Al is my fastest machine and the one I use the most. It runs Gentoo Linux.
SuperMicro SC760-A case
The SC760 is just like the SC750, except that it adds an extra 9mm fan on the left side that's supposed to kick in if the primary fan dies, and chassis intrusion detection. My side fan is on all the time, and my chassis intrusion detection is turned off in the BIOS. So I probably should have saved a few bucks and bought the SC750 or some other version of the same Addtronics design.
My case got seriously bashed by UPS. There's a noticable dent on the left rear corner. But it still does the job, and returning it for another one would be a pain, so I decided to keep it.
The $10 Sunon 8mm case-front fan I have isn't powerful enough to make much difference. And the one I used to have died. Bad fans give a false sense of security. Not that my machine's overheating or anything, but I'd really prefer to use a better brand. Unfortunately, the only ones I ever see are the same junky Sunon models.
With those complaints noted, the SC760 is a seriously nice case. It's huge, with more drive bays and power connectors and fan slots than I need. My motherboard sensor is reading about 10C cooler than it was in an In-Win Q500, a huge difference. And unlike the In-Win, the SC760 doesn't have nasty sharp edges on top.
HEC Silent Op 385W Power Supply
My old Abit NF7 wouldn't boot with the 300W PS that came with the SC760, so I got this one. It's got the new extra 12V connector required by some newer boards, allegedly 385W maximum power output, and a reasonably quiet fan.
Asus M3A78-T Motherboard
AM2+ socket, AMD 790FX chipset, AMD 750 south bridge, Marvell 88E8056 Gb ethernet, Azalia audio, ATI HD3300 video, support for 140W CPUs, 4 DDR2 1066 slots.
Pretty nice motherboard. The onboard video is too slow in Linux, but that's probably the drivers rather than the hardware. Network and sound worked easily.
Retail AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition processor
64-bit, quad cores, 512 KB of L2 cache per core. Runs at 3.0 GHz stock. 45nm. 125W.
I'm running this at 3.4 GHz at default voltage with the stock cooler with no drama.
4 Mushkin 2 GB DDR2-1066 DIMMs
They seem stable. I've got 8 GB but I'm still running 32-bit Linux, so I can only use up to 4GB in a single process. Though the kernel is in 64 GB PAE mode, so all 8 GB do work.
eVGA eGeForce 7300LE 256MB onboard
Needed a new video card since PCI Express has replaced AGP. Went with NVIDIA yet again because they have better Linux drivers than ATI. I'm not really a power gamer anymore, so this is plenty. I'd be happier using onboard video to reduce the number of complex parts in my computer by one, but the ATI drivers just aren't good enough yet.
Two Samsung 204B monitors
Nice, not too expensive, 1600×1200 flat panels. The only problem is that some (including one of mine) have a known defect that makes the screen blank every few minutes when using the DVI input. The solution is using the analog input, which is annoying but not really awful.
Western Digital Caviar WD1200JB 120 GB hard disk (IDE, 7200
RPM, 8MB buffer)
My Linux drive was full, and the biggest, fastest IDE drive out there was only $200, so I bit. It's 120MB, it's fast, and it runs quiet and cool.
Samsung HD501LJ 500 GB hard disk (SATA2, 7200
RPM, 8MB buffer)
500 GB for $135. Sheesh. (Note: they're even cheaper now.) I hate the fragile SATA power connectors. Otherwise, SATA is fine, though not exactly a huge improvement over PATA.
Samsung HD753LJ 750 GB hard disk (SATA2, 7200
RPM, 8MB buffer)
They just keep getting bigger and cheaper. This is my backup drive.
NEC NC-3540A DVD-RW
It's a cheap DVD-RW drive. It's fast enough. I still mostly burn CDs rather than DVDs, so it doesn't matter too much.
Yamaha System 45 speakers
The Yamaha 45W bundle consists of the YST-M15 speakers and the YST-MSW10 subwoofer. I'm very impressed with the speakers, for their size and price, but less so with the subwoofer. Just doesn't
add as much as I would expect to the sound, considering the price.
Logitech Optical Mouse
I'm using one of the simple ones with two buttons plus a clickable scroll wheel. That's enough. I got tired of replacing batteries in my cordless mouse and moved it to my laptop, which gets used less.
IBM Model M PS/2 keyboard
www.pckeyboard.com
www.modelm.org/mboard.html
The most perfect keyboard ever made. Weighs as much as a small truck. Clicks loudly enough to keep the neighbors awake. Will never break. Has no stupid/evil Windows 95 keys. A bargain at any price.
Mitsumi 1.44 MB 3.5″ floppy drive
Yes, Apple, we still need writable, removable, bootable devices. Floppies are too small and slow, but nothing else has the same level of hardware support. (USB thumb drives are getting there, though.) Mitsumi has a well-deserved reputation for making cheap junk, but their floppy drives seem to hold up fine. The new motherboard has the floppy connector way on the bottom, and the cable is too short, so this is actually not connected. (But it's there just in case.)
Lexmark Optra E312L Laser Printer
A cheap laser printer that I got several years ago. The "L" version was cheaper than the full E312 because of a "starter" (read: 1/4 full) toner cartridge, and lack of advertised PostScript support. Turns out the "starter" cartridge lasted me for several years, and the printer actually supports PostScript fine, at least from Linux and Mac OS. (Maybe they crippled the Windows driver?)
Trendnet TE100-P1P Ethernet Print Server
My new motherboard lacked a parallel port, so I bought one of these gizmos with an Ethernet jack on one end and a parallel port on the other, to turn it into a network printer. I later found out that my printer has a well-hidden USB port, so I didn't really need this. But it was only $30, and it lets the printer work even when my computer is off, so I kept it.
In case you're having problems configuring one of these, it comes up with the IP 192.168.0.1 from the factory. So you need to do something like sudo route add -net 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 dev eth1, so that your computer knows how to reach that IP. Then you can visit http://192.168.0.1 in your browser, which gives you a config web page. Then you can select DHCP (assuming you have a DHCP server), change the hostname to something you can remember, turn on the second server port for http / ipp support, and change the ipp queue name to something you can remember. So now I can print to mine from CUPS using the simple URL ipp://lexmark/ipp