My Next PC

I've always thought long and hard about what to do when my computer dies. I've had this machine since 2001 and it's very much outdated. My next machine is not going to be a pre fabbed order from HP or Dell. I'm going to build it myself.

With the help from the people at TigerDirect, I'm going to show you the parts and costs and the pains that I'm willing to endure to build my next machine. This is going to get really geeky, so be warned.

I'm starting off with a monitor. I'm ready for a flat panel LCD. I was tedious at first, because the technolgy wasn't there yet, and the costs were through the roof, but now that the prices have gone down, and the functionality has arrived, I'm ready to get with the program.

The Acer boasts a 19 inch screen, and has a decent 700:1 contrast ratio. That's really all I need. And at about $160.00, not a bad price. I remember when these things were 600 bucks easy. Plus looking at 16.2 million colors on this bad boy will be a pleasant experience!

I'm getting an Ultra Black Aluminus ATX mid tower case to hold my PC. This is a beautiful case, and at only 50 bucks, it's worth getting. I like this review of the case, it says it all:

The motherboard is a beauty. The The Intel Desktop Board D945GCCR has all the functionality that I'm ever going to need. 70 dollars is very good too considering all that it can do. This also has a video which summed it up nicely.

I don't want to spare any expense on the processor. I can get a much higher end chip, but the dual cores that Intel has put out recently really takes my cake. This one's around 150 bones, but to me the processor is the workhorse in any good machine, and this little beauty will zing! With the 2mb cache and the 800 Mhz bus, I'll be zooming through anything!

Memory is not cheap at all. I'm going to start with 2gb of memory and eventually work my way up to 4gb once the need demands it. As long as I have dual channel DDR2, and can handle the 800MHz speeds that it claims, it's going to fit perfectly into my system. I wasn't a fan of Corsair until recently. I'm willing to give them a try. The memory is going to set me back about 100 dollars.

250gb hard drive for 70 bucks? You're kidding me right? Not these days. With people looking to buy up to a terabyte of hard drive, the prices have dropped dramaticaly on smaller hard drives. I just never in my life imagined saying that a 250gb hard drive is small, but with the internet going crazy with media these days, movies, music, internet TV, the space runs out pretty quick. With the 120gb hard drive that I already have, this will give me plenty storage for everything!

Well there you have it. All together, building my computer piece by piece, I'll be spending approx. 600 bucks. I plan on just buying these parts one at a time, every couple of months, because I cannot escape being practical.

There are other things that I'm going to have to buy too, such as a sound card for my podcasting, fans for the processor, etc, but this gives a really good summary of what my next computer is going to look and feel like. All that wold be left for me to start fragging on Unreal Tournament 2007!