What do you guys think about PC Magazine's recommended system?

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Particle Physicist

between a quark and a baryon
.. and which parts would you downgrade if you needed to cut costs somewhere?

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 FX-53

Motherboard: Asus SK8V

Graphics Card: nVidia Geforce 6800 FX Ultra

Case: Koolance PC2-650BK

Power Supply: Antec TrueControl 550

CPU Cooler: Koolance CPU-300-H06 with Athlon64 Kit

Hard Drive: Western Digital WD740 (2 in RAID 0)

Optical Drive: Sony DRU-530A DVD+RW/-RW Drive

Audio Card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platimum

Memory: 512MB Corsair XMS3200 (2)
 
id personally get a x800 for that price

but id also wait a couple months until the PCI-E mobos come out.
 
I think it would be a mistake to plop down money for a first generation PCI-E mobo... there's bounds to be growing pains
 
I'd prefer an ATI card, but this gen is much closer than last. If the MB is PCI-E, only ATI has a "true" PCI-E card.

The box definitely, definitely needs 1GB of RAM. There's no excuse to just have 512MB. (Edit.: Oops. Missed that (2))

I'd probably kick the CPU down to an A64 3400+ to save some big bucks.
 
If you want to cut costs, go with an Athlon 64 3200+ and a straight up X800 (not Pro) card. Also, you likely don't need 2 hard drives running in raid. Go get a 120-160 gb hard drive for around $110.
 
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 FX-53

I'd swap this out with a regular Athlon 64. FX cost a lot more money and I'm not sure the boost is worth it.

Graphics Card: nVidia Geforce 6800 FX Ultra

Pretty hard to find right now and I'm not too keen on it taking two slots. I'd probably go with a X800 Pro instead.

Optical Drive: Sony DRU-530A DVD+RW/-RW Drive

I'd definitely look into replacing this. A DL NEC drive can be had for much much less and it's probably compatible with more media than the sony.


This is the kind of PC I want to build. I asked for some PC building/upgrading advice about a month or more ago and I think the general concensus was to wait for PCI-Express. I haven't built a new PC yet but I'm starting to think that wasn't such great advice. The new boards probably won't be solid for a while and I'm sure there will be driver issues too.
 
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