May Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 8

Price Round Up

The Intel System

Case: Cooler Master TAC-T01 Wave Master- $130
PSU: Antec 480W TruePower - $76
CPU: Pentium 4-3.4 GHz Extreme Edition Processor OEM - $1,029
Cooling: Thermalright SLK-948U w/Vantec Stealth 92mm FAN - $39
Motherboard: ABIT IC7-MAX3 - $173
Memory: OCZ EL DDR PC-3200 Platinum Limited Edition (2x512) - $254
Hard Drive: Two Western Digital 74GB SATA, 10000 RPM w/ 8-MB Cache - $410
Video Card: ATI Radeon 9800XT 256-MB - $409
Monitor: NEC/Mitsubishi DP2070SB-BK 22" Diamondtron Monitor - $604
Sound Card: Creative SoundBlaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro - $195
Speakers: Logitech Z-680 5.1 - $265
CD/DVD-RW: Pioneer 8X DVD+RW/-RW DVR-107D OEM - $93
NIC: Included - $0
Modem: US Robotics External v.92 USB Performance Pro Faxmodem - $37
Mouse: Logitech MX700 Optical Mouse - $52
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Natural Keyboard OEM - $20
Gamepad: Saitek P3000 Wireless Pad - $39
Operating System: Windows XP Pro w/s SP1 - $135
UPS: APC Back-UPS Pro 650VA- $60
Floppy: Generic Black Floppy Disk Drive - $8

Total: $4,028

The AMD System

Case: Cooler Master TAC-T01 Wave Master - $130
PSU: Antec 480W TruePower - $76
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 OEM - $759
Cooling: Thermalright SLK-948U w/Vantec Stealth 92mm FAN - $39
Motherboard: ASUS SK8V Retail - $180
Memory: Kingston HyperX PC3200 DDR400 1G ECC Registered (2x512-MB) - $380
Hard Drive: Two Western Digital 74GB SATA, 10000 RPM w/ 8-MB Cache - $410
Video Card: ATI Radeon 9800XT 256-MB - $409
Monitor: NEC/Mitsubishi DP2070SB-BK 22" Diamondtron Monitor - $604
Sound Card: Creative SoundBlaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro - $195
Speakers: Logitech Z-680 5.1 - $265
CD/DVD-RW: NEC Pioneer 8X DVD+RW/-RW DVR-107D OEM - $93
NIC: Included - $0
Modem: US Robotics External v.92 USB Performance Pro Faxmodem - $37
Mouse: Logitech MX700 Optical Mouse - $52
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Natural Keyboard OEM - $20
Gamepad: Saitek P3000 Wireless Pad - $39
Operating System: Windows XP Pro w/s SP1 - $135
UPS: APC Back-UPS ES 500VA- $60
Floppy: Generic Black Floppy Disk Drive - $8

Total: $3,891

Closing Remarks

After a couple of months the Pentium 4-3.4 GHz Extreme Edition and AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 are both widely available, and we've been quick to include these in the guide this month. Unfortunately, the extremely high price of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition made this month's guide a little lopsided, with the Intel system checking in at over $100 more than the AMD system, but performance still remaining consistent between the two. The extremely high price of the Pentium 4 EE put a damper on our hopes to secure enough of the budget to include a high end LCD in this month's guide. Instead, we recommended an LCD on the side, and did not include it in the overall price of the system for those of you who would prefer not to use a CRT.

Despite NVIDIA and ATI announcing new products over the past couple of weeks, neither company has boards available at retail, making them impossible to include in the guide this month. As both become available over the next few weeks you can be rest assured that we will be taking a look at both companies' products to determine which one will make the grade for next month's edition of the Extreme Buyer's Guide. Additionally, we are looking into making a full-blown LCD recommendation next month as there are some very nice high-end LCDs that might just make the grade. Hopefully, component prices will continue to drop at the ultra high-end, and let us push this system even farther with additional hardware improvements.

* Please note that the prices in our guide do not include shipping costs or taxes. The final system price also reflects a "best case" scenario of finding an online vendor that stocks the majority of internal components, or having access to a number of local computer retailers for system quotes and comparison shopping.