Two dual core Opteron 270, 4GB ram, tyan thunder k8we, three 500gb sata 3gb/s drives (who doesn't need 1.5T of storage?), and a fancy antec case.

It's been 6+ years since I've purchased computer hardware, so there was much learning to be had. Since I intend on running vmware server on this, I really wanted one of the new Intel chips that had virtualization. I also wanted two dual core processors. So, I found a nice Xeon 3000 that suited my price and power needs, but it turns out nobody makes dual-socket motherboards for Xeon 3000-series. Intel's website explicitly says thes are single-processor systems only. Sigh. Stupid Intel, they'd have my money now if they didn't make that (bad) decision.

So, the next chip up is the Xeon 5000-series. These processors are more than twice the cost of a Xeon 3000-series, and are very not worth it to me just to have virtualization. That pushed me towards AMD. I looked at benchmarks and features and ended uplooking at AMD's dual core Opteron line. Opteron 275's were at my price point, but the best price was at Newegg and they were sold out. Opteron 270's were $30ish cheaper, and only 200mhz slower, so I bought two of them. If I'm feeling adventurous, I'll overclock them and save myself time and $60, right? ;)

I'm really looking forward to having some new hardware. Wee!

On another note, I surfed the internets looking for items of need, reviews, and prices. Everything I found was either only $5 cheaper than newegg, or the cheapest was at newegg. I heart newegg. 6ish years ago, that's where I bought my 1.4gHz, then-nearly-top-of-the-line system. I'm glad to see they're still around and doing quite well.