Building an Intel Core i7 based computer – The goal

Somehow I’ve missed two important things to mention in the introduction: what will I use computer for and the budget.

The computer is, of course, meant to be a development workstation that will replace my current aged Core 2 Duo E6600 based one. I’ll base my new computer on three pillars in this order of importance:

1. Reliability
2. Silence
3. Performance and Price/Performance ratio

The first point is all about avoiding unnecessary risks by taking in consideration only quality components if possible and redundancy. Nothing is more important than data. And having certain disk redundancy keeps computer operational even if a single disk fails – a disk failure is not uncommon at all. Backups are important as well, but that’s another story.

Does second point really need an explanation? Do you want the noise level of a vacuum cleaner under the desk? If you work a lot with computer you’ll appreciate as quiet machine as it gets. Low noise is mostly achieved through passive cooling or big fans that rotate slowly – the bigger they are the slower they need to rotate and thus noise is lower.

So, performance and price make only the third pillar in order of importance. Of course those performance and price are important but only after the first two.

Se what’s left is the budget: 1501 euros. Expensive? Cheap? I think this is a good compromise for my three pillars of a development workstation.

In case that I’ve missed some other relevant information so far, let me know.

See other relevant posts:

Introduction
Building an Intel Core i7 based computer – CPU cooler