I use a Dell precision 490 at work, and it’s wonderful. Two Quad-Core 2.0GHz Xeon E5335′s, 4GB RAM, Raid 0 Striped HDDs. With 8 cpu’s I can run a lot of virtuals and still use the machine. 

But I’ve been spoiled by this machine,  and now I want one for home.  Unfortunately they are expensive. As configured that work machine was over $3,000.  Well worth it, but thats out of my budget.

So my project, and the subject of this article, is to see how cheaply I can duplicate the performance of my dell precision 490 workstation. Read the rest of this entry »