Ultimate Developer Workstation 2015 – Part 1

This is the first post of a 4-part series:

 

1. Ultimate Developer Workstation 2015 –  Part 1 Planning

2. Ultimate Developer Workstation 2015 –  Part 2 Building

3. Ultimate Developer Workstation 2015 –  Part 3 Performance and tuning

4. Ultimate Developer Workstation 2015 –  Part 4 Software and tools

 

As a Senior Consultant for Premier Support for Developers with a focus on SharePoint technologies, I mostly work with large environments and large code bases. Having fast development workstations able to support Visual Studio with 50+ projects in a solution and be able to support multiple SharePoint VMs is an absolute must for my work.

While I do not travel to my customer’s sites I work from my dedicated home office and am proud of this work environment. About every three years I build a new development workstation in order to keep up with the latest technologies. Currently I am due for a new workstation and would like to share this build with you.

 I spent some time considering whether to build a new physical workstation or use Azure VM. As one of my team mates said “Azure is my workstation.” I love Azure and its capabilities but still decided that a fast and powerful workstation in my home office is the best option for me.

After convincing my wife that “I really need” J a new workstation, I was given a budget of $4,000.

What I am looking for in a new workstation:

 

1. Speed

2. Overclocking with stability

3. Low noise

4. Windows 10

5. Did I mention speed?

 

To save some of my budget I will reuse existing parts I already own:

 

• 2 - 24” BenQ monitors
• 2 – 22” LG monitors
• Crucial M4 512 MB SSD

 

After extensive research and discussions with my friends here is are the specs I settled on:

 

• Corsair Obsidian 750D Black Aluminum / Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case
• CORSAIR HXi HX850i CP-9020073-NA 850W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Full Modular Power Supply
• Corsair Air Series SP120 Quiet Edition CO-9050006-WW 120mm Twin Pack High Static Pressure Case Fan
• 2 x Corsair Air Series AF140 Quiet Edition CO-9050009-WW 140mm High Airflow Case Fan
• Intel Core i7-5960X Haswell-E 8-Core 3.0GHz LGA 2011-v3 140W BX80648I75960X Desktop Processor
• ASUS RAMPAGE V EXTREME LGA 2011-v3 Intel X99 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Extended ATX Intel Motherboard
• G. SKILL Phoenix Blade FM-PCx8G2R4-480G Half Height 480GB PCI-Express 2.0 x8 MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
• 2 x ASUS STRIX-GTX970-DC2OC-4GD5 GeForce GTX 970 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 HDCP Ready SLI Support G-SYNC Support Video Card
• CORSAIR Hydro Series H110 Extreme Performance Water/Liquid CPU Cooler. 280mm
• 2 x G. SKILL Ripjaws 4 series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2800 (PC4-22400) Memory Kit Model F4-2800C15Q-32GRBB

 

By design, I limited my choices to three manufactures: Corsair, Asus and G. Skill. I am hoping this will eliminate any build conflicts. I purchased all items from NewEgg and am now waiting on delivery. With rebates and discounts I am right below my budget.

In my next post I will discuss the actual build of my new workstation. You can expect many pictures as well.

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 21, 2015
  20015 - do you mean 2015?

• Anonymous
  April 21, 2015
  Erik, nice catch. Thanks.