NPCT

Ars Technica has a semi-regular feature that seems quite informative and useful: The Ars System Guide, given a cookie-cutter approach to getting the parts to assemble your own machine. I’ve been building my own computers for ten years or so now, but I don’t consider myself an expert at all on the minutia of the bits. I get what I think looks solid and roll with it.

Ars Technica breaks it down nicely into three types: the God Box, the Hot Rod and the Budget Box. I’ll summarize here, but I’m going leave out things that I wouldn’t upgrade, such as monitor (I’m happy with my 17″ LCD). I’m also going to assume Linux and not include the price of Windows that they mention.

• Budget Box: AMD Athlon64 3000+, 512MB PC3200 DDR, NVIDIA Geforce 6600 – $541
• Hot Rod: AMD Athlon 64 3500+, 1GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM, eVGA Geforce 6800GT, M-Audio Revolution 7.1 – $1179
• the God Box: Dual AMD Opteron 252, 4GB Registered/ECC PC3200 DDR, Two BFG Geforce 7800GTX, M-Audio Revolution 7.1, LSI Logic MegaRAID320-2X, etc. – $8000+ (Who buys stuff like this?)

Sunday, July 31st, 2005 at 3:24 pm.
Filed under Computing.
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