Component selection for your computer.

A lens of Electronics (be it PC or computer news), guides to building or buying your own computer (things to look for) My budget builds include $300, $400, $600, $900, $1000 (US pricing) builds. This'll give you a good idea of what you could do by yourself. Also how to build a computer

Table of Contents
1. Spotlight Product 2. Introduction to the builds 3. Step by Step to building a computer 4. Basic Terms to Know. 5. The Companies 6. $300 Build 7. $300 build stuff 8. Budget Build - $400 9. $600 budget 10. $900 Computer Build 11. Budget build for $1000

Spotlight Product
Intel i5 2500K

Intel Core i5-2500K Processor Amazon Price: $222.98 (as of 02/03/2012) This product is in the spotlight because if you are in a more flexible budget or just need more computing power it offers great overclock-ability but also offers a quad core for a rather low price for how well it performs. To give you an idea, the i5 2500K performs better than an i7 950 for 60$ less and a lower power consumption. As mentioned in beginning the 2500K offers great dormant power, when overclocked to 4.6ghz (which I hear is easy and can be done with a stock cooler) it surpasses its older brother the i7 2600K and even beats the i7 980X in non multi-thread apps. Granted this processor doesn't have hyper-threading nor does it have 8 threads, It performs exceptionally well otherwise. *ALERT* You can get this for 180$ @ Microcenters, Locally though, if there is one close to you, check them out. I give it a full 10 out of 10. Pros: Easy Overclocking 32nm Cool and low power consumption Unlocked overclocking vs other Sandy Bridges For the price it performs better than competitors, IE AMD 1100T or i7 950 Con: Only 4 threads, but what more could you ask for out of a 220$ processor

Introduction to the builds

Read On!
Well say you want to build a computer to fit you budget 300 dollars, 450 dollars, 600 dollars, 1000 dollars, 1500 dollars? Well here's a guide you could follow to do that. I personally like to build it myself, it isn't hard. Travel around Youtube and you could easily find videos showing you how to do so. It isn't putting the parts together that's hard though. It is picking your parts.

Knowing what you need. 1st. Why should you build your own computer/HTPC? Well for one thing it'll save you a buck or two. A huge buck or two. It saved me about 200$ once I looked at other pre-built manufacturers. (HP, Dell, iBuyPower, CyberPower). In most cases they don't even offer as many options as you would have if you bought it yourself. Another thing you should know though, that I should have mentioned before, for that label of Dell or HP your paying about 100$ bucks for that. The case they usually give is really terrible and has no airflow. They also give you really crappy parts (HP and Dell) that leave no room for upgrading. So in reality HP and Dell are jipping you of about 50%. For instance I saw one time iBuyPower charging 86$ for just 8gb ram from 4gb of ram to start with. 8 gigs of ram only costs you 80$ to begin with, what were they charging you for the 4 gigs? Plus they don't use brand names, so it's probably even cheaper. Anyway just a few reasons why you should build your own computer. 2nd. Parts My choice for a parts in a PC is easy, here I would take advantage of what www.Newegg.com has to offer. They have a lot of good deals and combos you should check out. They feature great deals because of the whole sale. But some things aren't as cheap as Amazon. One being the Hyper 212+ cpu cooler in the great deals from amazon below. 3rd Cont: i5 2500K & i7 2600K (Or i5/i7 general) With these chips out the latest and greatest from Intel, they really have made every build so similar. And since most mid to enthusiast budget builds will include this, word of advice. If you have a Microcenter near you locally go to it. The i5 2500K and i7 2600K can be had for I'm pretty sure for $30-$50 less than Newegg or Amazon. 4th. Research Research is important, do some research on your parts before you buy them. Remember these builds may not always fit what YOU want to do. Most of these builds are for people who plan on gaming. However in the future I will include a build for those of you who just want a computer to do the things for daily use. 5th. Salvage Salvage what you can from your old build, have a pretty usable card from the old build, use it for now if it's working fine for you and get some better parts like the CPU. If you can salvage the CD/DVD drive do that to, save yourself 15 to 20 dollars.

Step by Step to building a computer

OK, I'll be honest this is a bit of an aged video. About two generations back. However as aged as it is, it is better than a lot of guides that I've seen. Newegg did a solid job of quickly and concisely teaching a novice how to build their computer. By the way this is a two part, so watch the first one I've linked below and once your finished with that, they'll have a link to the next one in those red/green colored boxes that appear. Be aware, AMD chips install differently to Intel chips, if I still remember how my motherboard looks, there is no retention bracket for AMD

motherboards, and the CPU cooler is a bit easier to install in my opinion. That is also linked in the video below. Build Your Own PC Tutorial + Bonus Review of Cooler Master HAF 922 Case_PART I by newegg | video info 908 ratings | 240,684 views curated content from YouTube

Basic Terms to Know.

Terms. This is one thing that probably is daunting about my guide. There are a lot of terms you probably aren't familiar of and so that may be quite annoying that your new to this and I'm not telling you what it is. Well here is a basic summary of terms you probably will need to know. Crossfire/SLI - These are terms used for dual card configuration. When I say "Dual Card" I mean that it is two of the same card. Most of the time, when you Crossfire or SLI they will be generally the same card and model. Crossfire refers to the AMD dual card configuration. SLI refers to the Nvidia dual card configuration. GPU - This is a graphics processing unit, or GPU, it basically renders the video for you to see on the screen. Think of it as your eyes in a sense. CPU - This is the central processing unit, or CPU, it basically carries out the instructions of programs. Example being Windows 7 or Vista. Think of this as your brain. Expansion Slots (on the Motherboard) - So as time goes on we will keep upgrading these slots on the motherboard, the thing your installing the parts on. From just a few years ago we've come a long way, from AGP to PCI to PCI Express. There was no particular order to those three, more could be named but those are the main ones to know. PCI Express is the current generation and has the largest bandwidth. PCI Express 16x 2.0 (2.1) is the current generation of video cards. Most cards releasing currently will use that slot. One important thing about PCI and PCI Express its that they're backwards compatible. Even from PCI Express 16, if you have a card using PCI Express 16x 2.0. The card will work in the slot mentioned prior. Another thing to note, when running things like two cards, be sure to note that although a motherboard may come with two slots. It doesn't mean they run at the same speed. Motherboard manufacturers get a lot of people here. There are 4 speeds to PCI Express 16x 2.0. There is, obviously, 16x, 8x, 4x, 1x. Most of the time when you use dual card configurations the motherboard will support the full bandwidth of 16x/16x, 8x/8x, or 16x/4x. Nothing else (usually). Something to note about this is don't think that just because from 16 to 8 there is a huge difference that performance-wise you'd be losing a lot from 16x/16x to 8x/8x. That's not the case, you will in reality only lose about 3%. I believe 16x/4x is about 5-10% it's a variation.

Memory/RAM - OK, now this is something many people I know get confused about. A lot of people I know who know nothing about computers think that when I say memory (when referring to a computer) I mean the hard drive space. Although you can think like that, most of the time, Memory (also known as RAM) is the dedicated system RAM/Memory. It's really hard to explain this simply, but just note your basic tasks use ram, especially programs like Photoshop, After Effects, Adobe varients, and many more. (Especially meaning they use a lot) Tips about memory - You don't need a lot. The average user would be fine with 4 gigabytes of ram now-a-days. A more intensive user probably would be better off with 8 gigs, anymore than that is just absurd in my opinion. I will justify, I understand that Photoshop uses a lot of memory, but from a real life standpoint. I use 4gb of memory and run Photoshop just fine, Photoshop is mainly CPU oriented. As for programming, like programming in Java, 8 gigs would be plenty even for larger projects. If you don't think that is enough, the most you would need is 12 gigs. More tips - When buying RAM, it was like it used to be a year ago. Memory/RAM is so "cheap" now that 4gb that used to cost 100$. Only costs 40$ and 8gb that used to cost $150+ only costs 80$ now. Let me be clear, you do not need to spend anymore than $100 on memory, most of the budget should be put towards that actually make a huge difference. That being the GPU and CPU. Power supply - This is basically the component that supplies the power to your system. Cleverly named. Think of it as the food you eat, the carbohydrates. Hard drive - This is where your computer stores all the files and data.. Think of it as the capacity of your brain.

The Companies
As it says, the key players in the component industry
Well here is the explanation of the key component players. Meaning the big names, like Intel, AMD, AMD Radeon (Formally known as ATI Radeon, Nvidia. CPU brand names Well there aren't just these two companies in the world that produce CPUs for the computers we use. There are many more out there, however these two are main ones. Intel and AMD. Now I'm in no way a fan boy. I justify each company by the needs of the user or the pricing. Well here we go. AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) This is a company that was formed/incorporated in 1969. They are the 2nd largest semiconductor designer in the world. During 2006 they acquired ATI which during the course of last year AMD has retired the name ATI. But their graphics cards still hold the name Radeon. AMD is a great company for budget builders below $800-$900. However with the recent release of Sandy Bridge it is hard to justify any AMD build above 1000$ because the performance is just not there as apposed to the Sandy Bridge chips.

Intel Well you guessed it, Intel is the largest semiconductor designer in the world. Intel was founded a year before AMD in 1968. They actually at one point at slacked behind AMD in performance, however during around the time of 2002 they started to catch up and finally beat AMD in overall performance in a CPU. To this day they still do with many of their higher end CPUs. That is their CPUs above i5 2500 (220$) can beat out any AMD equivalent or just the AMD line up in general. I would recommend this company for any budget above $1000. Later this year, Intel plans to release the LGA 2011 platform which will be backwards compatible with Z68. Main GPU companies AMD Radeon (Formally ATI) - For the sake of distinguishing AMD's graphical department from the CPU department, I will just include Radeon into the mix. I'll start with the history, ATI was incorporated in 1985. They made huge advancements and in 2006 they were bought by AMD. In 2010 the name ATI was officially retired. There were times of cards that sucked from ATI but there were many times that ATI cards were fantastic. AMD Radeon and Nvidia really have no separation anymore because if AMD hasn't filled that price point, Nvidia has it covered, if Nvidia doesn't AMD does. AMD has great budget cards however, below 120$ AMD cards have the advantage. The 54xx series is used a lot in HTPC builds and the 6790 offers great performance at the $130 price point. Above that, its toe to toe from AMD to Nvidia. Nvidia - Nvidia was founded in 1993, it's not a really old company. It originated in Santa Clara, CA. Nvidia has many positives, they have the benefit of CUDA (It can be thought of as another processing unit other than your CPU). I would recommend Nvidia in spots where AMD doesn't fill. But downfalls of Nvidia mainly were during the Fermi release. The 480 and 470 were kind of a fail because of their huge power consumption and massive amount of heat production. The later releases (GTS 450, GTX 460, Current 5xx generation) have all tried to patch over that mistake. The 570 and 580 revise the 480 with the same power consumption but better performance/watt. As mentioned above, Nvidia has great cards for spots AMD doesn't cover vice versa. Nvidia's Quadro cards are much better for people using things like Blender, Maya and other rendering software. Matrox - This company doesn't make GPUs that are for the average joe. They make them for workstations, so Matrox GPUs compete with the AMD FirePro series and Nvidia Quadro. I generally disregard Matrox as a company because as of late, they really haven't done much except do lawsuit after lawsuit to try and grab money. I'm sorry I dislike this company, but it is the truth. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------The video editing debacle - Here would be the time for professional users to read up. Nvidia is great for video editors with the usage of CUDA. The new Fermi's (Series GTS 450 and GTX 4xx or series GTX 5xx and above) has great CUDA performance and in most cases it speeds up trans-coding rate. However here is where it gets interesting. Although this is the case, video quality tests have also been done. CUDA does speed up transcoding, but it also lowers the

quality of the video. You're better off with a high end CPU rather than depending on CUDA to do the job for you. That's just me. Continued - Now where do you say AMD comes into the mix? In things like Hi-Def playback and just things involving visual quality. AMD prevails here. AMD in many of its cards beat out the Nvidia cards in a newly released Blu-Ray HQ benchmark. In things like Anti-Aliasing and just crispness of the picture AMD wins in most cases. Nvidia's higher cards like the 460 don't even compare to the much cheaper 5670 in some cases. However there is still a downside to AMD as well. Although Nvidia's visual quality is lower, AMD hasn't exactly perfected transcoding either. The visual quality of AMD is really nice, but during transcoding it is kind of a draw GPU-wise. Both Nvidia and AMD do make mistakes it and it all depends on the program you use to transcode. The safer bet however for transcoding is just CPU transcoding, most of the time this comes out with the best quality. One thing to note - Lets say you are using Premiere, you should probably look at an Nvidia card. The CUDA will greatly benefit you because Adobe specifically wanted to utilize CUDA and so the Mercury playback engine helps utilize it. Here is the only case where CUDA would be your best bet in my opinion. Be aware, though, that After Effects and Photoshop and others like Illustrator do not utilize CUDA.

$300 Build
HTPC/Office Computer

Well, I've noticed that I can't exactly use my 450$ build as a build for just office usage or just as a HTPC. One being that case makes your HTPC look like a computer more than a media center, and frankly. I just wanted to update the site. Lets get to it shall we. 1. CPU Well here, the cheapest CPU wouldn't matter since this computer really only needs to do office work or just do some media center management. So even a dual-core would suffice here. The AMD Llano A6-3500 would be my choice here running at about $90. It really is a great bang for the buck because for such a cheap price, the reason being it packs a punch giving you the performance of a Athlon II X3 and a little bit more but also gives you a low TDP by integrating graphics on the die but also having the new 32nm fab which gives the chip only a 65w TDP.

2. Motherboard Asrock A75M-HVS, well suffice to say that this board will basically do it all. At about 70$, it has all the things a motherboard needs to function. Plus it has USB 3.0 and SATA 3 which future proofs the board, and it's one of the cheapest FM1 boards out there. The board also has HDMI which for all those HTPC users would allow for the audio and video to be transferred through that. 3. Memory Well here it was basically a no brainer with RAM/Memory so dirt cheap now-a-days. DDR3 4GB ram could be picked up pretty easily at a low $20 range. And so I chose the Geil Value Plus 4GB DDR3 1600 , it's cheap ram that does the job for only $25. What more could you ask for. You could easily go for 2gb, but with 4GB being the main target/requirement for most future apps, I think you might as well get the 4 gigs now. 4. Power supply Here any cheapo power supply would do it. But since it is a HTPC build or an office computer, the 80+ might be necessary to save you some money on your power bill. Granted it won't save much. So I chose the Seasonic SS-300ET 300w 80+ bronze PSU at $40. It's a OEM power supply, but a darn good one at that. It'll do the job for most office workers or media centers, but don't plan on upgrading to any high powered video cards on this power supply. Oh another reason for this power supply is compared to most, it's pretty quiet. 5. Hard Drive The WD Blue 250GB is $44 at NCIX.US 6. Case Office Case: For Office, you want just a normal looking desktop. Well the Antec VSK-2000 is pretty solid asthetically. Plus as such a world wide company, it should have similar pricing everywhere. Which is about 45$. It doesn't have flair, but hey, that's most offices for you. HTPC Case: For HTPC, don't want a desktop looking case, so I decided that it the case should look rather nice asthetically. I found that the Silverstone Grandia GD05B looks rather nice. I wouldn't mind it being near my TV. It'd just look like another DVD player in the set. Well this case offers the basic fans, it looks nice asthetically, plus it's a solid brand. Though, it costs the most, running at about $85. Office build total: $314 HTPC build total: $354

$300 build stuff

Stuff from the 350$ build.

AMD A6-3500 APU with AMD Radeon 6530 HD Graphics 2.1/2.4GHz Socket FM1 65W Triple-Core Processor - Retail AD3500OJGXBOX Amazon Price: $81.50 (as of 02/03/2012)

Seagate Barracuda 7200 500 GB SATA 6.0 Gb-s 16 MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST500DM002 Amazon Price: $79.00 (as of 02/03/2012)

Corsair Memory 4 GB Memory for Intel and AMD 4 Single (Not a kit) 1600MHz (PC3 12800) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM CMX4GX3M1A1600C9 Amazon Price: $20.28 (as of 02/03/2012)

SilverStone Aluminum/Steel Micro ATX HTPC Computer Case GD05B (Black) Amazon Price: $89.97 (as of 02/03/2012)

Lite-On LightScribe 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive IHAS424-98 - Retail (Black) Amazon Price: $24.51 (as of 02/03/2012)

Budget Build - $400

1. CPU Here AMD regains the title, on a low budget Llano offers solid performance. Llano is AMD's new Fusion lineup offering the GPU on the die of the CPU. The A8-3870K comes in @ $145 but also comes with a 6550D which is plenty capable of handling your basic games, it'll play just as good as a 5670 in most cases. Also it has a low TDP, of only 100w for the CPU+GPU so that's another sweet plus. The CPU is comparable to the Phenoms but closer to the in between of a 925 and a Athlon X4 640. However since it is a quad-core it'll multi-task better than the 2100 and perform pretty close. 2. Motherboard So with Llano entering the game, obviously that brings in a new socket too. FM1 is the new socket to sport Llano. I recommend the Asrock A75M-HVS, which should run about $70, it has USB 3.0 and SATA 3 which will future proof, but also it gives you one PCI 16x 2.0 slot to allow you to use a dedicated card in the future if you need, or just Hybrid Crossfire with the A8-3850 3. RAM or Memory For this budget the Geil Value Plus 4GB (2x2gb) DDR3 1600 ram. It's only $25 off Newegg, and will probably be cheap in most places too. The thing about this ram is that it also has some heat spreaders to cool down the ram. Also it's one of the cheapest DDR3 1600 ram out, however from 1333 to 1600 it isn't a huge difference, however when running Llano, it does matter. 4. Graphics Card Not needed, the graphics is on the die of the A8-3870K, and the performance is really good. Way better than the i3 2100's Intel HD2000, it'll run games very well and currently drivers are being revised to offer Crossfire to the 6550D+Dedicated card (Lower end) the performance is actually already not bad such as games like Metro 2033, but that's only one game. The rest suffer performance loss and in most cases is ready to be used. However the 6550D by itself is a GPU/APU to reckon with. 5. Power Supply For this I didn't exactly have a huge budget at this point, I'd go with the Corsair CX430 V2 power supply. It is a decent PSU with good efficiency and for the low price of $45 (Newegg) it's a pretty decent deal versus competitors of the same wattage. Although it does seem like a bad PSU, reviews have shown me that it is quite close to the 80+ efficiency mark so with that being

the case, it's a solid choice especially since it can supply a pretty good amount of power. 6. Hard Drive Western Digital 250GB off NCIX US is only $44 at the moment. 7. Case Once the PSU was selected, the budget was basically nothing so I suggest getting the NZXT M59. Actually even at only $50, This case is pretty good for the price. It comes with 2 fans which most cases at $50 don't have and can be bought almost everywhere, If you do live in the Americas though or can be delivered by Newegg. I suggest getting the Rosewill Destroyer (which comes with 3 fans 120mm and has pretty decent air flow) and for the same price it really can't be beat. Another option is the Challenger which offers the same great performance. You could also get the NZXT Gamma which is $35 and that'll save some cash. Total: Fluctuating between $358, you still have to buy a DVD drive though so it'll run you about $378

$400 build stuff

Things that are cheaper than or equal to Newegg pricing

AMD A8-3870K APU with AMD Radeon 6550 HD Graphics 3.0GHz Unlocked Socket FM1 100W Quad-Core Processor - Retail - AD3870WNGXBOX Amazon Price: $139.99 (as of 02/03/2012)

ASRock MB-A75MHVS Socket FM1/ AMD A75 FCH/ DDR3/ SATA3&USB3.0/ A&GbE/ MATX Motherboard Amazon Price: $69.99 (as of 02/03/2012)

Corsair Memory 4 GB Memory for Intel and AMD 4 Single (Not a kit) 1600MHz (PC3 12800) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM CMX4GX3M1A1600C9

Amazon Price: $20.28 (as of 02/03/2012)

Corsair Builder Series CX V2 430-Watt 80 Plus Certified Power Supply Compatible with Intel and AMD Platforms - CMPSU-430CXV2 Amazon Price: $37.99 (as of 02/03/2012)

GAMMA Classic Series ATX Mid Tower Interior Steel Chassis (Black) Amazon Price: $39.99 (as of 02/03/2012)

$600 budget
My personal choice for parts
1. CPU - Well, sad to say AMD has lost the lead in value here. The i5 2400 is a solid chip at $190, a little on the expensive end but it beats out the majority of AMD's CPUs. TBH past the $600 budget, Intel is probably king. 2. Motherboard - I recommend the Asrock H61M/U3S3 @ $75. It's fairly decent performing board and has USB 3 as well as SATA III. It'll future proof you for a long time. 3. Ram or Memory - PNY Optima DDR3 1333 8gb (2x4gb) $32 Well 8GB is so cheap now, you might as well get it. It'll prepare you for the future, if you ever need that much RAM. But the common misconception with ram speeds (1333/1600/1866/xxxx) is that it makes a huge difference, from 1333 to 1600 it actually isn't even noticeable at all in performance. 4. GPU or Graphics Card - I'd recommend the 6870, sitting at just about $160 it's a great bang for the buck. Solid performance in games at 1680x1050 and pretty decent at 1920x1080. Nvidia really doesn't have good options around the $150 mark for cards. The GTX 560 no Ti, sits at about $180, that's a bit steep for a small performance gain. 5. PSU - Power Supply The PSU I recommend is the Antec NEO ECO 520w 80+ Certified from Antec. Great PSU for a budget builder cheap and one of the better PSU's at the price of $60 6. Hard Drive

With HDD prices inflated, check out NCIX, they have the Western Digital Blue 500GB for only $44. I'd strongly recommend it. 7. Case I recommend the Antec 300 or Antec 300 Illusion mainly because of the sturdiness of the case and how nice it is. The Illusion is a bit more expensive but comes with more fans and blue lit LED fans. So if your into the blue lighting that is the case for you. 70$ for the Illusion and 60$ for the normal 300. You could also go for the Rosewill Destroyer which I hear to be a pretty good case, has a blue LED fan in the front and offers fairly decent stock air flow. The Destroyer is cheaper at 50$. So take your pick. Total: $611

Stuff for the build above from Amazon

Things from Amazon that were a good price for the $550

Intel Core i5-2400 3.10 GHz 6 MB Cache Socket LGA1155 Processor Amazon Price: $184.99 (as of 02/03/2012)

ASRock H61M/U3S3 Intel H61 Micro ATX DDR3 1333 Motherboard Amazon Price: $69.99 (as of 02/03/2012)

PNY Optima 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) PC3-10666 1333MHz DDR3 Desktop DIMMs Memory Kit MD8192KD3-1333 Amazon Price: $38.88 (as of 02/03/2012)

SAPPHIRE AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 PCIE Graphics Card Amazon Price: $164.99 (as of 02/03/2012)

EVGA GeForce GTX 560 1024 MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 2DVI/Mini-HDMI SLI Ready Graphics Card, 01G-P3-1460-KR Amazon Price: $188.00 (as of 02/03/2012)

$900 Computer Build

Well with the $600 build over, here is my parts guide to a more expensive, and better performing $1000 build. In my opinion this should probably be the max an average user needs to use and for that matter a $1000 computer could probably handle most games at a decent resolution, say 1680x1050 or maybe a 1920x1080 resolution. But lets get down to the parts. 1. CPU Here with this expanded budget we can now implement more stronger CPUs into our budget. As in my Amazon recommendations above, the i5 2500K is perfect for this budget. The 2500K is a bit more than the standard 2500 for only $220. But the extra $15 is well worth the price. The extra money will allow for any person to, if they want to in the future, overclock to a VERY high clock rate. With that in mind, if you want to overclock ever, get the Hyper 212+ I have in the deals above, cheaper than Newegg and w/ free shipping. Not only that this processor performs to the level of the older i7's beating them in most cases. In fact for a $60 less than an i7 950. 2. Motherboard

For the motherboard, as of now I would recommend the Asrock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3. At the price of $125, at the time of this post, it's a solid board that offers a lot of the features that boards at its price do not offer. For instance the ability to run SLI and the ability to run 3 cards at 8x/8x/4x. Another great thing about the board is that it uses Z68 so for all you editors out there, it'll allow you to switch between discrete and integrated graphics allowing for the usage of Quick Sync. Plus you can still overclock, oh and you get PCI 3 for future proofing. 3. Memory - RAM I'd suggest the Wintec One 8GB DDR3 1600 $41, they are one of the cheaper heatsink'd ram kits on Newegg that are fairly cheap for the price but offer solid timings nad voltage. The large memory is good for future proofing. Photoshop and other programs don't really notice CL or memory speed as much as the amount you have. The CL or memory speed make only around a 1-2% difference which isn't noticeable. So 1333 8GB is actually great enough to supply your muti-program running, video/photo creation, or programming needs. 4. Graphics Card Here I'd suggest the 6950 2GB ($250) or the 6950 1GB ($240) or 560 Ti ($210) both are great cards. The 560 Ti is defiantly a beast with the factory overclock (See MSI Twin Frozr II) it'll play just the same if not VERY close to the 570 GTX. It defiantly handles much better than the 6950 2GB being quieter and cooler. However, The same can be said for the 6950 2GB, it performs better at higher resolutions such as 1920x1080 (or higher) but loses in resolutions such as 1680x1050 (or below). The 6950 2GB can be unlocked to the 6970 which gives it a reasonable argument as well. But only the reference design coolers can do it. ANY CUSTOM COOLER CANNOT UNLOCK! But all of the 6950 2GB's with voltage tweak should overclock quite well. All are a valid choice. The 560 Ti can be found quite cheap now as they have rebates so it may even be cheaper than $210. So can the 6950's. 5. Hard Drive Same as in the $600, I recommend the WD Blue 250GB from NCIX US/CA Only $44. 6. Solid State Drive - SSD For this budget, I'd go with the Corsair Nova 2 60GB $90, some may say the SF controllers have gone bad. But a recent firmware update has proved otherwise. I personally have the older version SF controller in my Vertex and it's fine. 7. Power Supply I recommend the OCZ ZS 750w at only $100 it's a solid PSU for the money and you have a chance for a pretty hefty rebate depending on when you've purchased it. 8. Case Finally for the case I recommend the HAF 912 ($60) from Cooler Master. The great thing about this case is it is very spacious. The cable management holes also make it easy to hide clutter and increase the flow of air. Also a lot of room for expandability and their is a lot of tool-less design. Total: About $890