My most recent PC build

[Grauniad]

In late May/Early Jine I built a new PC. My laptop was getting on to 5 years and the family desktop was a 2011 vintage.

I saw an article in Maximum PC about some benchmarks they did and "Best PC for the Buck" recommendations.

I like what I saw, so I started looking for components between March and the end of May (Memorial Day sales).

I bought my first components at the end of March and continued acquiring components as I saw them and liked the price. I actually built 2 PCs during this time, one was a special-purpose PC for a photographer, so it has some constraints on space and components - Maybe I'll describe that one later).

During the Memorial Day sales at the end of May I bit the bullet and acquired all the components. I could have, if I times it differently, saved maybe another $40 or so. Many of the components had rebates and I'm still waiting for some of those to be returned (the usual rebate process takes 8-10 weeks, and sometimes rebates just fail to materialize - topic for another post).

Here is a screenshot of my build components. Note that there is one actual difference in what I bought and what I actually did. While I really, really like the  Radeon HD 7770, I had a Radeon HD 7950 in an older build. That card was simply much too powerful for the 2nd generation Intel i5-2500K, so I swapped that card into my new build and now the family don't even notice that they have a much weaker card.

Footnote. Note that I have 32 GB RAM in my machine VS the 16 GB in the Maximum PC build. That means that for a comparable machine, My build could have been $100 less.

My choice of memory was dictated by the choice of Motherboard - I got one 8 GB stick of memory bundled with the Motherboard. That is a $50 savings right there.

[MadMag]

Looks like a very nice, stable and powerful machine.