nicc777's Journal: The ultimate hardware selection for a dual boot system

This is probably going to be one of those journal entries that will grow arms and legs, but I am interesting in putting together a high end home system in a dual boot role:

The Windows Partition - this will mainly be for games. Although I do not yet have any of the latest games (released in 2008), I have a stack of older games. In fact, for some games I will probably have to install an older version of Windows. Here is my dilemma: the older versions of Windows may give problems on the "ultimate" home system, so I guess one of my questions is if it's worthwhile to play the older games (think Win9* days) in VMWare or something... Will have to think about this a bit :-)

The Linux Partition - I have a lot of development and infrastructure related projects, so already I am running out of steam on my current desktop when it comes to a Xen/VMWare dev environment (I can run up to 4 VM's at times, but ideally I would like to run 8 or 10).

summary - The Windows partition is for games and the Linux partition is for real work :-)

Ideally I would like to try and let the all the hardware be supported in both Windows and Linux environments. One frustration I currently have (as an example) is my scanner (a Canon CanoScan 4200F). At the time I got the scanner, I was still running Windows exclusively on my home desktop. Now that system is liberated, and I lost the use of my scanner - highly frustrating! I would like to make better decisions this time with a fair amount of planning.

The Hardware Selection

So here my journey starts. I need to make purchasing decisions on the following hardware:

• Case
• Power Supply
• Motherboard
• CPU
• RAM
• Cooling
• Sound Card
• Video Card
• Storage
• Input Devices
• Other (TV card, printer, scanner, speakers)

the Case - I am not fussy about cases, but my concern for a high end system is around cooling, so I really need some input from old hardware hackers as to which cases is ideal. My budget for just the bare case is around US$200. I was thinking along the lines of a "LIAN LI PC-V1000BPLUSII W"... Any ideas/pointers would be most welcome :-)

The Power Supply - I'll admit that I have no clue when it comes to power/electricity. My current guess is to go from something like a 600 to 800 watt power supply ??? Again any advice here could be most helpful. I am hoping to spend less then US$100 on a power supply.

Motherboard - Because of my DEV requirements and the outlook to run many VM's, I am thinking quad core... The current board that looks like it will do the thing is the "GIGABYTE GA-X48-DQ6 X48". I am hoping to spend less then US$400 on a motherboard :-)

to be continued... I have to get to work now...