Home Development Workstation – Part 1

Why

I think that every techie should go through the experience of building up a desktop workstation from the ground level. Maybe it’s because I date back to the days of the PC XT, when computer support duties regularly had us tearing down cases, changing jumper settings and plugging in individual chips for memory expansions. Mainstream p0wnership of the desktop’s guts may also be a dying art form (notwithstanding) – in the days of ubiquitous WiFi, shrinking notebooks, Blackberries and iPods. Cloud computing may liberate us from access to information, but I’m interested in creating and maintaining how that information will be connected, managed, and accessed. In other words – I want to write, not just use, software!

Specifically I have a long list of development projects I’ve been planning (ie. dreaming about and procrastinating), dealing with a wide range of technologies (semantic web, mash-ups, mobile, social networks, SEO, etc.). I also want to take a much deeper dive into platforms other than Windows; it’s clear that Linux, FOSS, and Apple need to be contemplated as part of any organization’s environment. And, since I prefer the comfort of hands-on experience when talking about technology solutions for business issues, I figured it was about time to jump in.

So this will be the story of two things – homebrewing a workstation in the 21st century, and the switch from Windows to Linux. Should be fun …

Prior Art

Of course, step one for most technology projects seems to be find something close, and work it over to meet your needs (techno-jazz, riffing on prior art). It’s not difficult to locate how-to content for building a PC by mail order, and my spec is based on two excellent examples. Tom’s Hardware (TH) is by far the best resource for drilling into details of the components. TH also has an (apparently) annual series on building a PC from scratch using current state-of-the-art components. In addition, I’ve borrowed heavily from a Coding Horror (CH) series from last summer – Atwood’s detailed notes and photos during the build will give me a lot of guidance when doing the actual assembly (yes, I even aped his photo style – sincere flattery, Mr. Atwood!).

As I began to surf and spec the various components, I noticed a trend with these and other “build your own” mavens. The articles are always geared towards the gaming enthusiast, trying to squeeze the quietest performance and the highest power for the least amount of dollars. I remain at a loss to explain why anyone needs two $600 graphics cards, and all the fans required to keep the whole thing from melting down. Most of the changes I made to the specs from my model machines dealt with this; a dual-monitor development workstation is an absolute must, but I wanted multiple windows of Eclipse and Firefox running – not Civ and Doom. (although I nearly changed my mind on the video stuff when I saw this sample of user interface ideas in the works for coming version Ubuntu.)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwr-OjVUZRk

Deets

I’ll spare you the details of the mixing and matching – I’ll just give you my shopping list, with some callouts for the important components. Note that I did the “good shopper” bit (TH was good for research, and cNet did a decent job of letting me see the competition), and went to a couple different sources for all these parts. I checked prices at Newegg and Amazon for most of the stuff, but had to search hard for some of the components. Note that all prices are just snapshots from when I placed the orders; I started and stopped this project a week or so ago, and when I came back to some of my shopping carts, availability of some components changed considerably. Suggestion: carve out a long afternoon to research the components, price shop, and make the purchase – all in one sitting.

Had to insert a picture of the delivered components – it just felt like the right thing to do. It was kinda like Christmas! (props to Atwood for the idea)

Next up … building the box …