Building is in quotes because, so far as I can tell, there isnt much of a financial benefit, anymore, to building your own system as opposed to just ordering one.
That said, I fried my motherboard last week, took it into the shop for a quick fix and they ended up swaping my Jerry-rigged "dual core" (P4 3.2Ghz x 2) with a friggen AMD Sempron and telling me otherwise. Didnt find it until I got home.
Regardless... thats a different fight.
Was over on
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com which, through a bit of shopping around, Im pretty sure offers the most bang for the buck.
Been awhile since I dove into this realm so any thoughts would be appreciated.
Here is what I have spec'ed:
Case: CoolerMaster Stacker 830 Tower 420W Case W/ Side-panel Window.-Standard
Power: CoolerMaster Unit 600 Watts eXtreme Power -Standard
CPU: (Sckt775)Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6850 CPU @ 3.00GHz 1333FSB 4MB L2 Cache 64-bit-Upgrade from standard 2.66Ghz
Cooling Fan: CoolerMaster Liquid CPU Cooling System-Stardard
MoBo: Asus P5N-E nForce 650i SLI Chipset LGA775 FSB1333 DDR2 Mainboard-Standard
Mem: (Req.DDR2 MainBoard)2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory-3GB is another $100. I figure 2GB will get me by just fine and when I need 4, it'll be $50 per gig. 2GB is the 'prepackaged/standard' selection.
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 16X PCI Express-Standard
HD: 500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD-Standard
Optical: 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER-Standard
Optical 2: 16X DVD ROM-Standard
Sound: On board-Standard
Network: ONBOARD 10/100 NETWORK CARD-Standard
Wireless: PCI Wireless 802.11g 54Mbps Network Interface CardStandard
OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Basic w/ Service Pack 1 (64 bit)-Upgrade from 32 bit
Software: Microsoft® OFFICE® 2007 BASIC EDITION-Addition
As configured: $1,474 (with other misc. additions amounting to ~$30)
Key questions:
1.) I can save $160 if I ax MS Office. Now... I need Word and Excel. Can I simply install an older version of MS Office and will it run on Vista without major hiccups?
2.) Do I really want Vista or shall I select XP Home/Professional? Does Vista have any long-term staying power? Is XP really going to fall by the wayside? Is all the scuttlebutt just angry geek-types needing something to talk about over double light soy lattes?
The system, as configured (more or less), gets outstanding bang/buck reviews online and the basic package is set to expire tomorrow (2/24).
Thoughts? Any hardware conflicts as a result of my meddling?
Thanks. Going to go see if I can get through a sortie without the "uber" Sempron freezing.