Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Gone Quad - Day 0 with the Ultimate Developer PC

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Gone Quad - Day 0 with the Ultimate Developer PC

Posted in Programming.

I apologize for this post ahead of time. It will be full of gushing computer hardware pron. Mea culpa. I just got the Ultimate PC in the mail from Jeff and I'm typing on it now. Here's some pics from the set up on Flickr. Jeff sent the thing double-boxed in a box so large that even the UPS guy commented on it.

First Impressions

The Antec case is unreal. Brilliant design, built like a tank and very clean lines. Remember this is a collaborative case built with the folks at SilentPCReview.
Jeff is an artist when it comes to building a quiet system and adds a lot of noise reduction materials. The whole inside of the case is lined in a foam.
It's ridiculously fast. The word "obscene" comes to mind. It's working at least 80% of the speed of my thoughts (as opposed to 10-20% on my last PC.) I wait for little. Even opening a tab in IE7, once a chore that made me cry, happens instantly.
It is SO quiet that my wife immediately noticed a different in the sound upstairs. The last computer sounded like a jet plane. This one I literally have to strain to hear if it's on.

The Setup

Display Settings I hate waste, so I wanted to continue to use my existing 24" 16:9 and 20" 4:3 Dell monitors, so I bought another 20" 4:3 Dell. Now I run three, all via DVI, with a free DVI port for one more monitor in case the spirit moves me.

I need to tie up all the cables in the back there, but I've only been at this for an hour or so. Eventually all the cables will be clean and the whole area will be "office-like" - just like I like it.

Here's the Hanseldesk. Microphone and pop-filter on the right there, next to the XM Radio Boombox and Mac Mini. Two WDC MyBooks (love those drives) under the 24" LCD. The 20" on the right is a few years old and the 20" on the left is brand new (and half the price. Sigh.)

Vista 64-bit Ultimate

For some reason I thought that 64-bit would be this scary new world where nothing worked. So far it's been a total non-event. I don't know what I was sweating. I got a 64-bit driver for my Canon Pixma MP500 Multi-function Printer/Scanner and everything else has just worked out of the box. All 4 Gigs of RAM are available and in use.

What I Installed

I'm going to try to keep this machine free of crapware, so I'm starting to be a lot more judicious about what I go installing (unlike last year.) Here's what I needed to get going this evening:

At this point, after about 90 minutes, I have a machine I can use 80% and be just fine. I'll get Office and a few other things later.

Benchmarks

The overclocking worked nicely and the system is rock-solid stable, even though it's nearly 100 degrees in Portland today. The 2.40 GHz chip is running nicely at 2.84 GHz giving me a nice 18%ish speed bump for free.

You'll have to tell me, Dear Reader, what kinds of Benchmarks you'll want to see. Here's a few easy ones:

Previous 3Ghz P4 Bootup Time from after POST to Desktop: 48 seconds
Current Quad Bootup Time from after POST to Desktop: 12 seconds.

Here's what the 64-bit CINEBENCH Benchmark from Maxon says:

CINEBENCH 9.5
****************************************************
Processor        : QuadPower
MHz              : 2.8 Ghz
Number of CPUs   : 4
Operating System : Vista 64
Graphics Card    : NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS
****************************************************
Rendering (Single   CPU): 469 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 1417 CB-CPU
Multiprocessor Speedup: 3.02
Shading (CINEMA 4D)                : 531 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 1737 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 4328 CB-GFX
OpenGL Speedup: 8.15

****************************************************

Versus the P4:

CINEBENCH 9.5
****************************************************
Processor: Intel® Pentium® 4
MHz: 3.0GHz
Number of CPUs: 2
Operating System: Windows XP Professional
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS
****************************************************
Rendering (Single CPU): 248 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 293 CB-CPU
Multiprocessor Speedup: 1.18
Shading (CINEMA 4D): 278 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting): 1079 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting): 1685 CB-GFX
OpenGL Speedup: 6.06
****************************************************

I'll do some real world developer-specific benchmarking to see if, for example, DasBlog REALLY builds faster.

For now, as it's getting late, here's my Windows Experience Index, up from 4.2 on the P4.

Link Round Up

Here's the complete set of links talking about this project from concept to now. A few more real world benchmarks (with scenarios supplied by you, Dear Reader, or didn't I say?) and we'll be done.

Podcasts

Blog Posts

The CodingHorror Ultimate Developer Rig Throwdown: Part 1 - The idea is presented and my list of ~~demands~~ goals is kicked around.
The CodingHorror Ultimate Developer Rig Throwdown: Part 2 - The hardware list from NewEgg with a total of $1903.00. It'd be probably $1600 or less today, just a few months later.
The CodingHorror Ultimate Developer Rig Throwdown: Part 3 - Jeff gets my system to boot and I link to him excessively.
Building a PC, Part I - The Basic Build. Jeff unpacks and get my system to POST in two hours.
Building a PC, Part II - Lots of pics as Jeff moves beyond BIOS POST and adds my 10,000 RPM Raptor Drives.
Building a PC, Part III - Jeff digs into the magic and voodoo that is overclocking and pushes my system nearer to 3 Ghz. We're conservative overclockers, though. Remember this is a developer machine, not a Gamer PC.
Building a PC, Part IV - Jeff adds some damping foam and greats a Basic, Premium and Deluxe Parts List.

If you've build a PC with these posts as your guide, or if you've "Gone Quad," let me know in the comments. If there's a topic around this that you want to start, why not try the new Hanselforums?

Posted at 2007-08-02 12:48 AM by Scott
Comments [56]
Permalink

Thursday, August 02, 2007 12:45:31 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

What a sweet rig, good luck with it.

When I moved to x64 I didn't notice any difference in compile speed within Visual Studio. However, VS 2008 can be set up to compile using all 4 cores which will improve the speed.

Mads Kristensen

Thursday, August 02, 2007 1:02:44 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

12 seconds?!!? 12 SECONDS?!?

Dear God in heaven.

Andrew

Thursday, August 02, 2007 1:04:00 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I've been using x64 (WinXP) since mid 2005, and apart from a driver issue with wireless I've never really had any issues. In fact, quite the opposite.

I didn't notice a huge difference in speed, but there was definitely a speed improvement.

You're machine looks fantastic. Nice choice of kit. Love ya work.
OJ

Thursday, August 02, 2007 1:10:57 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

AWESOME! I look forward to some in-dept code :-) (assuming you have the time since you're writing a book now...whats it about if you don't mind me asking?)

Sushant Bhatia

Thursday, August 02, 2007 1:13:38 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I've found foam inside the case only tends to dampen the hard drive sound at the expense of things getting warmer inside and the fans ramping up. I guess it tends to stop convection of heat through the metal.

Be prepared for all sorts of issues with 64-bit I described on my blog. The main categories in descending order of inconvenience are lack of 64-bit drivers for hardware, lack of 64-bit plug-in's for Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer causing you to run 32-bit and 64-bit versions side-by-side and then the lack of 64-bit applications (Firefox, Visual Studio).

[)amien

Damien Guard

Thursday, August 02, 2007 1:51:28 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

This is a very nice rig Scott... It looks high quality and I think you made good choices to give you a good price/performance ratio.

I've always enjoyed building my own machines and each time I've had smaller budgets than I would have liked (that would be my wife's fault!)... You can see my current and previous machines on flickr. Unfortunately I got sucked into the whole lighting thing which I really regret as it now looks naff and I could have used the money else where!

Hopefully I'll be building a new one in the new year and I think I will follow your lead as I really like the look of your case and internals... Good choice of CPU as well, especially with waht Mads has said about VS 2008 compiling with all 4 cores!

Also, I note that you use three monitors, how do you get on with these and what are there sizes? I have a 24" Dell widescreen but would like to employee a multiple monitor setup. Ideally I would love this one of these Digital Tigers setups!

Enjoy your new machine!

Michael Sivers

Thursday, August 02, 2007 1:52:40 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Six months' time: Fans have started to get noisy, Windows has slowed down inexplicably, faster machines cost a lot less than you paid for this one.

Pessimist

Thursday, August 02, 2007 2:08:59 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Nice machine! But are you sure someone hasn't snuck in while you weren't looking and swapped out your 24" for something smaller?

Phil Haselden

Thursday, August 02, 2007 2:23:21 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Next step, cable management. That's the problem with the glass table, you can see all those unsightly cables...

Damian

Thursday, August 02, 2007 2:40:38 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I'm going to try to keep this machine free of crapware, so I'm starting to be a lot more judicious about what I go installing (unlike last year.)

This is definitely a good idea. I have recently ordered new parts for my PC as well, and I'm going to try this as well. Maybe just running virtual PC as well for when I want to try something out. It will need some self discipline to keep it up though ;).

Eric

Thursday, August 02, 2007 3:14:10 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Very nice, really gives the itch to get something new.

Only downside is that the super fast boot time is largely due to how little you have installed. I'd expect to see this slow down a lot over time when you innevitably start building up the list of applications installed. At least that is what I find with my machines.

Malakili

Thursday, August 02, 2007 3:15:02 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Hi Scott,

i got a bit inspired by this series of articles from you and Jeff and decided to go quad too. However, I had a few problems along the way - vista install failed, panic ensued etc - ended up learning how to test memory, hard drive integrity etc - and eventually got it all working. I've blogged it all over here. Hope it's of use. Kind of surprised that jeff didn't hit the same problem as it turns out i had. Lucky him/you.

Dan

Dan Maharry

Thursday, August 02, 2007 3:29:49 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I also went with Ultimate x64 edition (getting the system builders edition from NewEgg at 1/2 the retail price) when I built a "Mid Bang" system (basically like yours but with 2 GB RAM, 1 Raptor, and only dual core). It's gone pretty well. I've had a few weird issues like IIS 7 and PHP giving strange warning messages as well as iTunes video playing not being optimal, but stability has been great. I keep around a XP VPC image in emergency cases in case something absolutely demands IE6 or 32 bit (like some VPN software). VPC 2007 runs fantastically on 64 bit. It'll be great to hear about future cool x64 stuff you find that I might have missed.

Jeff Moser

Thursday, August 02, 2007 3:41:06 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Looks good. I got my Q6600 last week, running solid at 3.15GHz!

I took the upgrade as an opertunity to get a second Dell 24" for a really sweet setup.

My Vista x64 experience score is lower than yours, 5.2 but that's all due to the recycled hard-disk (perhaps I'll upgrade that).

I upgraded from an Athlon 3400+ and like you want to keep the "rubbish" off the main o/s. Having installed Virtual PC 2008, I've discovered the guest WinXP installation is actually faster than my old machine - and conviently a nice safe testing area for new software I'm evaluating!

R.

Ray

Thursday, August 02, 2007 3:53:36 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Setup a flickr group for development rigs and setups photos, it would be great to see what people are using/doing!

Feel free to add some pictures! http://www.flickr.com/groups/devrigs/

Michael Sivers

Thursday, August 02, 2007 4:13:39 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I can see that you're using Windows Live Writer already. The "temporary post for style detection purposes" shows me that.

12 seconds? I don't believe it.

Ian Sinke

Thursday, August 02, 2007 4:27:01 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

What I would like to see is some application benchmarks... Is Outlook 2007 more responsive (for example?)

Vaibhav

Thursday, August 02, 2007 5:44:03 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I just bought a new Vista machine (quad core FTW) and the first thing I noticed is that S3 Sleep actually WORKS now. It's amazing to have a PC almost completely "off" with the drives and fans completely powered down and 2 or 3 seconds after hitting a key on the keyboard it's back to a "usable" state.

I used to have my machine hibernate instead of sleep. This cut down a bit on boot time but you still have to wait for the machine to POST. Now I just leave my machine on all the time. I haven't checked the power draw yet, but with no fans, no HDD's and the CPU in a "halt" state I would imagine it's pretty low.

Chad

Thursday, August 02, 2007 6:11:30 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Scott:

I can't keep up with the text editors. I'm using notepad++ right now. So now it's the "e Text Editor?" It's not on your tools list. How about a review sometime?

Dave P.

Thursday, August 02, 2007 6:35:07 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I would like to see more info on the foam part. What kind it is, where to get it from & how it's stuck to the panels. Is it cut around the fan openings?

I see it's not filling t he whole panels. My concern also is that while it's isolating some noise, it would also keep the heat from conducting to the outside through the panels themselves.

Abdu

Thursday, August 02, 2007 7:11:08 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Good Rig .

Two reccomendations .

1, Virtual PC . Great for testing all those beta technologies . Also Start by moving some apps into virtual PC . e.g All Instant Messangers , email client. Its Great for productivity [Shut all external distractions , in a click ] and one click access to all of them without having all these resource hogs running in the background . The idea of grouping applications by function into different virtual PCs works great .

2, The RAM you have to me seems like a scar on this geek porn goddess . Slip it out and replace it with a top of the line corsair . you know you want to ..[I would love to see the new bench mark scores with better RAM ].

P.S Do that and hope Jeff doesnt read the comments on your blogs :) .

Pradeep

Thursday, August 02, 2007 7:16:11 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Verra nice! From the pics I see that Jeff installed the SLI bridge for you. Did you have to remove it to run the triple monitor setup? I'm just wondering because I have basically the same configuration with regards to the displays and graphics cards that you used (dual MSI 8600 GTSs running 2x20.1" monitors @ 1600x1200 and a 24" widescreen @ 1920x1200), but did not bother connecting the bridge. I'm a bit unclear on what function the bridge provides in a multi-display (non-gamer) system, and whether or not I should bother plugging it in.

PS - you need to get ultramon on that bad boy too (although I am not sure of 64-bit compatibility).

Mike

Thursday, August 02, 2007 7:30:09 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

> I got my Q6600 last week, running solid at 3.15GHz!

Be very, very careful. The Q6600 was the most challenging CPU I've ever overclocked. The failure modes are frustratingly subtle (only emerge after hours), and voltage increases seemed to make no difference whatsoever..

I *thought* Scott's Q6600 was stable at 3.0 GHz (and that's what is pictured in the initial screenshots), but after 4+ hours of four instances of Prime95 torture test, it'd bluescreen with regularity. The quad was an extraordinarily difficult chip to overclock. I finally got it stable at 2.85 GHz. Maybe you got a better chip than Scott did-- it's totally luck of the draw-- but be VERY careful, because in my experience the quad can fail in some obscure, non-obvious ways.

Moral: ALWAYS RUN FOUR INSTANCES OF PRIME95 TORTURE TEST OVERNIGHT TO BURN IN THE OVERCLOCKED QUAD! Otherwise, I don't care how stable you think you are; you probably aren't.

> you need to get ultramon on that bad boy too (although I am not sure of 64-bit compatibility

Great tip; I love Ultramon, and there is an x64 version.

Jeff Atwood

Thursday, August 02, 2007 7:48:36 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I've been using the same Antec case on my last 2 computers... man that case is just too nice!

Jonmichael

Thursday, August 02, 2007 8:12:39 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I wonder if all this overclocking is necessary, specially for non gamers. 2.6, 2.8 or 3Ghz all fall in the category of "very fast". It seems one is going into the territory of instability and overheating. I wouldn't risk it just to gain a few cpu cycles which might not make any noticeable difference.

I would build a rig in the sweetspot of performance and quietness. I would spend more money in a less noisy machine than on a faster noisier one. My ideal setup would be zero sound.... like working on a dumb terminal.

I have two machines which sit in a closed non ventilated closet with extensions cables running to my desk all through a KVM. The closet is very warm but the water cooled computer never shuts down from overheating and when it does, I know the cooler is running low in water. I tried two tower fins air coolers but they couldn't dissipate the cpu heat properly in such a warm environment.

abdu

Thursday, August 02, 2007 8:23:25 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I hope by the time you install those "Other Things" you'll have that tool list updated. ;-)

JRT

Thursday, August 02, 2007 8:45:37 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

What's the tiny little "4" in the display properties? Is that for Sideshow or is that just th empty DVI port showing that it's available?

Scott

Thursday, August 02, 2007 10:09:03 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I love that new machine feeling. Everything seems blazingly fast. Unfortunately, it seems to be fleeting. Its a combination of getting used to it (so it doesn't seem as fast anymore) and Windows just starts slowing down from cruft after you install more and more software. Once I start adding Tortoise, Messenger, Acrobat, and everything else that wants to add start-up acceleraters and explorer extensions, etc, my time from login to serene desktop gets longer and longer.
I've gotten into the habit of running Autoruns and saving the current configuration before installing anything new. After an install, I can do a compare and see exactly what new startup slowness was added. If I notice any difference, I know which items to disable or uninstall. Unfortunately, the difference isn't usually very noticable until you have the accumulation of a bunch of different installs.

Joshua Flanagan

Thursday, August 02, 2007 12:00:42 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I would also love to see a review on the e-editor. Could you also explain why Apple's bonjour is installed with the e-editor. What does it do? Why is this needed? Does it pose any security risks? Thanks!

cms

Thursday, August 02, 2007 12:03:40 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Sweet rig! I agree with you on 64-bit Vista being a non-issue. The only thing that doesn't work for me is Rhapsody Music, and I can get them through the web.

Monsur

Thursday, August 02, 2007 1:24:50 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Bonjour? Where does it say that's installed? I don't have that on my machine. Possibly for multi-person editing? I'd disable it.

@Scott - The 4 is the unused 4th DVI port.

I'm liking this idea of using VPCs for installing crap. I'm going to seriously try that.

@PhilH - I thnk you're right, that might be my 20" 16:9.

Scott Hanselman

Thursday, August 02, 2007 2:41:41 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

That desk looks like the exact same one I'm going to purchase from Fry's tonight. good choice Sir!

Oh, the machines not bad either ;-)

Ian

Thursday, August 02, 2007 3:44:10 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Wow .. what a sweet machine. Good work Jeff!

Owen

Thursday, August 02, 2007 3:45:22 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Scott, I don't know about you, but I get tired of all the crapware and Windows issues on my PC and having to re-install 100+ apps all the time. I invariably spend half my time reconfiguring all the configs, colors, etc., to get things back the way I like it. Unfortuantely, many times I miss things until after the box is blown away which adds extra time.

What I recently started doing is simply creating a VM for every major app. I.E.

1) I have a VM for e-mail, newsgroups, etc., RSS, Live Writer, etc.
2) I have a VM for VS2005, SQL2005, etc., Expression Web, all my third-party VS2005 add-ons
3) I have a VM for VS2003, SQL2000
4) I have a VM for VS6 and SQL2000
5) I have a VM for testing crapware from various websites so that I don't screw up my good box.
6) I have a VM for VS2008 Beta2 with SQL2005

Basically, anything that I want to stick around for a very long time and don't want to deal with incompatabilities or upgrade issues. This seems to be working fine for me.

My main PC is now just a VM host server that has VM Workstation 6 installed. Thanks to multi-monitor support in VM Workstation 6, I can access all 3 of my LCD monitors from within a VM! (DO THAT MICROSOFT!)

The only other apps I have loaded on my main PC is Adobe CS3 and I simply do that because they're more graphics oriented and I didn't have time to set it up within a VM.

I don't know about you, but I've already installed Vista at least 4 times on my home machines and twice at work. XP I've probably installed a couple dozen times over 3 years -- most of which is just to fix something that got screwed up somewhere and was annoying!

P.S. - It's probably good that you're no longer with Corrilian/Checkfree. I see Fiserve (where I work today) just bought Checkfree. I'm sure there will be lots of changes over the next 12 months....

Good luck at your new gig.

DM3281

Thursday, August 02, 2007 3:50:38 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

CRAPWARE!!!
I've had many such experience such as your previous one. What i try to do now. Is to have some extra Virtual Machines kicking around. one for "not often used stuff", and there is alot of stuff that gets put there, but it doesn't slow down or mess my day to day activities, and a throwaway one where i can install whatever crap i'm messing with, testing, thinking about.. and can easily revert back to a blank slate as desired.

-Karl

Karl Prosser

Thursday, August 02, 2007 4:00:05 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I can't say that x64 Vista has been a non-issue for me. I'm sure there are more drivers now, but... About 7 months ago I went to a new Core 2 Duo with x64 Vista, and I have ran into a few issues along the way.

1) Adobe CS3 Pro does not install due to a setup error. There is a workaround, if you Google for it. Basically, you have to register a cscript 32-bit .DLL! (Nice, didn't Adobe CS3 came out after Vista? I must have won the lottery for bad luck!)

2) Macromedia Contribute 4 does not install due to a setup error. Adobe did not have any recommendations at the time and suggested that I keep checking back with them for updates. Yeah, like who has times for that?

3) Home Server CTP and beta did not have any x64 client software. This was the reason I blew away and old PC just to install Home server. 3-5 hours I'll never get back just to find out x64 wasn't supported (yet?).

4) No x64 bit drivers for my Minolta MagiColor 2300DL printer. I got it to work by loading a 32-bit driver. Setup disks no good and nothing updated on manufacture's website at the time.

5) Nikon digital camera software did not load. I ended up not using it... and it ended up not really being required, but they do have a nice photo organizer that seemed better than anything else I had.

6) I just installed Vista at work where we primarily use SafeBoot to enrypt the laptop drives. Well, after loading all my crap, I find out at the very end that SafeBoot won't load because it isn't supported for Vista. Yeah, my bad. But we just installed the software a 2 months earlier due to corporate rollout. Vista has been out for quite a while not. Arrghhh (Maybe my fault... but I had to blow away my box and re-install XP to stay company compliant!) OK--maybe this was more an OS support issue that a 32-bit x64 bit issue, but it was annoying nonetheless.

I have other things that didn't work on Vista either... but I can't remember right now. I'll continue to use 32-bit until about 12 months when my Vista starts taking 15-20 seconds for a right-click context menu to appear for everything I do, among other things.

Good luck with x64!

DM3281

Thursday, August 02, 2007 4:53:30 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Sorry for getting back to the e-editor, but I guess if I would have read this post: introducing-e, I would have answered my own question...

cms

Thursday, August 02, 2007 9:13:01 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I understand that the x64 Home Server Client is being actively worked on and I suspect we'll see it VERY soon.

Scott Hanselman

Friday, August 03, 2007 1:33:35 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Does the damping foam insulate the case and thereby increase temperatures? I assume the case is aluminium and if so does the foam inhibit it's effectiveness at dispersing heat?

Michael Sivers

Friday, August 03, 2007 10:48:06 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

This looks great. I've built two previous system in Antec cases and they keep getting better.

It's getting hard to type. The saliva is jamMiNG m ykeeeee ysss.

Enjoy man, I'm so jealous.

Bernard Farrell

Friday, August 03, 2007 11:14:22 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

> Does the damping foam insulate the case and thereby increase temperatures

Computer cases aren't a heatsink*-- there's very little metal-to-metal contact, so adding foam doesn't change anything.. other than breaking up reflected soundwaves and reducing noise.

The one place where metal-to-metal matters is hard drives; once you use rubber/sorbothane to reduce transmitted drive vibrations, you do have to be little more careful with airflow to the drives. Hard drives benefit quite a bit (more than you'd think) from the passive heatsink effect of direct metal mounting.

As long as there's good airflow (typically fans, and having a good path for air to move through the system), that's responsible for 99% of your cooling. I suppose it's possible to block the fans and impede cooling, but I haven't done that.

* there is at least one that case that IS a giant heatsink, the Zalman TNN 1300 .. but if you have to ask how much it costs, you probably can't afford it.. it's also an incredibly complex install as I'm sure you can imagine..

Jeff Atwood

Friday, August 03, 2007 11:48:02 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

That e-editor looks intriguing. +1 for a review.

Jan

Friday, August 03, 2007 12:07:42 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Scott:

What was the final bill for this? I looked back through your posts and Jeff's too, didn't see it.

thx.

Dave P.

Friday, August 03, 2007 1:43:06 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Wouldn't the foam somehow cause some sort of airflow resistance. I mean, without the foam, the fan can blow air around the box. It hits a middle side and will deflect?? Won't the foam just absorb the air and keep it from moving??

I'm don't know if any of this is possible, but it sounds kind of logical.

Trimmi

Friday, August 03, 2007 10:31:24 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Nice box, I haven't seen a 5.8 rating yet on Vista... :)

Gary Cox

Saturday, August 04, 2007 8:35:38 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

The foam is for silence. There are intake/exhaust fans to move the air out so the foam has little effect on temperature. I've never bought into the foam thing. Noise will exit through the exhaust, intake grills, etc. The P182 case works well as is. The loudest parts of a computer are CPU fan, GPU fans and hard drives. Get a good heatsink with quiet air fan for the CPU. GPU fans are tougher to silence. I prefer passively cooled video cards. I have a 7600 GT and it's extremely fast for most of your work and it will even play most games at close to high resolution. For hard drives, get a quiet drive and use suspension.

Not bad but i get 5.7 as in vista with using e6420 overclocked to 3.4Ghz. What's holding me back is my video card only because I refuse to buy a video card with a fan. The loudest thing in my office is the loud drie in the Tivo.

mario

Sunday, August 05, 2007 11:18:25 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Hi Scott

I have recently been pricing up a new machine, taken much advice from your blog and podcast and have also (obviously) gone down the quad core route.

Anyway, I have looked at a couple of the items Jeff put in your machine on newegg website. They are half the price that they are in the UK, unfortunetly newegg dont ship outside the US. Can you recommend any other suppliers in the US that I can check out?

Thx
Steve

Steve

Monday, August 06, 2007 10:33:42 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I have visited your site 262-times

Visitor164

Tuesday, August 07, 2007 11:08:42 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Nice gear.

I will need to see a very compelling reason to move from notepad++ to e-texteditor.com: a review may be in order. Does Mike Gunderloy read comments?

<dreamingOf>I would like to see IM inside my text editor.</dreamingOf>

{francisco}

Tuesday, August 07, 2007 12:18:17 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Slick setup... what I'd really like to see is some discussion on the quiet aspects of the box. Power was a big part of this venture, but so was making it a quiet machine. Jeff mentioned it in his post, but it seemed like an after thought. This is as much of an art as building a beefy box for a good price. I'd love to see some additional discussion here... even something on your podcast. Things like the foam used and where to place it, how the drives were dampered, the optimal speed of the fans (as you can set the speed on the Zalman fans), and most of all... how to know where the noise is coming from and how quiet is "quiet" (for example, we know 8GB RAM is a lot compared to 2GB, but 4GB is much more reasonable today for desktops [speaking with a very wide brush]... but is 5db unreasonable to shoot for? I have no idea as this is the part I can't speak intelligently to).

-AC
(cross posted on Jeff's post)

Thursday, August 09, 2007 5:28:26 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Hey Scott - what type of Mic that u got behind the popshield?

s.

Spence

Friday, August 10, 2007 4:35:49 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

But does it run Minesweeper?!

Jonathan

Saturday, August 11, 2007 12:01:47 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Just got finished ordering the components and should be able to start building later next week. I ordered almost exactly what you built so looking forward to having a screaming machine finally....

Matt

Wednesday, September 05, 2007 9:20:32 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

> Power was a big part of this venture, but so was making it a quiet machine. Jeff mentioned it in his post, but it seemed like an after thought

It's not an afterthought. As I explained in my Quiet PC post, you start with the right components, picked for low-ish noise, and the rest almost takes care of itself.

The foam damping is a merely finishing step to reduce noise a tiny bit more. It won't magically make a noisy system quiet, but it will make a quiet system a smidge quieter. With my apologies to Spinal Tap, it lets you get a little below one-- "this one goes to zero".

Jeff Atwood

Thursday, September 06, 2007 4:55:04 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Hey Scott,

What microphone is that? Do you use it for Podcasts?

Thanks,
Chris