Well, das tier is, by and large, done. Some minor changes (and one rather large one) were made along the way, but in the end, I have the fastest computer I have ever used. If I had to describe it in one word, the word I would pick would be:

Amazing.

Since this is pretty much the "let's tie up my main part of this thread by describing how it all went" part, I should go ahead and get started - this will take some time. :)

First, let's talk components. What did I settle on?

<ul>
<li>Lian-Li PC-12 Aluminum Case
<li>Enermax EG465P-VE Power Supply
<li>Tyan Tiger MP S2460 Motherboard
<li>Athlon MP 1600+ x2 Processors
<li>Crucial PC2100 256MB DIMMS x4 RAM
<li>Thermalright SK6 x2 Heat Sinks
<li>Delta 60MM 38CFM x2 Fans
<li>Visiontek Xtasy 6964 64MB DDR GeForce3 Ti 500 Video Card
<li>Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Value Sound Card
<li>3Com 905CX-TXM Network Interface Card
<li>IBM 60GXP 60GB Hard Drive
<li>Samsung 19K1504 Black-bezel DVD drive
<li>Panasonic JU-256A226P Black-bezel Floppy drive
<li>Panaflo 120MM High output case fan
<li>Panaflo 80MM x3 High output case fan
<li>Generic chromed 120MM Fan grille
<li>Generic crhomed 80MM x2 Fan grille
<li>6 feet of C-strip Edge-covering rubber
<li>Panaflo fan tail x4
<li>Rubber washers x16
<li>Fan screws x16
<li>Microsoft Natural Elite keyboard
<li>Belkin Soho F1DS104T KVM switch
<li>2 sets of Belkin KVM cables
<li>1 A-B USB cable
<li>Belkin F5D5130-5 Network switch (my old one died!)
<li>Rounded IDE cables x2 from NewEgg
<li>Rounded Floppy cable from NewEgg
</ul>

Okay. So that's what I bought. The case came with the hole pre-cut in the top, so I put some C-strip in there, followed by the fan, fan grill, some rubber washers and the massive screws I bought for the job. Of course, I tacked on a Panaflo fan tail so I could hook it up to my motherboard. :) Bare wire leads are great and all, but they're not so useful when you're trying to hook a fan straight up to the motherboard. I also installed the two fans in the front, as well as the Panaflo fan in the back. That required some work, as I covered previously. With the DVD and floppy drives installed, there wasn't really much else I could do until I got the motherboard. Once I had everything (this past weekend), I began doing the real assembly of the system. Everything went pretty much how I expected it to - I put the motherboard on the slide-out motherboard tray, placed the cards in their slots and installed the hard drive. I dropped the processors in their spots and then went to work on smoothing out the bottom of the SK-6 heatsinks. Lemme tell you, it took some doing. You need to be careful doing this if you choose to, because you don't want to make it un-flat. It needs to make a good connection with the processor core, and should be smooth. Well, after probably 20 minutes of work with some steel wool, I had it looking pretty good. So I dabbed some thermal paste on those processors and put the heatsinks on. Lo and behold, I didn't crack the processors. :) So that's definitely a good thing. Anyway, I slid the motherboard tray back in, wired everything back up, hooked the system up to my KVM setup and prayed. Now comes the moment of truth: does it work? Will it POST?

I pushed in the power button and... it did. :) No problems whatsoever. Everything was recognized and I was happy. So I started booting Debian's install disks - gotta get this thing set up? By now it's about 1 AM Saturday morning/Friday night. I was pretty tired. After getting a base Debian system installed with no hassle and getting nVidia drivers installed with little hassle (some, but not too bad), I could not get the system to recognize both processors. Recompiled kernel with different settings. No luck. One processor, it said. "Screw you", I said. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed. I spent about an hour trying to get it to work and it didn't. So, I started downloading RedHat ISOs.

Saturday morning came and I installed. Wow! System won't boot. Okay, so far, I'm not too impressed. Let's try this again. Install.... system won't boot! Alright. Third time better be a charm. Install... boots! With SMP, no less. I was tickled. No hassle getting nVidia drivers installed. No hassle getting anything installed, actually. So, I said to Debian, "I love you, but I will keep you for single-processor boxen." I began moving my home directory over to das tier. This took quite some time, just like copying 10 gigs of data normally does. I was also very careful about what I backed up - for example, my .gaim, .xchat & .licq folders came over (as well as my .q3a, hehe), but my .gnome and the like stayed - there were only certain settings I wanted to move over. I spent considerable time re-building my desktop, making Sawfish and GNOME work exactly the way I wanted them to. I installed a lot of programs that I have come to rely on, such as ntpd and the like. I tried to stick with RPMs only (the best way to make a RedHat box hate you is to compile everything from source! I found this out the hard way.), and I succeeded. Anything that I need to compile myself (things like MPlayer, for example), I will compile, then make an RPM of and install that. I really do not want to break this box at all. The thing with RPMs is that you really can't do half & half - either you're all RPM, or you're all source. RPM's dependency checking and whatnot really really suck, and I think it's an inferior packaging system, but if done correctly (that's the pain in the ass!), it works. So that's what I'll stick to.

So, here it is Wednesday afternoon. I've probably put 20 or so hours into configuring the box the way it needs to be and making sure everything is good. Last night, I moved syphon out from under my desk and put das tier in its place. That's a pretty big switch, considering that syphon has been my main computer (upgraded, of course) since 1998. das tier has huge shoes to fill, but so far, it's filling them nicely. syphon will be kept in its current state for a few months (to make sure I haven't forgotten anything) and then will have a completely new install of some flavor of Linux (I might dual-boot it with BeOS too, or maybe triple-boot it with BeOS & Linux & Windows 2000 - I'm not sure yet). Anyway, syphon is also slated to receive a processor upgrade relatively soon, probaby to 1.2 GHz. That way, it'll be a nice little box for Jenni to learn Linux on. Aren't computers fun?

So. Now, the last part (I guess) - unresolved issues. Yes, I don't have SCSI in the system yet. That will be coming (I think), but I'm not sure when. Luckily, because of the way I'm building the system, a transition to a main SCSI hard drive would be relatively painless, so I'm not real worried about it - when I feel like it, I'll do it. Until then, I'll focus my money on other things.

The other issue is with the front bezel. As it is, it doesn't allow enough air intake. I questioned this previously, and my dad said "it'll be fine". Well, it's not. It's definitely keeping air from getting into the front of the case, and that is not good. The system still runs well with the front bezel on, but I have very high standards for this system and a front bezel that restricts that much air (I can feel a very noticeable difference in the amount of air getting sucked out the back & top whenever I put the bezel on or remove it) is absolutely unacceptable. So, I'm going to install 2 fan ducts in the front, which will allow for free air flow into the case. Currently, the system is sitting bezel-less and the processors are running at a cool 33º C (well, warm, but not in the world of Athlon processors). So while I'm fairly happy with the cooling, the front bezel issue is definitely a significant one and is something I need to take care of.

Overall, I have spent almost exactly $2,100 on the parts and shipping (and occasional tax). When you look at some other "over the top" computers, this is still pretty cheap, especially for everything that I've gotten (did I mention that it's fast?). I consider it money pretty well spent, and I'm definitely very happy with it so far.

I'll conclude this later by posting pictures of the new setup, the innards of the box, etc. I hope you've at least sorta enjoyed watching me blow tons of cash. :)