Recently, my primary workstation collapsed in a heap. When power was applied, no lights or whirring sounds. I diagnosed a dead motherboard (power supply was fine). Time for ‘The New Machine’.

Putting together a new workstation, and in particular one on which you do a bit of gaming, has to be considered carefully. You want the newer and therefore faster technology, but not the top ofthe line, super expensive hardware that costs disproportionately more. Theres a level of hardware, just before it gets ridiculously expensive, that affords great value. So I went on the hunt.

The first thing to decide, is your processor, this will determine a fair number of your future options. I looked at the higher end Core 2 Duos, but decided to reach up and grab some of that i7 core goodness. The i7 is Intel’s new chip architecture… with any luck, the future of Intel chips. Its blisteringly fast and runs 4 cores, which equates to 8 threads running concurrently.  (Linux identifies each thread as a processor, although its not quite the same thing.) Having decided to get the chip of the future, I moved onto motherboards.

Amongst the various suppliers I researched, I found a total of 3 i7 core motherboards as options. Obviously not yet totally mainstream. On a motherboard, you’ve got a number of decisions to make, particularly whether you’re happy with onboard graphics or whether you’re going to add a graphics card. After reading through a number of reviews, I settled on the DX58SO from Intel. Intel motherboards are a pleasure to set up and are super reliable. This board is designed as a workstation board. It has no onboard graphics, but that wasn’t a problem, since I was aiming for a addon card. DDR3 RAM was also an attraction… significantly faster than DDR2.

The graphics card was the cherry on the top. I’m an Nvidia fan… good drivers for Linux. The GTX275 is a card that Intel added to the market after losing out to a significantly powered ATI card which was reasonably priced. Because it came after the GTX280, it has most of the technology contained in the formidable GTX295. The GTX295 is of course basically 2 cards smacked together. The GTX275 is apparently half of the GTX295 sandwich. Needless to say, the price point is perfect if you are looking for bang-for-buck. Its a big card, 10 inches by 4 inches… the DX58so suffers from a small fault, in that an installed PCI express card, sits right on top of 2 of the SATA ports. (Solved by using a 90 degree elbow piece on the SATA.)

RAM-wise, I chose 2 2GB dimms. I’m sure I’m under-utilising the entire system by not running 64 bit OSs, but for the moment everything is running fantastically. The DX58so has 4 slots for RAM, but runs optimally with 3 DIMMS. Again, since 32 bit OSs can’t access more than 4 GB of RAM, this is moot for now.

So far, the machine displays nothing but sheer power. Kubuntu breezes along like nothing else. All applications load in a few short seconds. In windows, I have installed and played Flight Simulator X (with DirectX 10) and Armed Assault (one of my favourite games.) Both of the games are very graphics intensive, particularly FSX. FSX runs smoothly with all settings on high. So does Armed Assault. In the past, a small battle in Armed Assault, would grind the machine to a halt… now, it just cruises… and I can actually aim properly at fully automatic. Its an absolute pleasure.

I was a bit worried about the noise of 5 fans running… but so far, this machine is the quietest one I’ve ever owned. In summary… this is a great combination of hardware….