After 5 years of being a Macintosh user and owner, I purchesed the parts to make my own x86 system. I did it to play the odd Windows-only game (CoD2 and the upcoming Spore) as well as for working on OpenSolaris.
It’s a Athlon64 3200 CPU, 1GB of Corsair RAM, and a GeForce 6600 on a Asus A8N-VM CSM motherboard in a mico-ATX package (case by Antec).
So far I’ve enjoyed it. It compiled Solaris Nevada build 34 in 2 hours, 7 minutes and plays CoD2 really well on my 20″ Apple Cinema Display.
 Here’s some system detail courtesy of CPU-Z:
CPU-Z Report
|
CPU-Z version 1.32.1.
|
CPU(s) |
  |
Number of CPUs |
1 |
|
Name |
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ |
Code Name |
Venice |
Specification |
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+ |
Family / Model / Stepping |
F F 2 |
Extended Family / Model |
F 2F |
Brand ID |
4 |
Package |
Socket 939 |
Core Stepping |
DH-E6 |
Technology |
90 nm |
Supported Instructions Sets |
MMX, Extended MMX, 3DNow!, Extended 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, x86-64 |
CPU Clock Speed |
2009.1 MHz |
Clock multiplier |
x 10.0 |
HTT Bus Frequency |
200.9 MHz |
L1 Data Cache |
64 KBytes, 2-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size |
L1 Instruction Cache |
64 KBytes, 2-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size |
L2 Cache |
512 KBytes, 16-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size |
L2 Speed |
2009.1 MHz (Full) |
L2 Location |
On Chip |
L2 Data Prefetch Logic |
yes |
L2 Bus Width |
128 bits |
|
|
Mainboard and chipset |
  |
Motherboard manufacturer |
ASUSTeK Computer INC. |
Motherboard model |
A8N-VM CSM, Rev 1.xx |
BIOS vendor |
American Megatrends Inc. |
BIOS revision |
0702 |
BIOS release date |
01/17/2006 |
Chipset |
nVidia GeForce 6100/6150 rev. A2 |
Southbridge |
nVidia nForce 410/430 MCP rev. A2 |
Sensor chip |
Winbond W83627EHF |
|
Graphic Interface |
PCI-Express |
PCI-E Link Width |
x16 |
PCI-E Max Link Width |
x16 |
|
|
Memory |
  |
DRAM Type |
DDR-SDRAM |
DRAM Size |
1024 MBytes |
DRAM Frequency |
200.9 MHz |
FSB:DRAM |
CPU/10 |
CAS# Latency |
3.0 clocks |
RAS# to CAS# |
3 clocks |
RAS# Precharge |
3 clocks |
Cycle Time (TRAS) |
8 clocks |
Bank Cycle Time (TRC) |
12 clocks |
DRAM Idle Timer |
16 clocks |
# of memory modules |
2 |
Module 0 |
Corsair DDR-SDRAM PC3200 – 512 MBytes |
Module 1 |
Corsair DDR-SDRAM PC3200 – 512 MBytes |
|
|
Software |
  |
Windows version |
Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (Build 2600) |
DirectX version |
9.0c |
|