This year is going to be a landmark one for the computer industry. Quad core processors are in full bloom. Software processing speed requirements are stabilizing for the average user. RAM prices are reasonable and hard drive space plentiful.

A system built today could easily last five years or more in terms of computing power (excluding game playing). Sure innovations in size and heat output will come along but for raw power the need has been met. How much more horsepower do you need for your vehicle beyond 300hp? This advancement is happening in processor technology.

Thus today we present a system that will carry you forward into the future. If your not running Quad Core your missing out on today's innovation and needlessly waiting for the next big thing.

Our system presented here is designed with the best use of your dollars and quiet computing requirements. Something faster is not worth the money unless listed. Quiet components are selected over noisy ones. At all times is quality paramount. Enjoy and let us know how your build goes.

CORSAIR 520HX $140
First up we have the power supply. The main thing to look for in a power supply is quality and clean stable output across all rails. The CORSAIR 520HX is 520watt capable but does not use that much power unless needed. You should always have more wattage capacity on hand as most power supplies are only able to provide up to 80% of their rating. Taking the 80% efficiency into account you want extra power so that your not running at maximum output all the time. A little extra power when all four cores are going full speed along with video card usage makes this power supply a good choice. If gaming and running the GeForce 8800 GTS/Ultra series you will want 30 amps on the +12 rail so consider the CORSAIR 750TX for $180.



Nice quiet 120mm fan and modular outputs for clean case interiors.

Asus P5K-E $142
Now we gotta plug that power supply into something. The motherboard you purchase should have what is called an "8-Phase Power Design". You can read about it here: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2589&p=2. Thus the power supply needs an 8 socket connector in addition to the 24 socket ATX 2.0 one that is common.

The Asus P5K-E with the Intel P35 chipset gets you PCI Express x16 video card support and fast DDR2 667 RAM access. The South Bridge Intel ICH9R provides Sata II Raid. 8-channel HD audio, 1394a firewire and Gigabit LAN are also on board. Please note that the shipping BIOS is version 0703. We had stability problems with 0807 and 0901.

The one downside to this board is the lack of ECC memory that the P35 does not support. Perhaps next year Intel will have decided the average user could use this feature with 8GB RAM becoming common. Please note that if you intend on installing 8GB of RAM with this board you must use DDR2-667 sticks.





This is where your Quad core is cradled in the Intel 775 Socket pattern.


Intel Q6600 SLACR $280
Now what good is a mainboard without a kickin' processor? The Intel Q6600 SLACR ends the drought of waiting for something really useful to come along. Say hello to Quad-Core! Basically it is four processors that are all smashed like a sandwich onto one socket. Very nice. This beats the old days where four processors were scattered about on a very large motherboard and used a lot more electricity.

With four processors you could have one dedicated to moving the mouse, one decided to surfing the web, another one dedicated to playing your favorite song, and yet another one for umm, whatever you want! Of course you will be much more productive than that. Some of the work we do here processes 500 files at a time. With four cores now it is 500/4 = 125 per processor. This has taken some jobs from 3 hours down to 15 minutes from an old single core 1Ghz processor system! That is 1.8 seconds per file vs. 22.6 on the old system!

On a Quad-Core system you can force software to use only one processor. Obviously our software takes advantage of four processors. What would our job time be if it did not use four cores? One processor processed a file in 7.8 seconds (65 minutes over 500 files).

So from that number we can get an idea of the Ghz speed improvements. A 2.4Ghz processor is 2.08 times faster (twice as fast) than our old 1Ghz system. So 22.6/2.08 = 10.9 seconds. But why are we getting 7.8 seconds which is still faster? Most likely improvements in the system bus speed from processor to ram and hard drive etc. It would take a 4Ghz dual core processor to equal our current 2.4Ghz Quad core. What do you think that would cost? Not $280 that is for sure. The Intel Q6600 SLACR is the best use of your money right now.






We apply a better heat sink compound than what the retail box ships with.


EVGA 512-P3-N800-TR $150
With DVI (excellent color calibrating support) and 512mb RAM this PCIe 2.0 x16 video card is all we need for the moment. Powered by the GeForce 8800 GT (G92 revision) with DirectX 10 support it will even meet the demands of casual gamers. Best of all the included fan is very quiet. What is really special about this card is GPU computing support via the CUDA (or later industry standard OpenCL) architecture. All Geforce 88xx series cards support the CUDA for C API which allows for massive parallelism. With this card's 112 stream processors, some distributed computing projects we are involved in get completed 10 times faster than using an Intel Q6600 processor! Interesting times ahead.



Crucial 8GB DDR2 667 $130 x 2 = $260
We only buy Crucial brand memory. We are a bit of a snob on this point too. There is faster memory, there is prettier memory, but rarely as stable. Crucial makes sure that the memory you buy works and you can avoid the time consuming RMA process other brands make you endure as you QC their product for them.

The model shown here is the CT2KIT25664AA667 which is two DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) sticks supplying 4GB of system memory. Why the slowest DDR2 spec? If you want real memory performance you will have to wait for the second release of DDR3. In our opinion everything else is not a good return on investment.



Western Digital WD5000AAKS $105
What is the slowest component in your computer system? The hard drive. Can't live with em, can't live with out em. This is the one area we really penny pinched. You could do much better than our choice but be prepared to spend $500 more! This 7,200rpm, 500GB with a 16mb cache Western Digital WD5000AAKS with Sata II interface is a cheap, quiet, and energy efficient way to store files.

The type of work we do is not disk intensive, just processor and RAM intensive. If your writing more than 16mb of data per second you will want a dedicated RAID controller. 3ware RAID cards with 256MB write cache and higher will take the wait out of writes! For reads look for faster RPM and bigger Christmas bonuses.



DVD/CD $40
We went with light scribe support (burning an image to the front of the disk for show). Nothing to see here. Wait for the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD outcome over the next few years.



Windows XP x64 Edition $140
In order to use more than 4GB of RAM you need a 64bit processor and a 64bit Operating system. You can use 4GB RAM on a 32bit OS but it is not stable. x64 is a requirement for our systems because of how Windows allocates 32bit software. Each 32bit executable gets access to a full 2GB memory space.

On 32bit versions of Windows your total RAM minus 1GB is available to applications thus it is difficult to run multiple applications each having access to 2GB RAM. Of course virtual memory in the form of hard disk paging is available if you like watching your hard drive activity light. We want direct access to memory not the page file.



Antec P180B v1.1 $130
You have spent this much so you might as well get a sweet case to house it all. The Antec P180B (identical to the P182 in function) caught our eye with it's simple clean lines. Then it massaged our ears with it quiet sound dampening panels and 120mm fans throughout. This case lives up to its "without compromise" catch phrase. We did fill the two optional 120m fan slots with Scythe S-FLEX SFF21D 120mm case fans. We swapped the default top mounted Antec tri-cool fan with a Scythe. This lowered the noise level a little as the top mounted fan has the shortest access to our ears. We also RMA'd the front USB ports as static charge would reboot the PC.











S-IPS LCD Monitors $450
Please, please we beg you, buy a quality display. You have no idea what your missing and we cringe at what your seeing even looking at our website. Only buy LCD S-IPS panels. This is a technology not a brand. Currently they are only available in 20", 24" and higher sizes. 22" models need to be avoided like the plague.

S-IPS panels provide you with:
* Wide gamut color range so that you will see all the colors a jpeg file allows.
* Colors will not change when viewing from the side or even different sections.
* Can be accurately calibrated such that prints match what is shown onscreen.

Currently we are using Dell 2005FPW 20.1" wide screen displays. Not the best S-IPS panels but a good investment none the less. With a maximum pixel dimension of 1050 for the height they are not the best for editing HD video. For that you should consider a 30" display with 1600 for it's maximum height. This gives you 1600-1080 = 520 pixels for toolbar and start button controls as well as the original HD content.

Conclusion
There you have it. The best use of your money for 2008 computing. See ya next year!