Ideal Computer

My super PC
Nicholas Coppley
Rasmussen College
Fall 2012

Here are the highlights of My Super PC today!
Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H |
Processor | Intel Core i5-3570k 3.4GHz (quad-core) |
Ram | Crucial 8192MB (8GB) PC3-12800 DDR3 |
Video Card | MSI Geforce GTX 660 2GB DDR5 PCI-E |
Solid State Drive | Crucial M4 128GB |
Hard Drive | Western Digital RE4 1000GB 7200rpm SATA 3 |
Optical Drive | ASUS Blu-Ray 12x DVD RW |
Sound Card | ASUS Xonar D1 (but the motherboard built-in sound is very good) |
Operating System | Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit |
Monitor | Dell UltraSharp 2001FP 20.1-inch Flat Panel LCD Monitor |

It wouldn't take long for My Super PC to become just an average PC. But My Super PC was built with upgradeability as a primary consideration and it's as upgradeable as it gets!
This brings me to the first rule of building your own PC which I call the “six month rule of delayed acquisition”. Only use hardware and software that is at least six months old. There are three big reasons. First, as you may guess, is that prices drop drastically in even as short a period as six months. Second, as you may guess again, is that any problems will shake out in this time. But a third very important reason is that in only six months there will be volumes of information about an item – from how it performs to how you can best use it.
My Super PC is built entirely from high quality components in the "sweet spot", meaning each component gives the most bang for the buck. This also means that the ultimate money-is-no-object component is not used. Doing so could easily double the cost, while only marginally improving on the final result.
The operating system is just the thing that lets everything else run. If it's staying out of the way and not causing any trouble then it's doing most of what I want. Usually I'm not hung up at all on getting the latest and greatest version of Windows, and could stretch out my "six-month rule of...