Utility Player alternatives
As with the Econobox, we have some alternative propositions for how to fill out the Utility Player.

Processor
The $150-250 portion of the CPU market is pretty crowded right now, so we ended up choosing three alternatives to our triple-core Phenom II. The quad-core Phenom II X4 940 is a slightly fancier upgrade for folks who want an extra core and a higher clock speed. This chip will happily work in our primary motherboard, and thanks to its unlocked upper multiplier, it should be as easy to overclock as its three-core cousin.

On the Intel side of the playground, we've singled out two products. The Core 2 Quad Q9400 has the same price and overall performance as the quad-core Phenom, but it has a leaner power envelope. Meanwhile, the Core 2 Duo E8400 costs a little less than the triple-core Phenom but carries just two, higher-clocked cores, which offer higher single-threaded performance and lower power consumption.

As we noted earlier, Intel's LGA775 socket has a more limited upgrade path than the AMD alternative right now. If you'd still like to go blue, keep reading to learn about our recommended Intel motherboard.

Motherboard
Gigabyte's Intel P45-based GA-EP45-UD3P looks quite similar to our recommended AMD motherboard. That's no coincidence, because both models are part of Gigabyte's Ultra Durable series, and they both feature dual physical PCI Express x16 slots and fancy cooling for the power-regulation circuitry. The Intel mobo costs a little more, though, and it has two more SATA ports and one extra Gigabit Ethernet controller. Judging from the gushingly positive user reviews on Newegg, this should nicely complement our alternative Core 2 CPUs.

Graphics
If you have a little extra cash kicking around and want a graphics card with more than 512MB of memory to run games at higher resolutions, Zotac's GeForce GTX 260 Reloaded is a fine step up from the Radeon HD 4870. Yes, you can get 1GB Radeon HD 4870s with equivalent performance for about the same price (XFX even has one with a double-lifetime warranty for just $240), but we find the GeForce slightly more compelling.

You see, Nvidia has forged a close relationship with many game developers through its "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" program and other initiatives. Often, lately, new releases have run better on Nvidia GPUs. The GTX 260 Reloaded also draws less power than the 4870 1GB, which is less heat to be dissipated. The difference doesn't amount to much under load, but we measured a 30W gap between the two cards at idle. (That's at least two of those swirly light bulbs.) We could also make a case for Nvidia's PhysX tech, but aside from Mirror's Edge, few games support it.

This Zotac card has additional upsides over other GTX 260 Reloaded variants, including higher-than-normal clocks, a nice Nvidia dual-slot cooler, and lifetime warranty coverage. Well, technically, the warranty drops down to two years if you don't register within 30 days of purchase, but that's not a bad deal either way.

Storage
You might be wondering what LG's GGC-H20L Blu-ray combo drive is doing in our alternatives section. We realize this is an expensive step up from our Samsung DVD burner, but we think some users will happily cough up a little extra for Blu-ray playback support. This drive can play HD DVDs, too, in case you find any of those lying around.

Audio
Integrated motherboard audio has certainly come a long way, but the best solutions still don't provide very good analog output. If you have quality analog speakers or headphones and don't mind paying extra for better sound quality, then something like Asus' Xonar DX is in order. This card sounds great, supports features like real-time Dolby Digital Live encoding, and does a decent job of emulating Creative's EAX 5.0 positional audio effects in games.