Blaine's Computer
From Bellybuttonporn
Ok so I built a computer for blaine.
The goal was to make a WOW-capable machine without spending tons and tons of cash. Admittedly WOW isn't much of a task for today's insane video cards and machines, keeping costs down was a big priority.
Just for convenience I used Newegg. One-stop shopping and their prices are usually very competitive.
I'll describe what I bought and why. However: Prices and new stuff come out all the time. If you just buy all of this stuff without doing any research on your own, You are retarded. That is your warning.
Contents |
Processor
I chose an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300. Intel has really set the bar high with the Core 2 Duos, and the E6300 had the best price/performance ratio at the time. I spent some time looking at Tom's Hardware to see their benchmarks and reviews before I settled on this chip.
Case
The only reasons computers have cases is to keep the parts from being a pile on the floor. I decided to save money and went with an Off-brand no-frills case. At $17 it was the cheapest case that didn't look like total ass. On the plus side it was damaged in shipping (very slightly, you can't even really notice unless I explain it and show close-up pics) and newegg just refunded the cost and instructed me to "do whatever you want with it". So I simply put Blaine's computer into it. Score!
Motherboard
I'll probably catch some flak here, but I decided to skimp on the motherboard. I chose a ECS P4M890T-M2 because it was one of the cheapest motherboards that supported the E6300 and memory.
Video Card
We need good performance, but it is really easy to break the bank on a video card. I picked a BFGTech Geforce 7600GT because it had pretty good performance (It can easily handle WoW, without question) and an attractive price tag. Better cards exist, but the prices quickly spiral out of control.
Power Supply
Powmax 480W. Have you ever heard of Powmax? Neither have I. That's why it only cost $12.
Ram
The more Ram you have, the more elbow room your games have to spread out. 2gb of DDR2 533 Ram is more than enough for WoW, and will allow Blaine to easily run the game and anything else he needs in the background (ventrilo, Firefox, etc) and allow quicker alt-tab switching. I could have gone with DDR2 800, but to save a little bit of money I chose the (slightly) slower Ram. WoW won't notice.
Some people swear by a specific company, like Corsair or Kingston. However, I have never had a stick of ram simply go bad, ever. I buy generic to save a few bucks.
Hard Drive
a 160gb Sata2 drive allows plenty of room for the crap people do with their computers, and will be fast enough to widen the I/O bottleneck.
When buying a hard drive don't get fooled into thinking that smaller = cheaper. There is a sweet spot (currently it's somewhere in the low 300's) where getting a smaller hard drive actually costs more.
Optical Drive
Lite-On makes great drives, but have a reputation of being loud. At $30, the Lite-On 16X DVD+/-R DVD Burner was a goddamned steal. I chose to get the Retail version so it'd come with a DVD player program and burning software, so I didn't have to procure those under the table. I'd link directly to it, but it appears Newegg doesn't have it anymore. Oh, and as a bonus, the drive isn't loud at all. Score. You really can't go wrong with Lite-On.
Floppy Drive
Wtf is that? Don't need one.
Monitor
Blaine already has a CRT. We're saving money so instead of buying a flat-panel beauty, we hooked his video card up (via one of the included DVI->VGA adapters) to his ancient HP monitor.
Keyboard / Mouse
Blaine had these too. Why waste money?
Total
I spent under $750 for this whole system. It's been a few months, so you could build something better for less now. Rock on.
