Quad-core for $700

So, here's my guide for what to buy if you want a Quad-core system for an affordable price. This system will not include a hard drive, optical drive, case, or really anything other than the core components. Also note that prices are subject to change (I'm not going to update this guide), and that you should check through all of the components before buying a system (I will not take responsibility for anything bad that happens as a result of my advice).

So, let's get started.
Goals: a fast (>2.0GHz) quad core system, with 4GB of RAM, and a fairly modern GPU. The Motherboard should have plenty of room for expansion, and the components used should have few, if any, known issues (of the issues, temperature will probably be one of them).

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield - $260. however, there is no warranty (for an extra $20, you can get the chip from Retail with a 3-year limited warranty on parts and labor).

CPU Fan: Masscool 8WA741 92mm Ball CPU Cooler - $20.99. Lots of airflow, not that expensive.

Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - $5.99. Thermal Compound is very important, as it allows the CPU to dissipate heat into the CPU Fan/Heatsink.

Motherboard: Intel BLKD975XBX2KR LGA 775 ATX Motherboard - $189.99. Supports Quad-core processors with a 1066/800MHz Bus, 4x240pin DDR2 800 Dual Channel (this standard of memory is very cheap right now), up to 8GB RAM, 3 PCI Express x16 slots (however, only one is electrical x16. The other two are x8 and x4, respectively), and two PCI slots. 1 ATA100 slot (IDE, for all of you who use that term), and 8 SATA 3Gb/s. There is no onboard video, but there is 8-channel onboard audio, and it's going to have a high-end GPU put in anyways. The LAN is 10/100/1000Mbs (Gigabit Ethernet, anyone?), and it has 4 USB 2.0 ports, and 1 Firewire port (with the same available on on the motherboard, for front-panel connectors). The power supply is 24 pin.

RAM: G.Skill 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-pin DDR2 800 Dual Channel - $54.99 x 2. Might as well fill up all of the slots, so that this system will have 4GBs of total RAM (considered the minimum to run Vista, if you happen to feel like that).

GPU: EVGA GeForce 7600GT 256MB GDDR3, PCI Express x16, SLI Supported - $89.99. Not the best GPU, so gamers might want to spend an extra $100 here to get a higher end GPU, but this will be good enough for mos things. It has a trio of connectors - VGA, DVI, and TV (supporting HDTV, S-Video, or Composite), so it should be able to support most monitors you might have.

PSU: For this system, Newegg's Power Supply Calculator suggests at least 742W (That's with everything here, and support for all of the motherboard's 8 HDD (at 7200RPM), and two Combo ODDs. The calculator can be found here, and I suggest that you recalculate with any additional components you plan on including put in. For example, if you are planning on putting in additional GPUs, the power consumption will increase a lot.

With that in mind, it seems like the PSU could end up being very expensive. This ETASIS ET850 ATX12V / EPS12V True 850W PSU ($159.99) looks like it would do the job - it has a 24pin Motherboard connector, 8 SATA connectors, and pretty much everything else that would be needed. However, it is a LOT more expensive than I would want a PSU to be - but sometimes you have to deal with it.

Total cost: $836.93 + Shipping & Tax, and the cost of whatever operating system you would want to put in this. A case, Hard Drives, and Optical drives could easily cost another $200 (that's for only 80GB of storage). Certainly more than $700, but still a good deal.

The price might be able to be trimmed as much as, or more than, $100 - dropping the PSU down to around 600W (still enough for 4 HDDs and 1 ODD), and trimming down the RAM to 2GB would do that much.

If you end up buying/building this system, drop me a line at aetuneo.pheonix / gmail.com (figure out where the @ goes!), and tell me how it went (my bet is that anyone who built this would have to spend an extra $20 at least on cooling, and that it would be very noisy).

My Computer

As anyone who knows me knows, I am a bit crazy about computers. I suppose that I could be described as a Technophile - after all, I spend most of my Saturdays fixing up old systems at the ACCRC, and messing around with various levels of technology. I used to constantly tinker with my computer (not anymore - it works perfectly), and I'm planning on upgrading it in a year or two (to a quad-core system. But that, of course, is another story). So, anyways, here are it's specs:

CPU: 3.33GHz Celeron D.
RAM: 2GB, 533MHz Dual Channel DDR2
GPU: GeForce FX 5200, Dual VGA Out
PCI: NIC (10/100), Fan (for the GPU). 1 PCI slot is available.
Motherboard: Machspeed P4MSD-800D2
HDD: 40GB SATA, 320GB SATA (formatted so that only 270GB of it is available), 160GB IDE (the IDE drive is somewhat questionable, nothing important is on it. I'm going to be moving it over into an external enclosure soon, so that I can have a lot of portable storage). Only 97.9GB are free right now - I have a LOT of Anime.
Fans: 7 80mm (CPU, 2 in a PCI slot, 3 case fans put wherever I feel like it, 1 in the power supply), 1 120mm (the other power supply fan). It's rather noisy, but not so much.
Monitors: 2 17-inch CRTs, each running at 768x1024, 85hz. Having two monitors is nice, though it has occasionally made me think that I should be able to move the cursor from my monitors onto a laptop.
Speakers: Standard 2-unit desktop.
Keyboard and Mouse: Wireless keyboard, 5-button Microsoft optical IntelliMouse. Both connect via USB.

That's it, I suppose. When I feel like it, I'll explain my plan to upgrade to a quad-core system (it's a lot cheaper than you think - if all you need is a new CPU (and a CPU fan), Motherboard, GPU, and some RAM, you can buy one for under $600 or $700. And I can support that assertion).

A change in pace.

I've decided to remove most of the historical posts I've made, as a beginning of changing the aim of this blog. So, basically, you'll lose a lot of me claiming that I'll get stuff done in the next week. What anyone who might read it will gain is not having all of that stuff to sort through: only posts which I consider to be interesting will remain. Expect some new, interesting posts in the future; I'm going to aim for one or two a week, possibly including some sort stories (I have been told that I probably need a place to get rid of my excess creativity, so I'll try to do that). Expect some very eclectic writings (and some of the pictures I've taken) to start showing up over the next few months.

Disclaimer: I am probably using the word "eclectic" incorrectly. Deal with it.

EDIT: Done. The Blog is down to two posts, one of which is this one.