Getting it all together

Last Friday I started receiving the parts for Gemini. Pictured here from top left to right is

1. Enermax Galaxy 1250 Watt power supply
2. Intel S5520SC motherboard
3. ATI Radeon 4870 graphics card (temporary)
4. LG 50 GB Blu-ray reader/writer
5. two Corsair Dominator 6 GB 1600 MHz memory kits
6. two Intel Xeon 5580 processors
7. Intel RAID 5 activation key for the S5520SC
8. 250 GB HD (temporary) for testing
9. ArctiClean Thermal Material Remover
10. Arctic Silver Ceramique - thermal paste
11. ArctiClean Thermal Surface Purifier
12. Sun Microsystems keyboard and mouse
    

I was able to get all these parts from NCIX locally (except for the keyboard) and they gave me a nice discount too.

I could not find any keyboards I liked anywhere, but I have an old Sun Workstation that still has one of the better keyboards I have ever used. However it's not compatible with personal computers. So I ordered one of Sun's newer keyboard kits that is compatible with personal computers. Now if only I could find some way to get all the keys to work with Windows.

The last piece I'm waiting for - the biggie - is my Silverstone TJ-07 case with a CoolIT Systems Boreas and Domino WS 240 water cooling for the graphics cards and CPUs. Then I can finally assemble the first phase of Gemini.

On back-order I have 6 Western Digital Enterprise 2 terabyte disk drives coming. They are so new they are still a month or two away, and in the mean time I have a smaller 250 GB drive I can use for testing.

I've already got a copy of 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate Release Candidate. When Microsoft finally release Windows 7 in October, I'll go get a legitimate copy then.

I'm also planning to get a Dell UltraSharp 3008WFP 30'' Widescreen LCD Monitor - but I can get that just about any time. I may as well spread out my spending over a few pay cheques.

In the next phases I plan to add a FusionIO ioDrive, but I'm still waiting for them to announce when you can boot from the device. That's going to be my boot drive and it's going to be blazing fast.

In the final phase I plan to get two ATI Radeon 5870 X2 graphics cards, and two Koolance water blocks to connect to the Boreas water chiller. Hopefully these will be ready sometime this fall. I will be ready for some intense GPU overclocking. Also, these cards will be the first to support DirectX-11, the new graphics standard in Windows 7.

We plan to move in about a month to a slightly larger place. One of the things I intend to do is have a dedicated 15 Amp, 240 Volt circuit added to the second bedroom just to power Gemini. It will be a great way to warm the room in the winter. At any rate, it will be interesting to see if I finally get Gemini powered up before we have to move.

When I get things working relatively well I will probably have a coming out party for Gemini.