Hotrod Box
You're probably a computer geek if you've come to this page, so you'll hopefully understand all the terms that I throw out here while I talk about the custom PC that I built from parts I personally selected and assembled after much research. This is actually the second custom computer I've built for myself. (I've also built several for other people.) The parts list is below. Piece-by-piece, the first computer morphed into what you see listed below. Eventually, I had collected more than enough parts to just rebuild the original 1999 computer. My brother uses that one now. Some day this one will morph into something else. I hope to jump onto the Small Form Factor HTPC bandwagon before long, so my purchases going forward have that in mind.

My most recent trend in modification has been to make my PC quiet. The main things I have done to further that goal have been to undervolt all the fans using inline resistors or thermistors. I start out with relatively quiet fans to begin with, such as the Vantec Stealth and then undervolt them to about 6 volts. The video card and chipset fans are undervolted to 5 volts using resistors, while the power supply is modified to use only one fan - the 2200-rpm ADDA that came with my Lian-Li case - via the existing thermistor pulled away from the heatsink. The most unusual mod is left for my hard drive, though. It starts out as a relatively quiet Maxtor Fluid Dynamic Bearing model. Idle noise is tolerable, but seek noise is enough to drive a person nuts. So I isolated it from the case using two rubber vacuum cleaner belts. It's the same basic concept as a NoVibes cage, but a whole lot cheaper.

• Hardware
  • AMD Athlon XP 1800+ CPU; ThermalTake Volcano 7 HSF w/modded Vantec Stealth fan
  • MSI KT3 Ultra-ARU motherboard
  • 512MB Corsair XMS2400 DDR SDRAM plus 512MB Corsair XMS3200C2 DDR SDRAM
  • ATI Radeon 9000 Pro 64MB video card
  • Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 series 80GB hard drive with 8MB cache; rounded copper-sheath cable
  • Sony DRU-500A multiformat DVD burner; rounded copper-sheath cable
  • Samsung SyncMaster 172T 17" LCD; DVI connection
  • Lian-Li PC-6002 aluminum mid-tower case
  • SeaSonic Super Tornado 300-watt power supply
  • Logitech Elite keyboard
  • MS Trackball Optical
  • Linksys LNE100TX PCI 10/100 NIC
  • Diamond SupraMax 56k PCI modem
  • Logitech Z-680 5.1 speakers; optical SPDIF cable
  • Logitech Cordless Freedom 2.4 joystick
  • Canon S600 printer
  • Canon CanoScan N670U scanner
  • Canon A20 digital camera
  • Olympus DW-90 voice recorder
• Software
  • Windows XP Professional
  • MS Office XP Professional
  • Macromedia Dreamweaver MX
  • Macromedia Fireworks MX
  • Photoshop 7
  • MS Visual Studio 6
  • MS Visual Studio .NET
  • MS Money 2003 Standard
  • MS Expedia Streets 98
  • Norton Internet Security 2003
  • Nero 6 Ultra Edition
  • WinDVD 3
  • Quake 3 Arena
  • Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
  • MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries
  • lots of freeware like Netscape, MSN Messenger, SpeedFan, etc.

Slightly off-topic
Even after updating this page with my latest components, I still just have to link to an old page showing a screen shot from my first custom PC. This is for all of you who think Win9x stability issues are frequently caused by low system resources. That line from the phone technician is pure bullshit.

Don't forget the Mac
Besides the Windows XP box, I also have a 12" Apple PowerBook G4. It's just a basic one that I bought to test my websites with. It also gets used as my daily driver for things like web browsing, email, and word processing, but the XP box still does all the heavy-duty stuff. I can't say that I really like one machine over the other. They are good at different things. The Mac crashes a lot more and it feels like a sloth compared to the PC, but the GUI is uber-cool-looking, and it's braindead simple to use. The best thing about it is the design and the fit and finish of the hardware. I've never seen another notebook that exudes such quality.

• 12" aluminum PowerBook
• 867-MHz G4 processor
• 256 MB DDR266 RAM
• 40GB 4,200-rpm Fujitsu hard drive
• DVD/CD-RW combo drive
• AirPort Extreme card
• Logitech Elite Duo wireless keyboard and mouse
• MacOS 10.2 ("Jaguar")
• MS Office v.X
• Some shareware like MaxMenus, ChronoSync, and more.