My New Desktop

After almost three years using the same desktop PC, I finally switched the whole package. With Alon’s help and recommendations I managed to come up with this spec:

• Intel i7 860 processor @ 2.80 GHz, 8 MB cache
• Gigabyte P55A-UD4 board (SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0 ports)
• OCZ Gold DDR3 1333 MHz 8 GB memory
• Intel 80 GB SSD X25-M
• ATI Radeon HD 5850 graphics card with 1 GB DDR5 memory and DirectX 11 support
• Thermaltake Element S Pro case
• Corsair HX 650W power supply

This is my biggest impression from the first few days of working on this rig: an SSD is an incredible improvement. It demonstrates ever so clearly just how much I/O is the bottleneck in today’s PCs. The system boots in under 15 seconds. It takes less than a second to get a fully functional desktop from the moment I finish typing in my password at the login screen. Programs launch instantaneously—it’s as if they were never closed. This is absolutely amazing.

Some screenshots:

 
(Nothing too shabby, eight logical processors and eight gigs of memory.)

 
(The measurement was performed while the system was running and many applications were open; a clean test yielded an average transfer rate of 190 MB/s.)

(I, too, found it hard to believe, but the SSD got the lowest subscore.)