I recently put together a new server, and as preparation, spent a few hours on Newegg.  I’m quite suprised at some of the deals that can be found right now, and thought I would pass the summation of my research on.  Behold: The Best Computer for your Money (as of May 2009).

Case: Antec 300
Power Supply: Antec Basiq 500
(Buy these together on Newegg & Save $20)

Motherboard:Gigabyte GA-EP45C-UD3R
CPU: Intel E8400 3.0 Ghz Core2Duo (Wolfdale)
(Buy these together on Newegg & Save $15)

CPU Cooler: Zalman 9500

Memory: 4GB Corsair XMS

Video Card: BFG 9800 GT OC 1GB

Hard Drive: Seagate 500GB SATA

There you have it folks.  All told, the total in my newegg cart for all of the above is $651.88.  There’s also another $35 off in Mail-in Rebates, bringing the total to $626.88.  Now here’s the beautiful thing.  The combination of the 45nm CPU and the beefy cooler allow even a newb to overclock the CPU to 3.6 Ghz without trouble.

Here’s are some of the highlights:
3.6Ghz Dual Core Processor
6MB L2 CPU Cache
1333 Mhz Front Side Bus
4 GB Ram with super-fast 5-5-5 timings
1GB Video card

Try to find those specs with any pre-built machine; you won’t.  And if you do, it won’t be with the quality, name-brand guts you see here.  That’s all for now, I’m off to play UT3.

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