I've been rolling my own for about 10 years.

Lots of RAM! I would consider 512 MB a minimum for a dev machine, especially with .Net.

For developing business apps, 2D graphics is more important than 3D graphics. Fast 3D graphics does not guarantee fast 2D graphics. I haven't done dual monitors because my desk space hasn't permitted it in the past, but I would agree this can be a plus based on seeing friend's machines in action. I like my Matrox dual-head card, but have also liked the ATI's I've used.

I have used many motherboards from various manufacturers. If you want to keep the machine for a long time (more than two years;) you want a manufacturer that does a good job supporting the board with BIOS updates. Otherwise, when Longhorn is released you may have to get a new mobo. I like Asus because of this reason. You will find others who have different favorites. I don't like too much stuff built-in on the mobo because it can cause complications if I upgrade hardware or operating systems, but you can save a lot by getting the LAN adapter and/or audio built in. I would avoid built-in video unless it is easy to disable and the mobo includes a good AGP slot. Be sure you have at least one or two spare PCI slots for future expansion or in case the built-in LAN or audio adapters die.

Regarding CPU's, don't waste money spending an extra 50% for mobo, CPU and RAM speed that is only 10-15% faster in performance. You are better off buying more RAM.

Get a good case. Cheap ones come with cheap power supplies and poor ventilation. You will likely be taking the cover off and on a lot the first few weeks. Make sure you have a big enough power supply as well as a good one. But don't go overboard because too big a power supply will not regulate its voltages as well if it is way under utilized. I like Lian Li all aluminum cases because they run so cool (I don't have or need air conditioning) and are easy to work in, but there are several other good cases. I like PC Power and Cooling's power supplies. The only time I had a problem with one, they replaced it without batting and eye. The other ones are all still working great. There are a couple other good brands too, but beware the cheapies.

If you want to write CDs or DVDs, spend a few bucks extra for a decent brand. The cheap ones make a higher percentage of coasters.

SCSI is nice, but these days isn't worth the hassles and cost for most development machines unless you have a lot of SCSI devices other than the HD or more than four IDE devices. With enough RAM, the HD isn't overworked so much that SCSI is a significant advantage on a work station. (Servers are a different story, where you often have more HDs on the chains and can really use the extra few CPU cycles saved by SCSI's smarter controller.) If you only have one HD, one CD/DVD device, and maybe a tape drive, IDE is easier to set up and way less expensive. If you need SCSI for a good tape backup, you can get a more modest card that will work fine for tape backup.

Most HDs are plenty fast enough. The fastest ones tend to be the loudest and the quickest to fail. Buffer size is more important than speed for a lot of applications.

If you need a modem, get an external one. The internal modems these days (with the exception of a few very high end models) are garbage, relying on the CPU to do most of the work.

Don't forget: lots of RAM!

Pick your compents and search Google news groups for comments, to be taken with a grain of salt unless there are a lot of comments from DIFFERENT posters. But don't get too hung up on research. No matter what you do, somebody with more dollars than sense will build something better and the bleeding edge deserves that name: better to be conservative than agressive. (Unless, of course, you want to switch to being a hardware jockey;)

...Jim Hansen

>Does anyone have any recommendations to make on building your own computer? I came across an article at:
>
>http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1549122,00.asp
>
>on how to build your own gaming machine for under $1,000. What I would like to do is build my own machine, but I'll be using it to develop with Windows XP Professional, Visual Studio.NET, and SQL Server 2000. I am assuming that in a development machine, hard drive performance is more important than graphics performance, but is that true?