Re: The Crushinator's graphics board(great name by the way).
We're sticking with Zotac's GeForce GTX 260 Reloaded here, simply because achieving significantly higher performance would mean paying upwards of $500 for a dual-GPU setup.
The $389.00 HD4850 X2 would have "crushed" the 216 Reloaded by providing the "significant higher performance" you desired.
I don't see the "upwards of $500" price tag you describe.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102809

One small note:

In your guide you recommend the Antec NeoPower 500W Power supply and an Antec P182 for the The Sweeter Spot system. The 8-pin Cable for the EATX12V isn't quite long enough to be fed behind the motherboard, which was disappointing to find out... The system I build has that one lone cable over the motherboard...

Otherwise, I made a few modifications to this recommendation and have a great new Christmas gift for my father-in-pseudo-law. Thanks!

this was a gripe abt software RAID, but its moot and i can't find the post delete

I can't believe the "Utility Player" comes with a 4850 and a physical sound card :/
Eeep, ditch that, just use onboard and the 4870 instead.

I am disappointed that you didn't consider alternative operating systems. I am not an OS zealot, but it would have been nice if you mentioned that it was possible to install OS X (if you're building your own PC, you can certainly handle installing it), a flavor of Linux, or if you must have Windows, then Server 2008 seems to be your best choice for 64-bit.

The WD 640, 750GB and 1TB Caviar Black are all on newegg at 7.5-7.7 GB/$, with the 750 being cheapest. So is there something special about the 640GB model that gets it the nod ahead of the larger drives?

Frankly, none of the boxes really matches may taste. Its too mixed up and it seems as if not enough attention has been paid to power consumption or noise. It also lacks recommendations for monitors and speakers, and perhaps a printer and a scanner/camera, too. Li'le weak.

A lot of sites are showing the 260 core 216 ahead of the 4870 1GB using the new Big Bang II drivers so it's a good choice for the Crushinator.

Bender approved.

Why do you have only one AMD system? I simply cannot see how one can recommend a $180 IntEl dual core and have no mentioning of the $180 AMD quad that offers better performance than that IntEl dual core.

Is TechReport going to become another Anand?

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15941/3
What??
AMD can't quite match the performance and power efficiency of Intel's Pentium E5200 in this price range
What??

A 3.1 GHz Athlon64 X2 6000+ stomps on the 2.5 GHz C2D E5200 in performance, and the AMD motherboard + CPU combination costs more than 10% less than the Intel option for the Econobox, too.

you guys should consider renaming the crushinator ( though it is a cool name, it might offend those who have been crushed in construction accidents and building collapses etc)

how about...

the ownination station
or
ernest scared stupid

"Since the Core i7-920 doesn't support DDR3 speeds above 1066MHz"
Who the hell is the target audience here if it's presumed that ppl would just run stock settings?
It angers me when i see such recomandation since people that don't know any better might actually go and buy it.

Crushinator.....nice choice.....

X25-E would be a better choice, would it not??

TR, this was an incredibly thorough, helpful, and well written article. Kudo's.

Does the HD4870 really out perform the 260? Every recent chart, graph, and review I've seen seems to suggest otherwise. The 4870 512MB seems to consistently run out of memory when you start enabling AA, even at 1680x1050 resolution. I'm trying to decide between these two cards right now and with the Geforce 260 at $210~ and including Far Cry 2 vs the 4870 512MB at $230~ and no game... well. I want the best performing card, FC2 is a game I want to play but not a game I'd buy till bargin bin. But again, every chart I've seen as late has the 260 beating the 4870 but in GRID (don't care about at all) and CoD4 (care about, but the performance is so high it doesn't matter).

Sigh, this is really hard. :(

Edit: Also, just to confirm Phenom X4 + GeForce 260/HD4870 vs E8400 + HD4850 is a certain win for the Phenom combo in gaming... correct?

In the utility player, wouldn't the airflow of the sonata 3 case impede the radeon 4850? Would the 1 12cm fan be enough to keep everything cool?

I ask because I'm looking forward to building a new desktop after 4 years of not building one (I've kept up-to-date on tech like it's my job) and that 800 dollar budget is exactly mine.

I have a quibble about some remarks in the x32/x64 paragraph on the OS page.

You *can* use some 32 bit drivers, but not many. It's not for everyone, but with about 30 seconds work I got an ancient USB scanner working on my Vista x64 install last week.

Basically the make or break is the quality of coding in the driver. If it was written to best practices (few were), it can work thanks to some really great reverse-compatibility stuff that's in MS's x64 designs, both XP and Vista.

We're shunning the Phenom 9950 Black Edition because, while it's also available with a 125W power envelope, it carries a $16 premium for a tiny 100MHz clock speed increase. If you really must have that extra smidgen of performance, just save your money and change the multiplier on the 9850. Or get the Q8200.

It overclocks much better, though!

Coolers for the LGA 1366 processors? You folks have talked about Core i7 overclocking, but the Cooling section on the last page still only has LGA 775 heatsinks. Or is the stock Core i7 heatsink good enough? (The LGA 1366 mounting holes are further apart, so a mounting kit or perhaps a different design would be needed.)

Hmm if power consumption is a concern in the budget section i would love to see an x2 4850e 45w + Biostar GF8100 + HD4670 :p Also the x3 8450 for me is a fantastic low cost CPU even more so if your needs include HDTV playback!

There's one thing I noticed about the WD 640GB SE16 vs Caviar Black recently when browsing WD's website. On the drive specification data sheet .pdfs the Blue/SE16 has a "Non-recoverable read errors per bits read" of <1 in 10^15 while the Black is <1 in 10^14 (strangely unlike the 750GB and 1TB Blacks which are 1 in 10^15) so the Blue series is rated with a lower error rate than the bottom half of the Blacks.

Is that even something to consider as important between the two drives? Does WD have any explanation for this?