I used to be a hard-core hardware enthusiast. I was reading hardware oriented sites daily and always on the edge of technology, updating my home machine all the time. It is worth mentioning that I was still a PC gamer then and that a lot of the upgrades were triggered by the advances in the graphics cards technology.

But then I tried console gaming and got myself an Xbox. Finally realized that the PC gaming is nice, but expensive and that if I did not need to play games, my machine could survive several years before the next upgrade cycle.

Still, 5 years is a lot of time for a computer, so this winter I decided to build a new desktop/server/multimedia machine. Timing was good as the choice of the processor and the chipset became trivial (IMHO). Here’s what I picked:

• ASUS P5B-E, because it overclocks well, but almost any Intel P965 chipset based mobo should work good enough
• Scythe Ninja (rev.B) cooler to help with the temperature because of the overclocking, this is a big and quiet cooler that can even be run in a fan-less mode
• Intel Core 2 Duo 6300 (1.86GHz), deliberately picked the slowest and the cheapest model because they overclock like crazy
• G.Skill DDR2–800 (or PC-6400) memory, got this brand because they were the cheapest one having a decent (4–4–4–12) performance, at first I got 2GB, but then prices dropped so now I have 4GB (should be useful when running several virtual machines)
• NVidia 7600GS based graphics card with 256MB of memory, this is more or less recommended minimal configuration for running Windows Vista (128MB of memory and older cards will work as long as they support shader model 2.0)
• Western Digital Raptor 36GB 10K rpm as a primary (OS) drive and Western Digital 320GB (KS model) as a secondary drive; 10K rpm vs more common 7200 rpm is visible, but the price is such that for the data drive you’re better off with something cheaper with a lot of capacity
• Quiet case (with noise dumping material) with a quiet power supply – I chose Antec Solo because it looks good and is not too big, has only one 12cm ventilator with a very slow rotational speed (and noise) and Antec NeoHE 430 because of its high efficiency, very low noise and modular cabling – you only use the cables you need reducing the clutter in the case
• Samsung 205BW monitor to replace my CRT – yes, I had CRT monitor up until recently – this Samsung is probably the best wide screen LCD with a 1600x1050 resolution that you can buy for under 300€

Everything worked from the first try. I was able to overclock the machine to 2.8GHz (!) via a single FSB increase to 400MHz which made the bus synchronous with the memory speed. It is plenty fast, looks good and is very quiet.