Hi Everyone,

My current setup is/was a custom pc I built back in 2001 AMD Barton X64 2Ghz (overclocked) system which I primarily used for rendering and music production, and also my 6 year old Compaq Persario for Gaming / E-Mail / Surfing etc.

My wife has/had an older Compaq Persario which is about 7 years old, and need for an upgrade.

Got a small bonus for completing some projects at work, and so I started doing some research on purchasing a new system.  So this is what I came up with

Case:  Coolermaster Centurion 5 II $67.77
Board: ASUS Sabertooth X58 $193.54
Memory: 12GB in Triple Channel configuration  $67.08 x 3 = $201.24
CPU: Core i7 950 -> Can o/c to 4.0 - 4.4 GHz $289.79
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470  $199.99
1st HDD: Corsair or OCZ 120GB SDD $189.99
2nd HDD: WD Caviar Black SATA3 2TB (this will be on a seperate SATA3 controller on the MB for less bottlenecking $154.99
Optical: Samsung SH-S243D/BEBE 24X Black DVD Writer SATA OEM $21.99
Power Supply: Corsair Corsair TX750W 750W $106
Cooler: Scythe Ninja 3 $47.77

Total with Blu-ray writer: $1571.07 (Canadian)

Modifications:
With DVD-RW instead of Blu-ray: -$98
With WD Caviar Black 640GB as 1st HDD instead of SSD: -$130.20

But I started thinking about the price vs performance and If I could do with less.

So I went to my favourite local computer store and looked at some of the bargain priced pc's they build in house.

So I bought two of these:

Sale Price $379

Board: ASUS P5G41-M LE/CSM
Memory: 4GB (2x 2GB) DDR3 1333Mhz
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 2.5Ghz
GPU: Intel GMA X4500 (Windows 7 Ready)
HDD: 500GB HDD,
Optical: 18X DVD-Writer

Power Supply: 450W

I bumped up the Power supply to 600W as well I added a PCI Express card ATI HD 5670.

Total price for both computers $1100.

One for me and one for the Wife.

I've got my wifes up and running right on on Windows 7 64-Bit and slowly migrating her work stuff onto it, she's happy.

I'll have to configure mine next. :)

So what do you guys think?