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Project Insomnia

Project Insomnia is many things, but in this context it is simply a "braindump" of whatever I happen to be thinking/reading/watching/doing at the moment. Parental guidance suggested.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Advanced System Building 301

FiringSquad.com has an interesting feature today: Advanced System Building 301. This is not an average system setup guide; it's intended for those who are already very comfortable building their own machines and want the latest tips and tweaks.
If you’re reading this, you’ve probably built dozens of desktop computers on your own and for others and consider yourself a seasoned system builder. You laugh at the so-called expertise of Best Buy’s GeekSquad, and are the one doing the teaching when calling technical support. If this sounds like you, you’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to take your system building skills to the next level. This isn’t the place to if you want to sit and listen to an expert tuner take a didactic approach and give lecture on building a highly optimized system. This article isn’t written like a tutorial – this article is for experts.

I did catch the author in a couple of mistakesareas where I disgree, though:
  1. Do not place Windows' swap file on a separate partition of your single hard drive. If you only have one drive, there's no performance gain at all in moving the swap file. If you have more than one, place your swap on the fastest drive you have--and install Windows on the second-fastest.

  2. He suggests updating sound, video, motherboard, etc. drivers from the manufacturers' Web sites before hitting Windows Update. I have to strongly disagree here; unless your components are totally unrecognized by Windows, it's always best to make Windows Update your very first destination once you've secured the machine enough to feel comfortable plugging in the network cable.

  3. There's been quite a lot of research and testing done to optimize the size of Windows swap files. The author doesn't seem to have read it, listing general estimates for various amounts of RAM. A few days of perfcounting will tell you exactly how big to make your swap for your specific system.

  4. Classic search vs. XP search: XP search is not great, but classic search is worse. Leave XP search on and instead install Google Desktop search. It beats them both.

  5. Having IE check for new versions on every load is just a waste of time, since you've enabled automatic Windows Update downloads.

Aside from these admittedly minor, and probably personal preference issues, the article is a good read for anyone who builds systems regularly.
|| Andrew, 8:10 PM || ||

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