[TR] July 2007 System Guide

The July 2007 System Guide has been posted at the Tech Report.

Their add to your newegg.com cart feature makes life easy for all you lazy system builders that don't like doing the research.

The guide includes their Econobox ($538.44), Grand Experiment ($1061.89), Sweet Spot [my personal favorite] ($1362.82), and Double-Stuff Workstation ($3144.89) systems.

There are also alternative suggestions for each system and a peripherals section that covers things like monitors, mice, speakers, and keyboards.

As usual, I must mention that you would be doing yourself a disservice by ignoring comments posted in response to the article.

[ARS] June 2007 System Guide

The ARS Technica folks have released their 2007 Guide, once again bringing us their recommendations for a Budget Box ($741.99), the Hot Rod ($1,521.28), and the God Box ($10,228.30).

Be a good system build archive reader and pay close attention to the alternate recommendations and reasoning behind their exclusions, and most importantly, don't forget to read the forum responses!

I am having a really hard time not pulling the trigger on that Hot Rod box plus a few upgrades, like two 500GB SATA drives, 4 GB of RAM, and a 24" flat panel or two.

I keep telling myself that I have no time for gaming, and that there aren't enough good new games out there to make this worthwhile. Blizzard's Starcraft 2 was pushed back to last year.

I do wish I had a 3D-capable system lying around so I could try out Ubuntu Feisty Fawn with all its desktop effects enabled.

[THG] Six P35-DDR3 Motherboards Compared: No Winner?

Tom's Hardware benchmarked six of the latest-gen Intel motherboards and was unable to pick a winner. The motherboards, all sporting Intel's P35 Express chipset, "offer support DDR3 memory and the next generation of FSB1333 Intel Core 2 processors."

Why should a fellow System Builder care about this article? In their conclusion, it is stated that all of the motherboards "were so close in performance that benchmark results can't accurately determine a winner, because the differences are smaller than the benchmark's degree of accuracy.... And that's why I can't pick a board for you. Each buyer must determine which "killer feature" set best suits his or her needs."

This is one less component requiring a great deal of research. Seems like a quick look at the features of a few boards sporting the P35 Express chipset will help you pick your winner.

[THG] Spring HDD Guide

Tom's Hardware has posted a Spring Hard Disk Drive Guide. Their component guides tend to contain good charts comparing the performance of the latest and greatest devices. Knowing which HDDs are the fastest/coolest and most reliable on the market is something an avid system builder should know. Slow disk IO can cripple even the fastest combination of CPU, Ram, and Motherboard, so we want to do everything possible to ensure our HDDs are performing at their top capacity.

THG also recently posted their Dads and Grads buyers guide, in which they are pushing some cool gadgets, gear, and software as Graduation and Father's Day gifts. I certainly wouldn't be opposed to someone sending me a Matrox DualHead2Go and two Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP 24" monitors to go along with it.

[THG] System Builder Marathon

Tom's Hardware Guide has completed their three day, three build marathon. Day one was a $525 USD low-end system. Day two was a very capable $1,255 USD mid-range system. Day three was a top-end, mindlessly blow your $3,590 USD build. $1,200 - 1,400 seems to be the current sweet spot.

They've also used day 4 to do performance benchmarks and compare each system.

Don't forget to leech off the minds of the THG forum dwellers. They do a pretty good job of keeping the author and THG team in check:

Forum Responses to Day 1
Forum Responses to Day 2
Forum Responses to Day 3
Forum Responses to Day 4

One of the posters directs viewers to another noteworthy forum thread: Sanji's Guide to Gaming PCs on a Budget.

[THG] maintains an archive of their how-to DIY articles, which includes, but is less specific than their previous system building guides.

[TR] March 2007 System Guide

The Tech Report seems to post a new system guide every 2-3 months. The March 2007 System Guide covers five builds, and discusses alternative configurations for each. A nice feature allows you to click a link to add every component of the build you are reading about to your NewEgg.com shopping cart. This is great for all of you lazy bastards that know what you are doing but choose not to price-hunt. I suppose this is also greatly beneficial for you 1st time builders.

Always remember to read the comments after reading the article! There are a lot of smart people sharing useful information that have too much time on their hands.

Also, [TR] maintains an archive of their previous system guides.

[CM] Building an Affordable Gaming PC

The Corsair Memory team has written an excellent article detailing how to build and overclock a PC from start to finish. They show BIOS screenshots and how to test your overclock. Don't forget to read though the article discussion in their forums for extra tips and advice.

[ARS] May Budget Box and March Guides

The ARS Technica team recently released their May Ultimate Budget Box Guide. The readers responded.

The March System Guide gives us 3 Builds in typical ARS fashion: The Budget Box, The Hot Rod, and The God Box. The readers responded here.

[Various] Older Links

I'll try to keep the earliest post updated as friends and other readers give me their "I found this link helpful when starting on mine: (insert old link here)" recommendations:

1. ExtremeTech's Build-It Section contains various builds and is somewhat regularly updated.
2. [H]ardOCP Holiday 2006 Buyers Guide

Welcome!

I've always thoroughly enjoyed keeping up-to-date with the latest and greatest PC components. A long time ago, I realized that it is not too difficult to build your own monster rig. If you are looking for more power than a low-budget system, and you consider the time investment to do the research as a hobby instead of a cost, building your own system can save you hundreds, and in some cases, thousands, of dollars. The more top-of-the-line power you are looking for, the more you will save by building your own.

Since I enjoy finding and reading guides about building systems, I'll keep track of everything I find here. Maybe I can save some of you that may be on the fence about building your own enough research time that you decide to give it a go! By the way, I take no responsibility for fried parts and mangled data that may result from you doing so. Building your own does not get you a warranty, but if you are worried about warranties, you probably shouldn't be rolling your own system in the first place!

Have fun and enjoy!

By the way, for those of you who do not know what a top-of-the-line system costs or where to buy one off the shelf, take a look at these options (when you see the prices, you'll understand why I build my own):

1. (Dell) AlienWare
2. (HP) VoodooPC
3. Falcon Northwest
4. Hypersonic PC