So, $450 later and I still have a PII... what happened? ^-^ Well, I wanted to get this box up and running ASAP and leave upgrading for later. I'm looking at spending another $1500 before I'm done so this will be a hefty project.
HDD (storage): Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA (probably several). The terabyte drives are going for approximately $50 over two 500GB drives. Hopefully that will disappear soon. I'm moving all my movies from CD-R/DVD-R to HDD to save physical space. I estimated last year that I have around 2-3TB in movies so it'll take a while to buy that storage and to keep a backup. With the emergence of eSATA, I will likely buy an external dock so that they can be kept offline when not in use (no use spinning drives, I'm not using).
Motherboard: Probably one of the new Gigabyte X38 boards.
CPU: The price-slashed Core 2 Q6600 - quad-core processing power for only $270! It would make video conversion and compiling effortless and beautiful.
RAM: If I was buying right now, I'd just go for 2GB but 4GB is not out of the question and will likely be my choice in six months. I was happy with the mid-range OCZ but honestly any decent DDR2 RAM is okay (Patriot, Corsair, OCZ, etc). I wonder how long it will take DDR3 RAM to outperform DDR2 and to be cheap enough for the mainstream. I'm not worried about it at this point, DDR2 won't disappear for a while.
Video: The recently released 8800GT is all the rage and for good reason! It performs nearly as well as the high end 8800GTS, GTX and Ultra but for a fraction of the price. They are currently about $250. The GeForce 9xxx series will come out soon. Unfortunately, you have a choice ~ intel northbridge or SLI. I like the intel northbridge, even though my last board was an nForce. I don't have a practical purpose for SLI at this time (as sick as it would be!).
Monitor: The time is coming for me to move to LCD. I sold my beautiful but heavy NEC MultiSync last year so I wouldn't have to carry it around (and uselessly, after I sold my computer). I wish I hadn't but that's life. Right now I'm looking at a much bigger display anyway. I can get a Samsung 215TW 21.5" S-PVA panel for $450 (although now through the end of the month, there is a $100 mail-in rebate on newegg! Unfortunately, I just spent all my money). Alternatively, I can get a Samsung 245BW 24" TN panel for the same price ($50 Black Friday MIR!). I have to look at them in person to get a feel for whether the TN panel would bother me.
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