As with the other configs, we have some additional suggestions for modifying our Sweet Spot spec.

Processor
The Core 2 Duo E8400 in our main recommendations list ought to be faster than the Core 2 Quad Q6600 in most desktop tasks. However, some folks may have usage patterns that justify quad-core chips at lower clock speeds, such as video encoding or 3D rendering. If that's you, you may prefer the Q6600's four slower cores to the E8400's faster two.

As you might have noticed, we've taken AMD's Phenom out of the picture here altogether. The truth is that while Phenom is capable of providing decent performance, so long as you turn off the TLB erratum fix, there are just no good, affordable motherboards that let you do that right now. The only motherboard based on AMD's 790FX chipset we'd recommend is priced at more than $200, making it more expensive than AMD's cheapest Phenom. Under these circumstances, we have no compelling Phenom-based alternative to recommend for this system.

Motherboard
We've had good experiences with the Abit IP35 Pro in our main recommendations list, but some folks might prefer a cheaper offering from a bigger company. That's why we're recommending Gigabyte's GA-EP35-DS3P as our alternative. This board is about $25 cheaper than the IP35, but it has many of the same features, including dual PCI Express x16 slots (one of which has only four lanes of connectivity), six Serial ATA ports with RAID support, and passive cooling. The Gigabyte mobo even has some perks the IP35 Pro lacks, like two FireWire ports and eight USB 2.0 ports at the back. If you don't think you'll miss the sophisticated monitoring and tweaking features of the Abit board, you should be happy with the GA-EP35-DS3P.

Graphics card
AMD currently has no direct competition for the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB, but its Radeon HD 3870 is a decent choice for folks who want to save a few bucks and don't want an Nvidia card for whatever reason. Make no mistake, though: Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GT is faster, and the GeForce 9600 GT delivers similar performance for less. Unless you have a good reason to pick the Radeon, we recommend looking at the 8800 GT we singled out for our Grand Experiment build or the 9600 GT in our Econobox. Still, the Radeon HD 3870 delivers decent performance, and its dual-slot cooler will quietly exhaust warm air out of a system.

Storage
We have three storage suggestions in our alternatives list. The first is Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 750GB, which is our recommendation for users who care more about a long warranty than higher performance, lower noise levels, and a lower price tag.

The second is Western Digital's 150GB Raptor. We don't expect you to trade our recommended 750GB drive for a speedier one that only has 150GB of capacity, but we do think the Raptor is a good complementary option. Thanks to its 10,000-RPM spindle speed, the Raptor provides the best performance with random I/O seek loads of any Serial ATA drive out today, making it an ideal operating system and application drive. With 750GB and 150GB drives in one machine, you'll enjoy the best of both worlds: high speed where needed with high capacity riding shotgun.

Our third storage recommendation is Pioneer's BDC-202BK Blu-ray combo drive. This drive combines Blu-ray reading and DVD burning capabilities at a relatively reasonable price tag (for a high-definition drive, anyway). Now that the format war is over and Blu-ray has been declared the winner, we feel safe in recommending a high-definition drive.

Sound
Creative's X-Fi XtremeGamer may be a fine sound card, and it may satiate most folks' need for crisp surround sound audio. However, Asus' Xonar D2 is a superior alternative for audiophiles with a little more cash to spend. We tested the Xonar D2X, the PCI Express x1 version of this card, and it scored better in our RightMark Audio Analyzer test than any other sound card we've reviewed in the past. The Xonar fared well in our listening tests, too, and we were impressed with the little extras Asus tosses in, like illuminated rear audio ports, loads of cable adapters, and music conversion software. About the only downside to the Xonar is poorer game performance than cards based on Creative's X-Fi audio chip, but Windows Vista's changes to the audio hardware-software interface largely negate that disadvantage.

Although we reviewed the PCIe Xonar D2X, we're recommending the PCI Xonar D2 here. The D2X costs more, and since every motherboard out there still has at least one PCI slot, we see no real reason to pay extra for PCIe connectivity. If you plan to keep the card a few years and are looking for something to put in your empty PCIe x1 slots, though, feel free to grab the D2X.