[quote=paramount]I built a decent system recently for just over $200 using Fry’s and pricewatch.
AMD Tri Core 450 3.2GHz
Biostar Mobo
2x500gb Hitachi (the best IMO) drives 7200RPM
9800GT PCIe
Bulldozer Case
Really good refurb power supply (don’t go cheap on this…)
4GB DDR3
Windows 7 Rating 5.5 (which seems low to me)[/quote]
That’s a lot of bang for the buck, paramount! You’re a very “persistent shopper.” My Vaio has a 3.2 Ghz dual-core processor and is very fast with smooth video (predates tri core). My experience with Hitachi HDs is with their SCSI drives over the last 18 years. Although smaller than SATA/IDE, they are VERY durable and stable and almost never crash. And I have NEVER had one die on me … click, click (but have a small box of dead EIDE drives).
Vaio has a Windows Vista (Home Premium) rating of 7.8.
