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I have been following with much interest the numerous posts, pictures and pod casts that Scott Hanselman and Jeff Atwood have published on the subject of building a fast and quiet computer.

Here are some links I shamelessly copied off Scotts page.

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.

You can tell its a subject of great passion for both of them. Overall it looks as though the guys had a lot of fun for the roughly $1,900 (not sure how much was spent) and heck looking at the latest post by Scott I get the feeling the shipping charges alone were $1000.

Having recently switched to Vista I also felt the need to get a faster computer. What’s that dumb saying ” What Andy Grove (Intel) giveth, Bill Gates taketh away”?

So to make a long story short, I found an HP Quad with 3GB of RAM on sale for about $880.00 .

I was really really tempted to do a series of posts of how I got myself a computer that does a good portion of what Scotts super rig can do at way less cost and time investment. But then I thought better of it. The very reason why I went this route, even though I seriously considered building a nice box myself, that very reason prevented me from doing a total take-off on the multi-part ultimate rig series - I just don’t have the time.

I needed something NOW. So for the investment of driving 30 mins, I was able to get up to speed and have a quiet, reasonably fast computer (its a 5.9 on the Win Index - except for the graphics which is a measly 3.3)

There is one other very subjective measurement that shows how much faster Scott’s overclocked monster rig is. It takes him something like 20 seconds to go from hitting the button to the Windows desktop. By comparison it takes me a full minute to do the same. (Although you should have seen my old machine…. )

I am pretty happy with this box and I was able to jump right back into a project and make good use out of the increased performance. Maybe in a few months I will get a chance to hand craft a box myself, but for now this will do.