*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

Back last December I posted an article about building a new developer rig.  Fast forward a few months and I was finally able to make it happen.  Well, almost.  I say almost because I didn’t build the *exact* machine I listed earlier.  I skimped on a few parts here and there to pour the foundation for something I can upgrade overtime, yet something that would give me a great bang for the buck based on my needs as a developer.

Like any good developer/geek waiting for a new machine to arrive I took all the precautionary steps to make sure the FedEx driver knew someone was home on Saturday.  On large purchases like this some vendors require a signature and FedEx will typically not leave it unless you sign.  Here’s my pre-delivery routine:

1. I got up early and took a shower.  The worst thing is hearing the doorbell ring while in the shower and by the time you get out the driver is gone.  If you are waiting on a delivery like this, you should be done no later than 7:45/8:00.  You just never know when they’ll show up.
2. I opened the front door shades to allow the driver to see into the house.
3. I turned on lights in the living room and turned the entertainment system on and very loud so the driver could hear someone was home.
4. I opened the garage about half-way so the driver could see a vehicle was home.
5. I let the dogs out in the house.  They are great at figuring out when someone pulls up or is outside.  I call them an early warning signal.

With the pre-delivery routine set it was time to wait.  The computer finally arrived about 12:30 PM.  Due to the early warning signal I had in place I was alerted to the drivers presence but I couldn’t find him.  I finally saw him walking back from around the house and he said he had put the computer in the garage.

I finally got the computer into the office ready for the unboxing.  Below are the pictures of the unboxing.

Don’t let the boxes you see below fool you.  The keyboard in the box I didn’t want, but it wasn’t an option to take off the build.  The 650W power supply box had all of my cables in it and the Kingston memory box was completely empty. 

CyberPower is the builder of the machine.  Who is CyberPower?  Well, they have been making custom-built computers for years and they allow hardware enthusiast to build a machine with specific high quality parts.  Since these are custom-built machines, they aren’t packaged like a Dell or Gateway or an Apple.  One mainly buys this product because you can get exactly what you want.  Thus, if you are expecting me to beat them up on their packaging I’m not.  I’ve had friends order from them before and on their custom built machines this is sort of par.  They can do better though, no doubt.  But, I’d rather keep the prices lower than having a pretty package that raises the price another $30-$50 per machine.

Moving on we can see the free t-shirt and bag and the box of cables opened. The bag is cheap and t-shirt not much better (at least for a guy).  I gave the shirt to Ellen.

Getting through the foam we are finally down to the machine.  Seeing the Cosmos-S Cool Master case at the bottom started to get me excited.

The case comes with a cover.  Honestly, I’m not sure why.  

But the cover does make a great doggy bed addition.  I placed the cover on the ground and the dogs immediately thought it was a new bed and added it to their bed in the corner.

After getting the machine out and inspecting the case (which is awesome by the way), I finally got it plugged up ready to load Vista x64.

Surprisingly I thought this machine was going to sound like a 747 taking off when I turned it on.  To my surprise it is extremely quiet (for a PC).  Stay tuned in, next up I’ll share the specs and some benchmarks, you know the REAL FUN STUFF!