24 June 2010 ~ 0 Comments

The 2010 Caffeinedi.com Ultimate Budget Developer Rig

Hardware

A few years ago, Jeff Atwood did a great series of blog posts on building the ultimate developer rig for Scott Hanselman.  For $2000, he put together a fantastic machine with stellar performance.

My five-year-old developer rig has had a great run, but lately, it just hasn’t been able to keep up with my needs – not to mention a lot of random artifacts and lines on the monitors, indicating the impending death of my video card.  So, I set out to build my own ultimate developer rig, but on a  lower budget of $1100.

This $1100 budget took into consideration the reuse of my existing chassis, data hard drive, DVD-RW drive, and dual monitors.  So, if you’re setting out to build one from the ground up with similar components, a budget of $1400 is probably more realistic.

Somewhat similar to Hanselman’s priorities, the requirements for my rig were as follows:

  1. Fast.  When I launch an app, I want it to display immediately.  When I compile, I want fast build times.  When I power it on, I want Windows to boot fast.  When I click on something, I want the action to register immediately.
  2. Multitasking.  Since I often run a ton of applications at once, some of which can be memory hogs, I need it to remain fast and performant even with tons of windows open.  If I can have multiple instances of VS2010, Photoshop, Eclipse, VirtualBox, Tweetdeck, iTunes, Firefox, and Word open simultaneously without losing much performance, it’s a win.
  3. Quiet.  I like to work in a quiet environment and can’t stand fan and hard drive noise.
  4. Reliable.  I can’t afford any extended downtime, data loss, or reoccurring blue screens, so I need the rig to be reliable.
  5. Budget.  I want to stick as close as possible to the budget while achieving the first three requirements.

After lots of research, I ultimately came up with the following component list:

Since I/O has almost always been the slowest aspect of my machines, I really wanted to go with an SSD as my boot drive.  I have heard nothing but fantastic things about the Intel X-25M, so I decided to go with it.  I also really wanted an i7, and the price for the i7-860 is a great value.  Additionally, to satisfy the low-noise requirement, I went with the upgraded Zalman cooler and the Cooler Master Silent Pro power supply.

Initial Results

I’ve been using this new development rig for about two weeks now, and it has absolutely blown away my expectations.  For my $1100 budget, I expected a great machine with room for improvement.  But, the machine’s performance is absolutely fantastic.

Windows Experience Index

The SSD makes all the difference in the world.  Windows boots in seconds, and applications load instantly.  The splash screens for applications like Visual Studio 2010, Photoshop CS5, and Microsoft Office only appear for a split-second before the actual application loads.  I cannot recommend the Intel X-25M enough – it is incredible as an OS and program drive.

To top it all off, the machine is quiet.  Like, real quiet.  Sometimes I have to look under the desk to see if the power light is illuminated because the fans are almost completely silent.

I could not be more pleased with the result of this build.  The performance of this budget rig has made me so much more productive, since I don’t have to wait for any of my clicks or keystrokes to register.  And, the reliability and low noise levels keep me focused on the tasks at hand.

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