Klaus Nordby's Militantly Dull Homepage:

My current desktop computer

Here is my current desktop computer, all bought as carefully selected parts and lovingly assembled by myself.

Motherboard: Asus P5Q Pro (like most Asus stuff, it's excellent and very overclocking-friendly)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0 GHz @ 3.9 GHz (I'm hoping, with some better tweaks, so elevate this monster CPU to 4.0 GHz, just for the hell of it)
RAM: 16 GB (4x4 GB) OCZ DDR2 "P45 Special" @ 872 MHz (it is a great joy to let Photoshop CS4 64-bit wallow in RAM)
GPU: Gainward GeForce 7600 GS 512 MB (I don't play computer games, so a very spiffy GPU is largely irrelevant for me, but Photoshop CS4 can now utilize a fast GPU for screen operations so I might upgrade this sometime)
Boot & applications disk: OCZ Solid State Disk Core V2 60 GB (I'm extremely happy with this SSD, despite that its write speeds are not all that great, so I'm soon getting more and better SSDs, they are clearly the future wheras speed & silence are concerned)
Data disks: VelociRaptor 300 GB, Raptor 150 GB, Samsung F1 1000 GB, Samsung F1 500 GB (the two Raptors run in RAID-0 and the array is used as a swap file drive only — I will soon be adding 2-3-4 small and cheap SSD disks to this array)
RAID: Areca ARC1220, 8 ports
Power: Mist 1000 Watts of quiet, reliable power (PSUs don't actually draw their full power all the time, thankfully, their rated wattage is just the maximum they can handle when needed)
Case: Lian-Li PC60 (though old, it's a very nice aluminum case, but as it's a bit noisy and cramped it's due for replacement soon)
Cooling: NorthQ 3580 Siberian Tiger, closed-loop water cooling set, just bought but not installed yet
OS: Vista Home Premium 64-bit (forget all the bad press you've heard about Vista, I'm very pleased with this 64-bit version, it's a rock-steady workhorse)
Display: 24" Eizo ColorEdge CG241W, 1920x1200 native resolution w/ hood (a very pricey monitor, but totally gorgeous and worth every Krone)

On this system, Photoshop CS4 Extended and Illustrator CS4 both cold-launch in two seconds — even "my" contact at Adobe, John Nack, is quite impressed by that. Opening a 500 MB TIF file in Photoshop takes three seconds. This common Photoshop test takes me 17 seconds to run — that is faster than any other machine, PC or Mac, listed there (though the results are a bit dated). So there is no Mac-envy here! Macs cannot be custom-built like this, nor does there yet exist a 64-bit version of Photoshop for the Mac OS.

Update: Here are some speed comparisons, using a very large image file, between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Photoshop CS4. I'm a huge fan of the 64-bit Photoshop, as it, for the first time, makes it endurable to work with really large, complex image files without spending your life waiting for progress bars.

(Yes, I well know these results only pertain to really huge files, and that with more normal-sized files the speed differences between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions are negligible -- but I'm much concerned with the speed of large files, hence I've done these tests. They're not super-scientific, but good enough proof for me that 64-bit Really Really Matters.)