I've never tried to build a PC before, but I am now and it should be done by sometime this weekend (if not before). I'm a bang-for-the-buck guy so I'm pretty pleased with how inexpensively I will be able to build this thing, with pretty decent capabilities.
The box itself is right at $300, mostly possible because I got a 580w power supply, case and CD/DVD drives from some computers being given away on Freecycle. My motherboard is a "last years" good model, which I got for $42 (including tax). It's only limitation was that I had to use DDR2 SDRAM, which is now costlier than the faster DDR3. I got 4 GB (2x2GB) of dual-channel 1066Mhz for $65 (and plan to double my RAM to 8 GB for another $65 in the near future). I got an AMD Phenom II 955 3.2Ghz Black Edition processor, which a lot of guys have overclocked successfully to near 4Ghz. Added a super cooler to make that possible. My Sapphire graphics card will be just $50 after rebate, but it has 1GB of onboard DDR3 and 400 simultaneous streams, so should be great for Photoshop/Lightroom work. A Samsung Spinpoint F3 harddrive allows me to put a quiet reliable 1TB drive inside for $60. I also plan to add some SATA to eSata transitions so I can plug in external eSata drives. (My motherboard has 6 SATA connectors). I agonized over the monitor, but went bang-for-the-buck again when I found a 21.5" Samsung backlit LED monitor on clearance at the local Best Buy for $149 (tax included). I'd love a larger IPS monitor, but will see how long I can get along with this one. Apple Cinema Displays are backlit LEDs, and this Samsung has great reviews. I got a 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium OEM disk for $94, and this will be my first Windows 7/64-bit experience. (We are still on XP even at work). I'm an old Mac guy, but Windows 7 is the first Microsoft OS that I can tolerate looking at. : ) I'm hoping to finally get to learn Lightroom after I get this up and running and start my "learning to post-process" phase. Looking forward to the digital darkroom. Darren Addy Kearney, NE -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
