It's been forever (1998) since I made one. So I had to get myself up to speed about what the current standards and sweet spots are.

Since I can't really use my work laptop for personal stuff (and need to get to work on that), but I can use it just generically as a laptop and use e.g. nomachine or a plain ssh tunnel to work with my files remotely, and I can get significantly more performance per price in a desktop than a laptop system... I elected to make my own.

My target is a mid-high range PC, capable of handling more or less anything I expect to do (moderate strength web server, gaming, video editing, development, ye generic office stuff, etc); plus to stay decently extensible to survive 2-4 years of Moore's Law.

Plausible future upgrades:
* more hard drives (not listed are two old HDs I have - one aging and only semi-stable 500GB IDE, and one 70GB laptop drive; those will help but aren't really reliable)
* +4gb ram (will require 64bit OS; not sure whether to try installing 64bit kubuntu hardy as afaict it has Issues, but I already have 64 bit Vista...)
* extra video card (if for some reason I end up doing massive amounts of graphics processing...)

I'll also still be using my old but still quite good Cambridge SoundWorks DTT2500 speaker set. No doubt there are better things out there, but I don't really see a need to upgrade that. Needed to add a coax s/pdif connector though, since I've lost the old one.

Otherwise, hopefully this system will last me a while. :-P


Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - 120
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad (Red) 750W EPS12V Power Supply - 150 - 30 MIR
GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - 90
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor Model BX80562Q6600 - 220
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler - 27
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - 6
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK - 150
MSI NX8800GT 512M OC GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card 185 - 25 MIR
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3750330AS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - 130
SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S203B - 27
Rosewill RCR-102 52-in-1 USB 2.0 Card Reader - 15
KDS K-24MDWB Black 24" 2ms(GtoG) DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor with HDCP support - 395
Microsoft FA6-00010 Black USB Wired Ergonomics Keyboard Mouse Included - 39
XTRAC Ripper Optical Mouse pad - 14
EDIMAX EW-7128G IEEE 802.11b/g PCI Wireless Card - 23
Link Depot SCW-10-BU Blue Aluminum screw - 1.5
2x SILVERSTONE FM121 120mm Case Fan - 34
Rosewill RCW-929 6 FT. High Performance Audio cable M-M - 9

Total $1792 - 55 MIR shipped, via newegg.

Could save ~$50ish going with noname online stores, but probably not worth it.

(Also, this counts as 'business expenses' for me as a contractor... so it's fully deductible from my self-employment tax. :))