Peripherals, accessories, and extras
Matters of religion and taste

Now that we've examined operating system choices in detail, let's have a look at some accessories. We don't have a full set of recommendations at multiple price levels in the categories below, but we can make general observations and point out specific products that are worthy of your consideration. What you ultimately choose in these areas will probably depend heavily on your own personal preferences.

Displays
The world of monitors has enough scope and variety that we can't keep track of it all, especially because we don't often review monitors. However, we do appreciate a good display—or two or three of them, since several of us are multi-monitor fanatics—so we can offer a few pieces of advice.

Let's get one thing clear before we begin: LCDs have long since supplanted CRTs as the display type of choice for gamers and enthusiasts. LCDs might have been small and of insufficient quality for gaming and photo editing six or seven years ago, but the latest models have huge panels, lightning-quick response times, and impressive color definition. Unless you're already content with a massive, power-guzzling CRT, there's little reason to avoid LCDs.

Despite their near-universal sharpness and thin form factors, not all LCDs are created equal. Besides obvious differences in sizes and aspect ratios, LCDs have different panel types. Wikipedia has a good run-down of different kinds of LCD panels in this article, but most users will probably care about one major differentiating attribute: whether their display has a 6-bit twisted nematic + film (TN+film) panel or not. The majority of sub-$500 monitors have 6-bit TN panels, which means 18-bit, rather than 24-bit, color definition. Those panels use dithering to simulate colors that are out of their scope, yielding sub-optimal color accuracy, and they often have poor viewing angles on top of that. 8-bit panels typically look better, although they tend to have higher response times and loftier prices.

So, what should you get? We think that largely depends on which of our builds you're going with. For instance, those who purchase the Sweeter Spot ought to splurge on a nice 8-bit, 24" display—perhaps HP's LP2475w or Dell's UltraSharp U2410, both of which have IPS panels and reasonable price tags. Pairing the Sweeter Spot with a small, $200 display would really be a waste, since high-end graphics cards provide headroom specifically for gaming at high resolutions. It'd be a bit like hooking up a Blu-ray player to a standard-def TV.

We recommend something bigger, like Dell's 30" UltraSharp 3007WFP-HC, for use with the Double-Stuff Workstation. Our workstation build has two high-end graphics cards, after all, and you ought to have an ample monitor budget if you're purchasing a $2,600 machine, anyway.

On the lower end of the spectrum, we think the Utility Player matches up well with less expensive monitors, like 20", 22", and 24" displays with TN panels. Picky users may scoff at 6-bit displays, but they're quite a bit cheaper and more than adequate for most applications. With the Econobox, something like a sub-$200 20" LCD should do fine.

By the way, we should point out that the Radeon HD 5000-series graphics cards we recommended throughout this guide support triple-monitor configurations. This scheme, which AMD calls Eyefinity, even works in existing games. You'll just need either an adapter or a display with a native HDMI or DisplayPort input, since new Radeons all have two DVI outputs with one DisplayPort and one HDMI on the side.

Mice and keyboards
New mice seem to crop up every other week, but we tend to favor offerings from Logitech and Microsoft because both companies typically make quality products and offer great warranty coverage. (Nothing beats getting a free, retail-boxed mouse if your old one starts behaving erratically.) Everyone has his preferences when it comes to scroll wheel behavior, the number of buttons present, and control panel software features. But here, too, one particular attribute lies at the heart of many debates: wirelessness.

Wireless mice have come a long way over the past few years, and you can expect a relatively high-end one to feel just as responsive as a wired mouse. However, certain folks—typically hard-core gamers—find all wireless mice laggy, and they don't like the extra weight of the batteries. Tactile preferences are largely subjective, but wireless mice do have a few clear advantages and disadvantages. On the upside, you can use them anywhere on your desk or from a distance, and you don't run the risk of snagging the cable. That said, good wireless mice cost more than their wired cousins, and they force you to keep an eye on battery life. Because of that last issue, some favor wireless mice with docking cradles, which let you charge your mouse at night and not have to worry about finding charged AAs during a Team Fortress 2 match.

We can also find two distinct schools of thoughts on the keyboard front. Some users will prefer the latest and fanciest offerings from Logitech and Microsoft, with their smorgasbord of media keys, sliders, knobs, scroll wheels, and even built-in LCD displays. Others like their keyboards simple, clicky, and heavy enough to beat a man to death with. If you're one of the old-school types, you may want to try a Unicomp Customizer 101/104 or an original vintage-dated IBM Model M. $50-70 is a lot to put down for a keyboard, but these beasts can easily last a couple of decades.

If you're part of the mechanical keyboard club and are looking for something a little less... well, ugly, then Metadot's Das Keyboard Professional or ABS's M1 might interest you. The Das Keyboard is pretty pricey (over $100), but it has a more stylish look and a softer feel than the Model M and its modern derivatives. The M1 costs less and has non-clicky mechanical switches, which are softer still, even though they make typing feel more solid than the rubber-dome switches on the average multimedia keyboard.

Another intriguing option is a keyboard with laptop-style scissor switch key mechanisms like the Enermax Aurora, which we found to be surprisingly pleasing, both in terms of tactile feedback and industrial design.

Card reader
This section traditionally included a floppy drive/card reader combo, but we're almost in 2010 now. Windows Vista is already three years old, and Windows 7 is now out. We've had the Internet, USB thumb drives, and Windows-based BIOS flashing tools for considerably longer than that. It's time to let go.

If you absolutely must stick something in that external 3.5" drive bay, we suggest this Super Talent all-in-one card reader. It's only $10, yet has good user reviews on Newegg, and should happily gobble up any flash card you find lying around.

Cooling
We're recommending retail processors in all of our configs because they come with longer warranties. Those CPUs also come bundled with stock heatsinks that, these days, offer decent cooling performance with reasonably low noise levels. However, if you want an even quieter system, additional overclocking headroom, or both, you may want to look into an aftermarket CPU cooler.

Our latest cooler roundup has left us particularly impressed with Noctua's NH-U12P tower-style cooler, and a new version of it that supports all current Intel and AMD socket types is now available. This mass of metal is exceedingly quiet with the accompanying fan, and it managed to keep our test CPU a couple degrees cooler than a pricier liquid-cooling setup. Impressive stuff.

For a cheaper solution, we suggest taking a look at Cooler Master's Hyper 212 Plus. Despite the $30 price tag, this heatsink has a large, tower-style design, three copper heat pipes, and a 120-mm fan with a four-pin PWM connector. The mounting system also works happily with LGA1156, LGA775, AM2, and AM3 sockets, so like the Noctua, you can use it with any of our recommended builds.

Conclusions
With higher memory prices and the scarceness of AMD's new Radeon HD 5800-series graphics cards, this system guide is a bit of a downer. In a way, we've taken a step back from the previous edition to account for negative developments in the hardware landscape.

That view doesn't account for how far we've come, though. Just six months ago, including a quad-core Nehalem processor in our $800 Utility Player build was unthinkable, you still had to choose between Windows Vista and Windows XP, and DirectX 11 wasn't much more than a few vague bullet points in a PowerPoint presentation. Having to pay a little more for RAM and wait for DX11 Radeons to trickle into stock... those are hardly major setbacks.

What's next? Budget users can probably look forward to 32-nm Clarkdale dual-core processors from Intel and new budget DX11 Radeons from AMD early next year, and Nvidia will introduce its first DX11 GPU—a high-end one, most likely—some time in the first quarter. Unless you're scraping the bottom of the barrel or shooting for the absolute high end, though, we don't see any point in holding off on an upgrade right now.

If you need assistance, feel free to head over to the System Builders Anonymous section of our forums. That forum is teeming with users asking for help, either with building new machines or upgrading old ones, so you'll find plenty of company and support if you're not feeling particularly confident about a new build.