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So first, for those who might be interested, let me give a breakdown on components used.

• Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad Core. 2.66Mhz, 8Megs of L2 cache.
• Intel D975XBX2 (Bad Axe 2) Motherboard.
• Two 2×2GB G.Skill DDR2 Memory Kits @ 667Mhz. That’s 8GB total.
• XFX GeForce 7900GS 256Meg Video Card
• 2 Seagate 7200.10 500GB Hard Drives (Perpendicular Technology)
• OCZ Technology GameXstream 600W Power Supply
• Thermaltake Armor VA80008 Case

The main reasoning for such a beefy box is I want to run a bunch of Virtual Machines on it, basically build a home lab. The build went pretty smooth, right after I figured out that the motherboards nowdays need 5 power connectors to be happy. Mind you, I haven’t built a new box in maybe 5 years or so…

After installing Windows Vista x64, I went on a mission to find a virtualization engine that will seat on top of Windows and run all my VMs. It would have to natively support 64 bit host and also be able to run 64 bit VMs. Well, Virtual Center R2 seemed to be the only one that would support this at the time, but after battling with the install, configuration and a bunch of DCOM permission errors for a while, decided to go with VMware Workstation 6 Beta and move on to VMware Server when the 64 bit version for Vista becomes available. Gotta say, VMware Workstation 6 Beta’s been working out pretty well so far.

Pictures of the build and setup with some more screenshots are below:

Cheers!

 p.s. thanks to Sash for consulting and recommendations