My new workspace...
As mentioned previously, my HP NC6120 laptop completely died. It did not power up at all; and I concluded that the motherboard died. Instead of looking for a new laptop, I decided to build a brand new tower. I still have my old tower powered with an AMD processor (XP2300 1.7Ghz) and a 64mb AGP GeForce 4 card, a limited 80GB hard drive and 1 GB of RAM; but alas, I needed to spoil myself and build myself since I haven’t used that tower for a long time and have been using my HP laptop.
I almost made the decision to pick up an Apple Macbook Pro or an iMac but after studying the specs on it; it becamce apparent that its just too ridiculously overpriced to me for the performance I would obtain. Instead, I figured for the same budget I would spend on either an iMac or Macbook, I can probably build one better. Obviously based on similar specs, I decided for similar PC components. I was considering purchasing a system from Psystar but it wasn’t like I’m not tech savvy enough to do what they do. A friend of mine also let me know of OSX86 and Hackintosh. After doing some Google searches and a lot of research, I decided that I was going to get myself the best of both worlds and take a risk to create my PC/Mac hybrid personal desktop. In the end, I am quite satisfied with what I spent and of the end-product.
Thanks to Newegg, I was able to get some great deals (in most cases, free shipping and no tax). I also picked up two 20″ monitors from Dell. Here is a breakdown of my system specs:
- Antec ATX mid-tower (black meshed tower) with two 120mm fans – very quiet
- Antec 500W power supply – enough for what I need to run.
- Two Dell 20″ E207WFP monitors – holy sweetness, my first LCD monitors; now I get 40″ of work space.
- ASUS P5Q Pro Motherboard – had a combo deal with CPU from Newegg and it is OSX86 compatible.
- Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0Ghz Wolfdale Processor – easily overclocks to 3.6Ghz; I will overclock after I get more ram.
- Arctic Cooling Freezer 8 Pro 92mm CPU fan – invested a little bit more for a real CPU fan and heatsink. (Hey, you want to protect your investment right?)
- OCZ SLi Ready 2GB DDR2 PC26400 Ram – runs as advertised but 2GB nowadays is like having the minimum.
- BFG Tech GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB Video Card – did my research, I didn’t want to spend too much on the new Nnvidia cards yet felt the GeForce 9xxxx didn’t compare opposed to this card.
- Western Digital 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive – major space upgrade than what I had.
- Encore Wireless-N Adapter – my old DLink DWL-G520 wasn’t compatible with this motherboard.
Without the monitors, the desktop came in at an estimated $600 which isn’t bad (after rebates ofcourse). Add the two monitors, it was closer to $1,000 for my brand spanking new PC. You can look up all the items on Newegg and compare shop with TigerDirect, or through Pricegrabber. Overall, I came out alright.
I am amazed at the performance of my PC, because of the amount of workspace, the ability to actually run games like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Crysis, Bioshock, etc. without any lag or problems and much more. I am dual-booting XP and OSX Leopard. I am just not feeling Vista; it isn’t much of an upgrade for me. If I had to a choose a 64-bit operating system right now, I’d choose Leopard. The only thing I need, is more RAM. Otherwise, I can’t ask for more. Here are some pictures of my current desk setup. Enjoy!
Running Mac.. ;-P
Close up of Mac on my custom PC.