Workstation #4 coming soon

• CPU: It should be a quad-core Intel, although AMD invented the multi-core CPU. First I decided for their Core 2 family, as the Core i7 brand is currently rather young and expensive, and its name seems to aim at Windows 7 anyway. But then I thought it might be better to stick to the new generation when buying a completely new machine. I hope that the 4×2.67 GHz model (i7-920) drops in price during the next weeks. It will only be overclocked slightly, if at all, as I’d prefer to have it stable and alive for several years.
• Cooler: I prefer a combination of a massive heat sink with a slow and silent fan.
• RAM: Another reason for choosing Core i7 is that it might be easier to find DDR3 SDRAM modules on the market in, say, 4 years, rather than DDR2. DDR3 has a higher data throughput as well, but I know that this is not really a matter in practice. The modules for Core i7 come in triples, thus 3×2 GB should be enough for the first time; I’ll extend them by another 6 GB in a few years.
• Mainboard: Besides the ability to support Core i7 and DDR3, it should have an audio chip onboard, as I don’t do professional audio processing or enhanced multimedia consumption. GBit ethernet onboard is standard anyway, and so is SATA II. It would be nice to also have WLAN, as I don’t have my internet router wired; but I assume that it’ll be a dedicated PCI card. USB 3.0 hasn’t hit the market yet, thus FireWire should be onboard, as I might buy a video camcorder soon.
• GPU: I don’t play games, but I leer at applications that use the power of current GPU technology for arbitrary computations. Choosing Nvidia ensures good Linux support and impelling the development of their CUDA technology. Thus I’ll go for a compromise between power and price, what leads me to a GeForce 9800 GT (or GTX+) with 1 GB RAM, or a GTX 260 with 896 MB RAM.
• Harddisks: I’ll place two 1 TB SATA II disks on RAID-1, as this is the compromise between an ever-booting system and a minimal number of disks. I might also buy an external 1 TB disk for backup. It is important to not buy them from Seagate, as they totally failed with their crappy firmwares recently.
• Optical drives: A DVD-RAM capable SATA DVD writer is enough. I don’t need the capacity of Blu-ray (25 GB) yet.
• Monitor: I used my 17″ CRT monitor from 1998–2004, until I got the notebook. I thus had the ultimate FOV shock at my employer when I got two 22″ LCD screens for twin view. I noticed then that I need much space for image editing and processing, what led me to a 24″ LCD screen. But I won’t take Iiyama, as they emit an annoying high-frequency noise in standby. I’m not sure yet whether I’ll take one with HDMI.

I’m already looking forward to giving the cooler’s heat sink bottom a mirror finish.