Ars Technica just published a nice system guide for those interested in a little do-it-yourself PC construction, and I think it’s worth mentioning here.
People have been building their own PCs for years, but Ars brings its expertise to the table in a nicely packaged article offering readers a choice of three machines: the Budget Box, the Hot Rod and the God Box. Using the site’s comparison shopping service (powered by DealTime), you can check the current price of each component yourself and read a nice paragraph or two explaining why it’s a good choice. Some specs on each of the machines, priced before buying an operating system:
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•Budget Box ($787) – AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 512 MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 6600, 80 GB HD
•Hot Rod ($1551) – AMD Athlon 64 3500+, 1 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT, 250 GB HD
•God Box ($12,213) – AMD Opteron 275 (x2), 4 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX (x2), 73 GB Maxtor Atlas 15k, 147 GB Maxtor Atlas 10k (x3)
Looks like they’re big fans of AMD and NVIDIA. A friend of mine did a good job of putting it in perspective, saying that he could cancel his plans to buy a condo, cash out his IRA and go for the God Box…or just snag the eight-monitored beast whose eBay auction is set to expire today. Ars DID say the God Box is beyond the range of mere mortals, but somehow that doesn’t placate me. What can I say? BYO projects like this are fun to think about. As soon as the first MacIntel machines ship, I’m seriously contemplating a run down do-it-yourself road, with help from the OSx86 Project, of course.