Re: Hardware Nerds Check in
Well, I can't advise much on price seeing as you guys get things significantly cheaper than we do, but newegg seems to be a good place to shop.
Just some general tips: you might as well get a decent sized hard drive since they're all pretty cheap. But do economise on RAM, DDR2 performs about as well as DDR3 anyway. And unless you're using a 64-bit OS (which I wouldn't recommend at this point in time) you won't be able to use more than 4Gb of RAM, and frankly I've been able to run most things on 2Gb with no trouble, I suspect RAM isn't going to be the bottleneck on my system anyway. I always buy Kingston because of their reputation but I've been told that most RAM comes out of the same factory anyway - it's all around the same price so what the hell.
Similarly if you're trying to save money then just go dual core, not quad. The benefits are pretty software dependent anyway. But always invest in a good motherboard, go with a brand name like GB or ASUS and research their low-end offerings.
You might as well get at least a 22", they're really cheap now. Invest in a case with good airflow, make sure it's large enough and has a lot of mounts. Remember that even if every component on your system explodes you can always salvage the case. I also personally recommend finding a mouse and keyboard you really like, sounds trivial but that's the part you'll actually be in contact with most of the time. Similarly, get a decent sound card (although these days even the really cheap ones will be just fine if you buy a good brand, I've even heard that the ones built into mobos are really good) and especially good speakers. They're not that pricey.
I personally recommend not getting Lite-On, mine are really noisy and I hear that's just the way Lite-On makes them. Can't remember which brand I was looking at, but it shouldn't be hard to find a quiet one, just google around. Needless to say, make sure all the opticals and hdds you buy are SATA. I'm thinking of replacing my old IDE drives just to save cable space.
Another thing that's really cost effective is decent case fans, I picked up some coolermaster 80mms for like $5-$10 and it was the best investment I ever made, I never realised how noisy my crappy old no-name brand case fans were. On a cheap rig you only need a couple of fans but they cost nothing so more doesn't hurt. Just don't create an air short circuit.
