First off let me say welcome to my new blog. I created this blog because I wanted a blog that I could use to discuss my interest in all things tech.
Now on with the show. I just built a new PC for The Pinnells, they had a Dell XPS 400 and the motherboard went south. We decided on a budget of around $700 just for the tower because they had everything else already.

I began shopping around and I chose to buy from www.zipzoomfly.com because I have had great success from their service department in the past and also they have lightning fast shipping for cheap. Tigerdirect.com has some good deals on bare bones systems, but I really like being able to choose all aspects of the build. With a budget of $700 I decided to not go to expensive on the case, but I didn't want anything to flimsy either, so I decided to see what Cooler Master had to offer. I decided to go with the Cooler Master Centurion 5 case which I found for $55.

I decided to go with a Intel processor on this build because quite frankly their Quad Core processor line really out does AMD by leaps and bounds. So I chose the Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 2.33Ghz processor for $195. With memory prices as cheap as they are now I decided to just max out the system (he wanted WinXP 32bit installed) and put 4GB in it. I found a killer deal on Corsair XMS2 4GB Kit for $55. They didn't really have alot of PCI cards in the old system that they ever used and didn't plan on expanding the system much anyways so I saved money by choosing a economical motherboard, the MSI G31M3L for $43 is a small board for the big Cooler Master case, but it will get the job done. They don't game much, but he does use AutoCAD, but on the $700 budget a Quatro or similar card is pretty much out of the question, but I figured a card with alot of memory on board should fit the bill just fine, so I chose a ASUS GeForce9400GT with 1GB DDR2 on board for $80. Hard drives have come down in price so much I decided to go with a 2 hard drive setup, one for the OS and applications and another for storage of music, videos, etc. I chose a Seagate 250GB SATA II 7200RPM drive for the OS and a Seagate 1TB SATA II 7200RPM 32MB Buffer for storage both drives came to $160. I figured a 500W power supply should power this rig fine, but had limited cashflow left so I wasn't able to go with a detachable cable power supply but I found a nice OCZ 500SXS power supply for $60.

I really liked the simplicity of the Cooler Master case and its tool-less design. The Intel processor runs lightning fast and overall the system is extremely quiet. I deliver the system tomorrow and hope The Pinnells will be happy with it.