Earlier this month, I built a new PC to use as my primary home desktop machine. It was the 3rd PC build I've done, with the earlier builds having been in 2004 and in 2000.
One of my goals for this build was to keep the budget under $700 (not including a monitor). This is the parts list that I ended up with:
| Motherboard | Foxconn P45A-S LGA 775 Intel ATX | $110 | newegg.com |
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Wolfdale 2.53GHz | $80 | frys.com (on sale) |
| RAM | Corsair 4 GB (2x 2GB) DDR2-800 (PC2 6400) TWIN2X4096-6400C5DHX | $26 | frys.com (on sale) |
| Crucial 4 GB (2x 2GB) DDR2-800 (PC2 6400) | $30 | frys.com (on sale) | |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital 1 TB SATA2 16 MB Cache | $120 | newegg.com |
| Video Card | XFX GeForce 9800 GT 512 MB | $110 | newegg.com |
| DVD-RW Drive | LG|GH20NS15 20X SATA | $23 | newegg.com (on sale) |
| OS | Vista 64-bit Home Premium (OEM) | $100 | newegg.com |
| Case + PSU | XION II Black Steel ATX Mid Tower | $60 | newegg.com |
Total cost of all parts and software: $659
Everything else that I needed either came integrated on the motherboard (sound, network) or else was "recycled" from my previous machine (monitor, mouse, keyboard, UPS, XBox 360 USB gamepad).
Here are the assembled goods, just prior to the build:
I was able to snag the good deals (at least as of this month, 11/2008!) on the processor and RAM via my RSS subscription to slickdeals.net; I knew that I was going to be building the machine in November, so when those deals came across Slickdeals in October, I snapped them up.
I also was able to save some money on the cost of the system by putting all of the individual parts on my birthday wish list; I got some of the components for my birthday, saving me from having to buy them. (Thanks very much Dad, Dad-in-law K., and Jeremy!)
I snapped a few more pics during the early stages of assembling the machine. The empty case:
The motherboard (Foxconn P45A-S), fresh out of the box, with no parts inserted yet:
The motherboard with the CPU (Intel Core 2 Duo E7200) and heatsink mounted, in the case:
So far, I'm really enjoying 64-bit Vista. With the 8 GB of RAM and the other parts I put into the system, it runs very smoothly -- as fast, if not faster, than XP ran on my old 2004 machine that was built on a similar budget. In particular, Vista seems to start up (from a cold boot) noticeably faster than XP used to. Based on my experience so far, I'd recommend Vista over XP for anyone purchasing a new desktop machine, at least for any machine with better than low-range specs.
I did have an initial issue with the machine bluescreening on a few occasions when I left it running overnight, which I've since resolved; I'll detail my experiences in troubleshooting that issue, and the eventual solution, in a future post.
With the set of hardware in this build, I have a Vista Windows Experience Index score of 5.4 overall:
- 5.4 Processor
- 5.9 RAM
- 5.9 Graphics
- 5.9 Gaming Graphics
- 5.9 Hard Disk
This is pretty much in line with my expectations; the nice thing is that I picked out a motherboard which will allow me to upgrade to a faster, quad core, processor in a couple of years should I feel the need to do so. (With the good deal that I got on the processor that I bought, upgrading from the 2.54 GHz processor I bought to even a 3.0 GHz would have run me around an additional $80 -- double the price of what I paid -- so I'm happy with the deal I got, even if the processor is slightly "underpowered" compared to the rest of the machine.)
In practice, the machine has run very smoothly with several of my older games that I've tried out on it that chugged a bit on my older system, such as Oblivion and Titan Quest; I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the machine also runs Call of Duty 4, a fairly new game which was included with the GeForce 9800 that I bought, very smoothly as well, even on "high" settings. Hopefully this computer will turn out to be serviceable for use as a gaming machine for at least a few years (in addition to its roles as a hobbyist development machine, and general household use PC)!
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