I decided to go for a slightly larger PSU to accommodate all the needs of the components. I also decided to purchase the new Intel Wolfdale CPU running on 45nm instead of the 65nm of the older CPUs. My last decision was to forgo the purchase of a Solid State Disk. The technology is incredible, the only problem is that the new faster disks are not available yet or so expensive that some would cost more than all other components combined in the PC.

Other components have been changed as well. I switched to the Gigabyte motherboard which saves me $10 and received great ratings across the board. The RAM was changed slightly from DDR2 800 to DDR2 1066 which increased the price by $50.

I might get a nice audio card as well, maybe the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer. All other components are still in my old PC and will be used in the new one as well. This includes Samsung DVD writer, Logitech Mouse and Keyboard. I’m thinking of purchasing a new 24″ monitor to replace my old 19″ Samsung monitor.

Any thoughts on this setup ? The PSU should be sufficient to handle everything smoothly. The overall costs are $1,031.91 at the moment.

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I’m not saying that this will be a perfect build. It will be a good allround Pc with enough power for all the applications, games and multimedia that you throw at it.

Please add your opinion about this build because I will need at least another month before I make the purchase and there is not a problem to replace a component if a better one is available. I’m using Newegg for price comparision as always.

I still have not made a decision about the Solid State Drive that I want to purchase and use as the hard drive for the operating system. A good one cuts boot time and application launches in half but they are very rare and expensive. Many of them are called SSD but do not have the read advantages yet. I don’t want to build a PC without them and buy them later because this would mean that I would have to setup Windows and Linux once again when I make that purchase.

I guess I have to pay more attention to hardware websites in the next month and hope that some will write a few comparisons so that I’m able to collect more information about them.

The price for the computer was mainly reduced because I removed the SSD for now which attributed to $700 last month. I made sure to pick a 512 MB video card this time, everything else remained the same.

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All components are chosen from the online store Newegg to be able to compare them with previous months. I will use a best-price-finder before I buy the computer to find the best prices and shops for the components.

Some thoughts. I made several changes to last months components. I changed the memory for instance slightly which added $10 to the costs. The benefit is that the new Dual Channel Kit has a latency of 4 instead of 5.

The video card has been changed as well. This one costs roughly $60 less and is faster than the previous one from Asus. Since most Geforce 8800 GT cards are sold out it remains to be seen which will be available when I make the purchases.

I reduced hard drive capacities from 500 Gigabytes each to 250 again which lowered the price by $100. I have plans to either purchase a third big internal hard drive with a capacity of 1 Terabyte or an external hard drive with at least 500 Gigabytes.

The Solid State Disk is still giving me headaches. I have to make sure that it really lives up to the promise of delivering this incredible speed gain over normal hard drives. The new one that I selected costs almost $700 for 32 Gigabytes. I hope prices are falling fast for those drives and that some magazines or websites will test them so that I have some benchmarks that help me select the right SSD.

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The computer will have everything that is needed to run it except for external components such as a monitor, computer mouse or keyboard because I decided to use those components from my old PC.

The Newegg online shop was my choice to be able to compare prices. It most likely would result in a cheaper price if I would research prices on several online shops. The Geforce 8800GT card is sold out in most locations and you have to be really lucky to buy one before christmas.

The major change in this month is the replacement of the Quad Core CPU with a Dual Core CPU from Intel and the replacement of the two 250 Gigabyte Seagate hard drives with two 500 Gigabyte Seagate hard drives.

G.SKILL 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory	$94.99 USD
MSI P35 Neo2-FR ATX Intel Motherboard	$119.99 USD
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0GHz LGA 775 Processor	$279.99 USD
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler	$21.99 USD
COOLER MASTER CAVALIER 3 CAV-T03-UK Black Computer Case	$59.99 USD
AeroCool ZERODBA ZERODBA-S500 500W Power Supply	$84.99 USD
Seagate 500GB 3.5″ SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive	$239.98 USD
SUPER TALENT FSD32GB25M 2.5″ Internal Solid state disk (SSD)	$499.99 USD
ASUS GeForce 8800GT EN8800GT/G/HTDP/512M Video Card	$299.99 USD

The total price for all components rose from $1,581.90 to $1,701.90 USD which can be largely attributed to the exchange of the two 250 GB hard drives with 500 GB models. The price for the Solid State Disk went up by $70 because I replaced the placeholder from last month with a available one.

Prices will most likely fall in January. Analysts say that SSD, Solid State Disks, will become more affordable in the first quarter of 2008. Lets hope that they are right.

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The total for all those components is $806 which is close to the $800 mark. They are unfortunately forgetting something important here. If you click on the check prices link next to each item of the new pc you will be taken to a “best price” website which displays the best deals for the selected item. It does not add shipping costs to the price which means that you will have to add those to the total amount of money that you are going to spend for the new pc.

Shipping costs would not be a huge problem if you purchase everything from one merchant – it would be one if you select the best price only and buy it from 6-8 different merchants. You could add about $6 to every item that you purchase at different merchants which is not that much but could range between $24 – $40 which have to be added to the total.

Checking the Geforce 7600 GT at the merchants revealed that the cheapest price for the item was $163 and not $109 as claimed in the article. Could be that the card is currently in short supplies and that the prices rose therefor. I know that you can purchase a Geforce 7600 GT for about that price but someone who is inexperienced and uses the link on the website will probably not find it by himself.

I did a quick check and added all cheapest prices and came up with a total of $836 instead of $806. Add shipping costs of $24 to it and the total would be $860.

There is something else missing of course, the display. The article assumes that everyone has a capable monitor at home and does not need one it seems. What if you are stuck with an old 14″ display and need a new one ? If they assume that you have a monitor at home they also should assume that you have a mouse and a keyboard at least which can be used as well.

Last but not least I would suggest a change in the setup. Instead of buying a audio card I would use on board sound and get a more powerful graphics card instead. A Ati Radeon 1950 Pro for instance can be bought for about $165 and should have some impact on gaming performance.

So, the system will be more expensive even if you have a display at home that you can use. It should also be noted that you have to build it by yourself. It does not help that much if you buy a cheap system but are not able to build it.

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