OK, just ordered (most of) my (latest) Dream Machine. I'm sure you are all sitting on the edge of your seats. :)
It's a build-it-yourself system, as I have always done. This time I am building it in a rackmount case. I still need to find a rack (enclosed, not full height).
I want to get all this stuff in a rack and off the floor. I've got a big Minuteman UPS and extra battery pack that will go in the rack with it (leftover from the California energy scare :) )
Kids, don't try this at home. :)
Chenbro RM412-4SCSI case
(holds an EATX mother board, includes a 4-slot SCSI hotswap backplane, no power supply)
PC Power & Cooling 510XE Power Supply (EPS 12V - required by EATX dual-Xeon boards) (I've always used PC Power & Cooling power supplies, and never had one fail)
ASUS PC-DL Deluxe mother board (dual Xeon, network adapter, NO SCSI adapter, uses a Pentium IV chipset for faster memory access (dual channel PC2700/DDR333) than other Xeon chipsets (single channel PC2100/DDR 266) and overclockability, NO PCI-X - only PCI, but has an 8X AGP slot. Defininately an odd duck. Oh, about the only board out there that will let you overclock dual Xeons.)
2 X 3.06 Xeon, 512K cache (reviews suggest the 1MB cache isn't worth the extra cost, and this board will allow me to overclock to 3.2 gHz).
2 X Kingston HyperX PC3200/DDR400 1GB dual-channel kits (4 512MB DIMMs).
2 x Seagate ST373453LC 73GB Ultra 320 SCSI 15K RPM, 80-pin (One will be used as a backup)
Adaptec 29230LP-R Ultra 320 SCSI adapter
And here comes the big gulp...
4 x Samsung 213t LCD, 1600x1200 21"
The Colorgraphic GT4 AGP card is apparently not yet available, but is what I intend to use to drive the hydra. :) It has 4 ATI controllers on one AGP card.
I am also waiting for availability of a new version of this quad monitor mounting arm. They say it should be in the first week of January. The new version will work with monitors up to 22" and eliminates the small gap shown in the picture.
lcdmonitorarm.com
BTW, my primary use of this system is software development. I'm currently on a notebook and an Iiyama Vision Master Pro 510 (22" CRT). My "old" dream machine is a dual Pentium III with a Matrox G450 and two of the Iiyama CRTs. (One of my hard drives died, and, no, I didn't have a backup. :( ) Beleive it or not, I was constantly running out of screen space. I tend to cut and paste from multiple pieces of code, want to see a C++ source file and header file at the same time, etc. |
