Hardware-mania

I ordered all the parts for my new computer yesterday, so now I am really excited. I have been planning on buying my own PC for over half a year now, saving up money in the meantime. But now, finally, I’ve got all the things I need together on a list and I ordered them all.

I didn’t want to go for an ultra high-end system (well, I couldn’t, let’s put it that way). Additionally, my knowledge of hardware is/was not really up to date (sure, I know how the stuff works, but there is so much to choose from), so it took some time to get a full picture.
I still don’t think I have the full picture and I had a limited budget, so I had to compromise here and there.
However, I came up with a configuration that I am very pleased with. And, hopefully, the hardware I have chosen will be easy and relatively cheap to upgrade (ie. replace) once it becomes out-of-date.

Anyway, I’ll share the specs with all of you who may be interested.

• GigaByte M61PM-S2 (motherboard)
  It has some cool features and wasn’t a very expensive option.
• AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (processor)
  2400 MHz, FSB: 2000 MHz, L2 cache: 512 KB
  I decided not to go for dual core. A couple of reasons: Single-process applications don’t get much advantage from two cores and there aren’t enough multi-threaded applications yet (that I know of) which I would use. Dual core is more expensive. For about the same price of a fast single core, you can get a dual core of which the cores are slower (means less processing power on single-process apps).
  The most processor intensive thing I will do is probably gaming, I’ll get more performance out of a fast single core (games are mostly single-process apps). So I think you get my point.
  I chose a motherboard with ‘the new’ AM2 socket, though, so I should be able to upgrade to multi core processors (as long as AMD chooses to support this socket, that is).
• Buffalo 1 GB DDR2-533 (memory)
  1GB of RAM is nothing special these days, but mentioning it makes me feel cool.
• Asus EAX1650PRO Gamer Edition (graphics card)
  I have little reason for choosing ATI here, especially considering the fact that I really like Linux. However, most of my gaming will happen on Windows so I don’t need ultimate performance on Linux. The ATI proprietary drivers for Linux support this card, so it’s not all that bad. The card was a little cheaper than nVidia’s counterparts and I have seen pretty positive benchmark results for this card (regarding gaming on Windows).
  The card has 256MB DDR3 video memory at 1400Mhz and the GPU is clocked at 600Mhz (auch, I’m getting too technical here).

I am also buying a 160GB hard disk, which will hopefully be enough for a dual boot system with Windows and Linux (not sure which distro… maybe Gentoo again, otherwise Debian or else back to Ubuntu). For the CPU cooler, I’ll use the one that is boxed with the CPU (it should be good enough, don’t you think?).
The case is nothing special; I think it’s got some style, but it should also be a good pick for a low temperature system (picture, mine won’t have a window ,though).

I can’t wait for the packages to arrive. I guess they must be here sometime this week or perhaps next week. However, my mother won’t allow me to start building before the next holidays (in 4 weeks)… I know she has a point, but I don’t know if I will be able to control myself.