Desktop hardware recommendation

[Jamon Camisso]

On 5/14/2011 5:12 PM, Thomas Milne wrote:
> I went back to look for one of the 'what would Lennart Do?' posts on
> the list and the last one I found was from a couple of years ago. If
> someone were in the market for a solid performing system for $500 -
> $600 today, what would be the quality hardware?
> 
> I'm already sold on Western Digital for storage and NVidia for
> graphics. I know Asus motherboards are generally solid, but don't know
> what would be a current favourite. I'm assuming the Intel Core I7
> processors are a good choice?

An i7 based system around 600 isn't going to take advantage of the
processor imo. I doubt you'll find a decent i7 for less than $225, add a
motherboard and that's over $300 for a reasonable Asus board. An i5
would likely be more appropriate.

Personal preference is AMD chips, but that's me. My current system
consists of:

Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black
Patriot 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz
Vertex 2 SATA II 2.5" 60GB (SSD for root filesystem)
WD Caviar Black 1000GB, 7200RPM (a couple)
OCZ ModXStream Pro 650W PSU
Gigabyte ATI Radeon 6850

If you have a power supply, and cut out the SSD, to build the
same thing with an equivalent Nvidia card comes in at $605-ish after tax
and rebates using components from Canada Computers. The Video card can
be an Nvidia 460 series too. This presumes you have a case as well.

But you can save yourself a bunch of money if you just get more ram and
an SSD for now..

Jamon
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