As described in BLOG-LINK-CALLED-BUILDING-ARCTIC-THUNDER, my son and I had a blast building his new PC. He named the white case after the Arctic Thunder arcade game. This page is devoted to the component list that makes up this box.
component, selection, price paid, notes
| Component | Selection | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Case | Thermaltake Commander MS-I Snow Edition | $50 |
| Motherboard | ASUS P8Z77-V LX | $105 |
| CPU | Intel i7 Quad-Core 3.4GHz | $290 |
| Memory | Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) | $125 |
| Hard Drive | Seagate Barracuda 2TB SATA 6Gb/s | $80 |
| Optical Drive | ASUS 24xDVD-RW SATA | $20 |
| Graphics Card | n/a; to control costs we are starting w MB's integrated graphics | - |
| Power Supply | Corsair CX750 Builder Series | $80 |
| Monitor | ASUS VS247H-P 23.6" Full-HD LED-Lit LCD | $135 |
| OS | Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM System Builder) | $90 |
| Keyboard | Razer BlackWidow Tournament Edition Mechanical PC Gaming Keyboard | $60 |
| Mouse | Razer Abyssus Optical PC Gaming Mouse | $30 |
| GRAND TOTAL ** | $1065 | |
** That sounds a bit high for a RYO machine, but here are some comparable systems from reputable manufacturers
| Brand | Cost | Notes | HP|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dell | |||||
| Gateway | |||||
| Apple | $1080 | Right on the money for the most comparable system I could configure; an XPS 8700. I could only configure it with a 1TB drive and 12GB of memory (on 4 DIMMS). | |||
| HP | $1440 | To my surprise, HP's site had more fine-grained customization options (down to the power supply) and I priced out an ENVY 700 010xt for about $400 more than I spent. | |||
| Apple | $1711 | As Mac's can run Windoze (why would anyone do that!?!?) I wanted to get an Apple number to compare against. I had to go with the mini line as the Mac Pros were so far out of the league of what we build. I found a somewhat similarly configured Mac Mini Server for $1576 and then just added the cost of the cheap monitor we bought. |