Building a Killer Desktop System

We spend a lot of time talking about building systems for gaming or for multi-media, but some of us actually work from home or are lucky enough to be allowed to bring in a system we built for work. I?m one of those lucky individuals, and I thought that I would build my own dream system for a weekend project.

My traditional problem with this has been that, like many analysts, I run multiple monitors. I tend towards overkill here; I run four of them in a two-down and two-up configuration. Since monitors are so inexpensive now, I?m surprised more folks don?t run at least two because it makes certain kinds of work vastly easier. It allows me to rapidly move between projects and reference material without closing or losing windows. I can also toss the CNBC feed on one of them to keep up on breaking news.

Until now, I?ve had to use an NVIDIA Quadra AGP/PCI solution, which was often unstable and couldn?t play a game to save its life (I know, it?s a work system; but hey, I like to play from time to time, too). Graphics performance was actually important for watching video clips or PowerPoint slides, and I could generally crash my system if I dragged either PowerPoint or a playing video between screens.

So, the goal was a high performance system that would scream at desktop productivity applications and could support four screens while maintaining enough performance to play games.

The Case

While I initially was going to use the Asus Vento case for this project, I decided that it took up too much room underneath a desk and that a more conventional tower design would be more appropriate. I chose the ThermalTake Soprano because you could lock it (you don?t want someone stealing your components), it has nice side window with installed processor cooling fan, and it has top-mounted USB ports, which I could use for my smart phones and PDAs. It has twin 12cm fans on the front and back and a 9cm fan over the processor, and it moves a lot of air very quietly. I chose silver to go with my desk, although I typically prefer black.

The Motherboard

I picked an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe board because I already had one. But Asus does a stunning job with AMD-based motherboards and I didn?t want to spend a week diagnosing any problems. This uses a chip that you flip between the PCIEX-16 slots to enable SLI mode; their A8N-SLI Premium does this in software, and were I doing this again I would spend the extra money on the Premium board.

Processor

This is a business system, and dual core is supposed to be for business, so I used the best dual core desktop processor currently on the market: the AMD Athlon X2 4800+. While this part isn?t as fast as the FX57, it can handle multi-threaded operations better and should provide a vastly better desktop experience. Plus, I?ve actually used it for playing games and found it to be incredibly fast.

By the way, the true advantage of dual core is when running anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. They will typically run on the second core, minimizing their impact on your day-to-day productivity. I?ll talk a bit about the actual experience at the end, but I was clearly looking forward to a big jump in performance.

Video: SLI to the Rescue

I had two 6800 cards in an ultra and a GT. Now, if I were going to use this setup in single SLI mode with one supercharged virtual graphics card, this wouldn?t work because you need a matched set?but in “multi-GPU mode” disabled (i.e. the Scalable Link Interface (SLI) mode turned off) it evidently doesn?t matter. According to NVIDIA, you may not even need the special card bridge in this mode, but I connected it anyway because it looks cool (it could use some lights, though).

My two primary monitors would be digital using the Ultra, while my secondary monitors (all LCD) would be analog and use the GT. At this point, I was thinking, man, this is going to be one cool machine.

Assembly Experience

No issues with system assembly; the product went together clean and booted the first time. One of the reasons I love Asus boards is because they typically boot the first time for me; Asus also does a wonderful job with manuals and this was no exception.

Now, before I actually hooked it up to my four-monitor setup, I thought I would test to make sure both cards were working. Plugging one monitor in the Ultra card and one in the GT, I was able to get only one monitor up. When plugging both monitors into the Ultra, both monitors came up and a third phantom monitor showed up in the Settings section of Display Properties. I didn?t mess around, called NVIDIA immediately and spoke to their expert, Nick Stam, who used to head the PC Magazine Labs and also founded ExteremeTech for Ziff Davis.

He pointed out that my drivers were down-level and that I needed to fully load the first card before the second card would come up. I did so, and with three monitors the phantom monitor vanished and I was ready to go into production.

The Power Surprise

The system I had been using was an Intel Pentium 4 HT with RAID 0 (which I?ve stopped; it doubles your hard drive failure rate without giving a noticeable boost in performance) with the old Quadra cards, and 512M of DDR RAM. The new system should be much better, so I hooked everything up, hit the power switch, and prayed.

The system came up clean and it screams. Applications pop, Outlook, in particular, doesn?t hang (and it was hanging a lot on the old system), I don?t even notice when the virus checker or anti-spyware products kick off in the background, and internet videos now run at decent frame rates and don?t hang.

The project was an unqualified success and I?m now a believer in the concept that more power isn?t just for gaming. And, I have the added plus that I can actually play a game on one screen while watching my IM and email on the others. Now that’s multi-talking I can live with.