It’s been a while since I last put together a decent post – apologies – I’ve been quite literally up to my neck in computer components, outfitting some new hardware. This has killed a lot of my free time while I research and consume the latest information on hardware. You’d be quite amazed at how much information needs to be consumed to make informed decisions when building a brand new machine.
There’s the CPU, motherboard, system memory, storage (hard drives), graphics (video cards), the power supply and case to research and evaluate. An exhausting task really, when you consider the range of options, potential configurations and plethora of reviews and marketing information.
So just a little while ago I built a new development machine to increase my general productivity. It has been a while since I last build a machine (2008) and in that time, the landscape has changed quite significantly.
The specs:
Motherboard: ASUS P6T-SE
CPU: Intel i7 930 (4 cores/2.80GHz)
Memory: 3x 2GB Kingston DDR3 @ 1600 MHz
HDD: Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB SSD +
1x Seagate Barracuda SATA II 1 TB @ 7200 RPM
Video: NVidia GeForce 210 (128 MB) PCIe
Venturing into the new Intel range, I’ve opted for the new i7 930 which is a quad core CPU with dual threads/core which basically means 4 cores @ 2.80GHz with two threads per core.
Now, the Windows Experience Index (WEI) for this beast is not overly impressive because I don’t have a requirement for a high end video card, as a result all the graphic scores are low (although still not appalling). What is impressive (I think) are the CPU and memory scores – a whopping 7.5! With a better graphics platform, this machine would probably run a WEI score of 6.8.
Since this is a development machine, I think it has achieved my desired end goal – a stable and blisteringly fast machine which can exercise a very fast CPU (or set of cores) as well as maintain a very high level of disk i/o (which is has an amazing impact on the time to compile solutions). I honestly don’t think you can go past an SSD if you are compiling a large amount of code.
What kind of specifications are you looking at for your development machines? Leave a comment!
