I recently surpassed one million total workunits on BOINC. That quite an accomplishment when back in the 90s it would take a whole year to reach a thousand work units. How did I do it? I rebuilt one of my older media center computers named "Unicron".

This is his story.

Meet the new Unicron, "reborn". Built in speakers, HD DVD and Blu-Ray Support.

So, I had this old HP Media Center PC named "Unicron" for the past several years right? Well, over the course of the past few weeks the power supply blew out for the second time in two years. Why? Well, basically because the power supply was a cheap piece of crap. However, due to the form factor of the Media Center PC, it wouldn't fit a regular power supply and keep its stylish curves. So, you are stuck using the stock supply. Well, guess what? HP doesn't make these media center PCs anymore, so the power supply is next to impossible to find. When you can find them the prices on these guys are over $200 for a piece of faulty hardware that would just die in another year.

Fuck that.

AMD Phenom II 955 4x processor before I installed the heatsink & fan.

So, what to do? Take that $200 and invest it towards a complete rebuild of the PC in question. First, to decide how powerful this machine was going to be and what I could aim for. My target was the most extreme performance for the price, quiet, not power hungry (which marked out Intel's top of the line Core i7 cpus) and did I mention performance? I wanted this to scream while running frozen cool, all in a small form factor and sipping on the power. I definitely had my work cut out for me.

I originally opted for the Radeon 5850, but due to supplies constraints (and power consumption) I went with the Radeon HD 5770. It's a beast and it draws next to nothing power wise.

For the CPU I decided on the AMD Phenom II 955, it's a quad-core cpu running at 3.2 GHz per core. But, that's all coming from a 95 watt cpu. AMD has some great 6x CPUs heading to the market in 2010 and even some 12x later. This CPU would not only give me the best "bang for buck" performance but also allow for an easy upgrade path for tweaking the system in the future. Did I mention it's a snap to overclock? Yep, even at it's stock configuration I've been able to overclock it to 4Ghz per core. For the motherboard, I picked a ECS 785g AMD chipset with a AM3+ socket for the CPU.

Shot of the memory banks, with "tracers" which are led patterns on the top of the memory for stats.

Memory wise, I opted for 8 gigs of DDR3 memory. For the operating system, I decided on the 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate for my main OS (although I might install Ubuntu, eComStation and Mac Snow Leopard on different partitions before it's all over with). Why 7? It's the best operating system Microsoft has ever created, hands down. That's no joke. Although I do know that's not saying much given their track record...

Brand new 23" inch 1080p widescreen monitor.

I needed a new monitor for the system, as the old 4:3 LCD just wasn't going to cut it. Finally found a great deal on a new Samsung on eBay. Just remember, when building a new machine for yourself, NewEgg, eBay and Amazon are your best friends. Don't try to get everything from the same place. You can get better deals on different parts from different vendors. Also, like to throw a shoutout to frozencpu.com for their sound dampening material. Stuff is great!

Das Keyboard. The best keyboard in the world. Period.

I also wanted an small form factor that would be easy to move and transport into the living room and connect to the HDTV. But, I also wanted a quieter machine. What to do with the final build? Line the inside of the case with sound dampening material from frozencpu.com - worked well and lower the decibel level of the machine a number of notches. The final system runs cools and quiet even while overclocked, runs anything that I can throw at it (I'm not a huge PC Gamer, but it has run Shadowrun, COD4, Galactic Civ2, Sins of a Solar Empire all at max settings running in 1080p without a single frame dropped).

Hard drive wise, I opted for solid state disk for the main operating system and then a 1 Terrabyte drive for the storage. It doesn't need much space as it's connected to my CAT6 Gigabit wired home network with about 10 Terrabytes of storage on the main server. Besides that, thanks to the main SSD drive Windows 7 boots in less than 10 seconds. Seriously. SSD is the wave of the future, now. It's the single biggest performance upgrade you can make.

For the keyboard, I went with a mechanically switched keyboard that makes those old school "clicks" when you type. Nothing feels better. It's called "Das Keyboard", just google it if you are in the market for a new keyboard. You won't be disappointed.

Doing this past project reminded me that while I build and configure PCs for a living, but it is mostly just work. But, building something for yourself? Fun and a lot more rewarding.

"Unicron" has been reborn with one million BOINC workunits down.