I've built probably a hundred computers, paid off my first car with money made during high school ~ I was pulling like $10k/yr owning "eQuality Computers" with one employee lol. 4 doctor's offices + $50-$100/hr (if I had to leave class, rate doubled) FTW.
Most exciting system built recently is a photo workstation for my dad, cost $2300 with the monitor:
*Intel Core i7 920 @ mild overclock on air, <3GHz
*Xigmatech Red Scorpion cooler (good quiet air cooler)
*MSI x58M
*6GB Patriot 7-7-7-20 1333MHz DDR3 kit, 2GB x3
*ATI Radeon 4870 x2 1GB - was the fastest single card at the time
*4 1TB WD Greens (7200RPM) @ RAID 5 for storage
*1 Intel X25M 80GB SSD for system and 10GB Photoshop swap
(unbelievably fast, btw)
*Antec 300 case
*OCZ OC 600W modular PS, barely enough power lol
*Dell 24" S-IPS screen - displays like 104% of the Adobe color gamut, awesome screen for a graphic/print workstation, horrible for games (~30ms lag on IPS screens)
*Vista x64 with loader
My system was put together about a year before that one, so it's a little lame in comparison:
*Intel Core 2 Quad 2.5GHz
*Thermaltake Duo Orb
*MSI P35 Platinum Combo
*4GB OCZ 7-7-7-20 1333MHz DDR3
*ATI Radeon 4850 512mb (OC'd with Scorpion's dual 80mm fan cooler - quiet
)
*WD Velociraptor 150GB system drive
*Seagate 750GB Movie Drive
*2x WD Caviar 250GB SATA-2 @ RAID 0 "other" drive
*Old school Super Micro full tower case, a few super-quiet 80mm fans
*PC Power and Cooling 550W? power supply, from like 1998 lol
*2x LG L226W 22" TN screens, great for games, can't hold a candle to the Dell on color accuracy even when calibrated
*Logitech G15 keyboard, G9 mouse, Momo wheel/pedals
*Klipshe Promedia v2 400 speakers, from
back in the day, and Speedlink Medusa 5.1 headphones for "getting serious" (-ly nerdy on vent)
*Windows 7 x64 RTM with SLIC 2.2 bios mod
Quote:
Originally Posted by g6civcx
I've noticed that within the past 10 years or so, the price for bottom shelf components remain about the same. I can get better performance, but for price-sensitive consumers, the cheapest PC I can crank out remains about $200-250 with no software. It cost about the same as it did since the early 2000s.
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I've noticed that too! Bottom-end
performance is what's come way up since the "sub $500 computers" first came out almost 10 yrs ago.
OK, I'm off to play NFS:Shift @ 1680x1050 with 4xAA @ 60fps. Kthxbye!