goodness. As for the not so crazy one, we just went with one intel qx9770, still intel's second most powerful quad.
Motherboard - For the all out one , we had to choose intel's only skulltrail motherboard, which unfortunately is more like a server board, it only supports PCIE x16 1.1 (not v2) , and it is only ddr2
800/677 FBDIMM. But it has support for 2 CPUs and it has 4 pcie x16 slots, and it supports upto 16gb of RAM. As for the not so all-out one , we chose the asus striker extreme 790i motherboard, which has support for all the new tech, but is not a skulltrail platform. Well , at least that was the original plan. On newegg, afterwards we saw a 4gb module of ddr2 800! So we were like wow, we can put in 16 gig! Problem - it was ddr2 , and 790i only supports ddr3 , so we had a choice, stick with 8gb of ddr3 or go with 16gb of ddr2, now , that is your choice, but we went with the 16 gig, but now i kinda regret it because of course - ddr3 is more future proof and all that, but in the future I guess we will see 4gb modules for ddr3. Hopefully. Also, we needed memory for the raid card (it had a ddr2 slot) but we will tell you about that in that section.RAM-
For the all out one - I chose 16gb of ddr2 667 fbdimms, 4x4gb .. they are only 667 but 16 gig .. wow. Obviously most people would like to go with 8gb of ddr2 800, but that's what PC 2 is for ;). For PC 2 we picked 8gb (2x 2x2gb) of ddr3 1600 RAM. In addition, we could probably OC that to ddr2 1800-1900 etc.
Video Cards-
For PC one, we picked four, yes four, 9800GX2s ... why? I don't know. Bragging rights??? But
seriously , that is why this is the all out pc, four 9800gx2s it is, maybe they won't be in SLI, but who knows? lol. For PC 2, we obviously didn't do that, we just went with "normal" sliied 2 9800gx2s for quad sli. Oh and of course, these aren't just any 9800gx2s, they are the evga ssc ones, so they are OC'ed to teh MAX!!Power Supply - We picked the same power supply for 2 PCs, and it is the silverstone 1200w. We needed this power supply because it has a BUNCH of pcie pwr cables (6x 6pin and 2x 8pin) , but since in PC I we have four 9800gx2s, we would also need to snag 2 PC power and cooling cables that convert a 6pin power plug to an 8pin so that we need enough power. Those are about $10 each. For PC 2, we picked the same power supply, although we could've used something a bit less than 1200W (Maybe 750w or something).
Hard drives -
This is where half the cost of both PCs go. Yes. Hard drives. Why? We picked 4, yes, 4 SSD hard drives that are 128gb each all in RAID 0! Think how much speed that would give! And for backup and large files, we picked 2 1TB Segate hard drives. Of course, many people would
d
isagree and say for one - 4 ssd 128 gb's cost $12000, and you could just at the very least get three of them and get 3 1tb hard drives in raid 5. I don't know, that is another good option so you can put a lot of variety into this, but that is what we decided to go for! Of course, for this kind of raid you think we are going to use onboard raid?? Heck no! We chose a $1200 raid card from areca on newegg. It also benefits from having a ddr2 533 slot where we can put in 1 stick of memory for RAM. As for that the 4gb module was just perfect for that, so we can have 4gb of memory in our raid card (we have a 4gb ddr2 800 module in the all out pc too just for the raid card)! :P
Case - We got the latest silverstone tj-10 case. As for looks it may not be that great, but the construction quality is great, airflow and cable and routing are nice, but it is HUGE (a good thing). It will be the perfect enclosure!CD/DVD - For this we picked to samsung sh-s203n drives (teh best performing dvd burners) and we also picked a $200 blu-ray lite on drive.
"Accessories"
These are the things that are not atcually inside the tower, or different accessories that are "not needed" such as speakers, CPU cooling, etc.
Mouse -Logitech MX revolution. It is an overall nice-but-expensive gaming laser mouse. Coming really close to it is the logitech g5/g7.
Keyboard - Logitech g15- just a normal overall gaming keyboard.
Monitors - You are not gonna believe this - but TWO 30 inch XHD3000s for monitors. Those will do really well... they can even double as a TV! :PSound Card - HT omega claro plus - for $180. Creative used to be the best, but now with their driver issues and such, this looks like a great card to buy!
CPU Cooler - For the all out PC - we have TWO Coolit Freezone's (h2o cooling) , and for PC II, we have "just" one.
Operating systems - One Windows XP Professional 32bit, and one Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit, and a copy of 64 or 32 bit linux. We would do 64bit xp, but that has a ton of driver problems and such.
Well that concludes our Dream Machines. If you want to see the newegg wishlists for both machines, they are right here -
All out PC - PC number one - $26507.67
PC Number two - more standard - $22,879.73
Hope you liked it!
