September 9th, 2007
The quad-core project - Building the PC walkthrough
Last weekend we built two new quad-core PCs over at the PC Doc HQ. I promised that you’d be first to see the results of our hard work (buildig these PCs is easy, the hard part is the photography … hot lights, having to keep your arms out of the shot, reducing reflections … ) - well, here you go.
The Parts
Check out the quad-core project gallery here!
I’ve posted the parts list for this project earlier, but lets take a closer look at the components.
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Four cores, each running at 2.4GHz, 8MB of L2 cache, blistering speed … what more is there to say?! Sure, I could have spent more money and got a faster processor, but it wouldn’t have been all that cost effective.
The only downside to the Q6600 is the same downside that applies to every other processor - the stock cooler is noisy and not all that effective if you plan on overclocking. But this is not a problem since I plan on replacing it. - ASUS Striker Extreme motherboard
I wanted a motherboard that would give me a lot of scope for tweaking with settings (for experimental purposes more than anything) and my interest was instantly drawn to the ASUS Striker Extreme. But once I started reading reviews of this board, I came across a lot of people having a lot of problems with this board. Crashes, lockups, DOAs, BIOS problems and dozens of other random issues. Hmmm. These reviews put me off the board.
However, after looking at other quad-core boards, I came back to the Striker Extreme and decided to give it a go. Either it would work or it wouldn’t, and if it gave me too much grief, I’d send it back to the store in a heartbeat.
As you’ll see later, the board performed flawlessly and I’m thrilled with the purchase. In fact, not only does it look amazing (the heatsinks are a very beautiful piece of engineering) but it comes equipped with some really nice features such as an electro-luminescent panel on the IO plate on the rear and on-board on/off, reset and CMOS reset buttons. - SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB 128-bit GDDR4
We wanted a decent graphics card but didn’t want to spend crazy money on it. Since there was no way we were going with NVIDIA given how poor the current drivers are, it didn’t take us long to pick the HD 2600XT. It’s relatively cheap, powerful, DirectX 10 compatible, HD compatible.
Again, we could have spent more money to get more power, but the return on investment is hard to justify unless you really need that power. The HD 2600XTs should do just fine for us (for now!).
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
Want to get in touch? Got a tip? Feel free to drop me a note! I ALWAYS respect anonymity. I'm also on Twitter (@the_pc_doc)
Right to Reply: Should any industry representatives wish to comment on any posts on Hardware 2.0, I will be happy to publish their reply verbatim on this blog.
Subscribe to Hardware 2.0 via Email alerts or RSS.
| 09/10/07
