My buddy eDawg just built himself a new beast. Here's a copy-n-paste from the invoice (totaling $1325 + tax). He's using dual flat-panel monitors imported from a previous system. See here:
- Case Antec | Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Retail » $100
- PSU Corsair | CMPSU-750TX 750W SLI + CrossFire Ready Retail » $110
- Motherboard ASUS | P6T Deluxe V2 LGA 1366 X58 Intel Chipset Retail » $290
- CPU Intel | Core i7 920 Bloomfield 2.66G 45N Quad-Core - Retail » $290
- 2 x Memory | Corsair XMS3 6GB DDR3 PC3 - Retail » $320
- VGA XFX | Radeon HD 4870 1G 256-bit GDDR5 HD-487A-ZWFC PCI Express 2.0 x16 Retail » $145
- Hard Drive 250G | Western Digital Caviar Blue 7200-RPM 8MB Cache SATA2 - OEM » $45
- DVD Burner Lite-On | Black 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 22X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW SATA - OEM » $25
- Windows 7
This system has 12 gigs of memory (2 x 6-gig sticks). That's downright decadent. I think he could arrested for having so much memory (without a permit). We hate you, eDawg. Actually, that motherboard can handle (up to) 24 gigs .. in triple-channel mode.
I said, "Dang, you probably oughta call your local power company and let them know whenever you're fixin' to start that beast .. so they can tweak bus frequency up to 62-cycles, so you don't bring down the whole western grid."
I asked why he didn't opt for a giant 2-TB drive for storage, or a 10K-rpm Raptor to run his system & programs .. or better yet » a solid state drive (drool).
I remember back when we ordered and built his very first custom system. That wasn't long after eDawg's dad married my friend » Maria. We all lived in this big 5-level Euro-style mansion that eDawg's dad built (which later sold for several $mil) cut into the hillside high above Laguna .. with a killer 180-degree view of the Pacific. Ah, the good ol' days .. sitting out on the deck and watching the sun go down.
••• today's entry continues here below •••
Lots of kids lived there .. Evan, Mikaela, Nicholas, Nikolai. All their friends would stop by, too, including Mikaela's fashionable & tendy high school girlfriends. There's something very cool about a bunch of kids running around a big house, stopping in to chat whenever .. sometimes asking for help with their homework. Dostoevsky said the soul is healed by being with children.
In fact, that's where the Bug was conceived. (In "the big house," as it was called.) Mikaela was the one who came up with his name. But that's another story. eDawg now lives up in Santa Barbara, where he went to party .. uh, I mean » college.
The only problem he had came when he pressed the POWER button for the first time, cuz he forgot to plug in the power cable for the CPU. [ eDawg should not be confused with thee Dawg .. my buddy from the Navy, who lives in NYC. ] Regulars will recall that I have built a few PC's in my day .. mostly ones that were designed to edit digital video .. back when such a thing was not easy to do.
I love designing & building computers. Oh, baby! When you take the CPU out of the box and insert it into the motherboard .. and lock it down. Better than sex. (Well, almost.) Then you press the START button. Nirvana. (I'm drooling on my keyboard.) Might need a cold shower.
My experience has been » building your own computer doesn't really save you any money. Rather, it allows you to get higher quality components for the same price you'd pay for a pre-built system. This is easily verified by doing the math.
You get components that are bigger, faster & sport more features. They're manufactured to higher standards and often come with better warranties. You could argue that this translates into a more stable system. But either way, you get more years of use with better performance (= more enjoyment).
UPDATE - eDawg just sent a link to his 3DMark benchmark results .. see » here.
