Components Used
A GeForce 6800 GT was used for this project. We expect prices to drop a bit, making it quite a good choice.
We compiled some hardware that can be considered representative today. As we focused on the platforms, all we changed was the motherboard, processor and memory, leaving graphics card, the hard drive and the power supply unchanged.
Here we picked a 565 W Enermax EG565P-VE together with a GeForce 6800 GT graphics card. The new 7800 GTX was presented two weeks ago, so prices for the 6 series are likely to drop a bit. As for the memory we used some Corsair DIMMs once again. The CMX and CM2X low latency DIMMs are still considered an excellent choice for enthusiast users.
Some of you may wonder why we only used a Western Digital 80 GB WD800 hard drive. The first reason is that we already have several of them with working Windows images for AMD and Intel systems, making it easier for us to run this project. The second reason is the power consumption of hard drives that has not changed much over time. When compared to processors, the motherboard or the graphics card, the hard disk has only a minor impact on overall power consumption.
Only few hard drives consume less than 10 W. This is why we had no scruples using these somewhat old WD800 models.
The power supply we used has an average efficiency of around 70% and can be considered a decent choice, although there are better ones around now.
Corsair again : The low latency CMX and CM2X (DDR) DIMMs are top sellers.
