Wanted to do a brain dump here, so don't mind me, just wanted to get people's thoughts on what I'm thinking of doing.
I'm currently using a mid-2007 24" iMac. It was my first Mac computer, up until that point I'd built my own computers through college and grad school. I am, however, an electrical engineer, so wouldn't you know, the need to tinker has me wanting to go back to building my own PC again. I'm not terribly wedded to OSX and I really like Windows 7 too, so there's that. Anyway, before this epiphany I was thinking of just upgrading to the latest high end, tricked out 27" iMac (minus an SSD as the prices are crazy through Apple for that). Now that I've decided to build my own rig again I've pretty much set my budget at 27" iMac Cost + $500 give or take (so about $2500 total) to account for the fact that I need to buy a monitor and would like to stick with 27" that I'll be giving up from the iMac - assuming $1k for that, that leaves $1500 for a build. However, any rig I build now is going to be somewhat driven by one of the things I've liked about the iMac - the low noise floor of the machine. So some of my initial decisions have been
I know I'll never get as quiet as the iMac since it's essentially a laptop machine, but I want to pay more mind to working with that. Hence, the first buying decisions. My philosophy always was, put a good deal of money into the "keeper" things you'll keep a while if you can (unless it's a throwaway system). So I'm willing to spend relatively big bucks on 1) a monitor, 2) a case, 3) a power supply.
1) I still own and use my 21" Sony Trinitron GDM-500PS that I bought back in 1999 for about $1500. Just look at this thing (these are not pictures of my actual monitor):
Still going strong, still amazing, still heavy as hell, but for a monitor more than a decade old I think I've gotten my money's worth.
Anyway, back to current events. I want 27" as one of my primary uses is Lightroom and Photoshop Elements (that's actually my heaviest duty non-gaming task). It seems like the new Dell U2711 is about the only game in town aside from the 27" Apple Cinema Display, both with resolutions of 2560 x 1440. They use the same panel, but the Dell has a CCFL backlight and is matte the Apple uses LED backlight and is glossy. It seems many consider the Dell better for photo work, but we'll have to see where I go on this. They're about the same price though the Dell is likely to be found for a lower price or on special as time goes on more so than the Apple. The whole glossy vs. matte means little to me, I can go with either. The Apple is only Displayport though, which would affect my graphics card decision I suppose.
2) The main reason my want to build a PC got ignited is because I went looking at sites and came across a case I freaking fell in absolute love with. The
Silverstone Fortress 2.
Damn, I drool looking at that thing. The 90 degree rotated motherboard, the I/O on the top, the clean lines, the fans - the FREAKING FANS!!!!! The best part is that it's recommended by Silent PC Review as being a good quiet system case, so I feel it's a good base and is likely to last through a good many system upgrades (did I mention I even still have the server tower case I used in the build back 1999 that I used the Trinitron monitor for? Yeah, I keep everything). That all seems to make the asking $200+ price worth it.
3) Power Supply is a bit more up in the air since it will depend on how I go with other stuff. I'm trying to basically pick from the units Silent PC Review suggests. My initial thought is the Seasonic X750 but I'm not sure that will be enough.
I also think I'll forgo an internal optical drive of any kind and get a USB one for install duties. I think I'm also going to go SSD for the system drive, or maybe get one of those hybrid drives to have more storage without having two separate drives in the machine.
In terms of everything else, I'm currently thinking Bulldozer is too far away to worry about on the AMD side, and I'm unsure about the Sandybridge schedule (need to read up). I could always just basically match what I was going to buy in the iMac, an i7 of some kind.
My main uses are, as I said, Lightroom, Photoshop Essentials, I do some hobbiest programming and development but nothing that requires a ton of power. Since I'm outlaying so much cash already I figure I may as well make it a good gaming rig as well, though I'm not sure that will result in a "quiet" system (I do like a tad bit of white noise from my machine though).
I haven't kept up with modern graphics cards (the last card I bought was an ATI 880GTS), so I'm not sure where I should be looking to push a 2560x1440 resolution screen. In gaming should I even expect to push that native resolution or just go lower resolution and have the card scale? In any event, I was thinking of doing a GTX460 SLI setup, but again undecided.
Anyway, just my thoughts. I need to read up on the CPU/Socket schedules, but I figure mobo/cpu/ram/gpu combos are not nearly as important longevity-wise as the initial outlay for a quality monitor, case, and power supply, since they'll stick around through many socket iterations.
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