First of all, youtube not working COULD be considered an advantage (; Second, what the heck are you doing in NH? (; Ok, for real. A few years ago I got a Lian-Li case. I have never, ever looked back. Whenever I build a 'real' computer I get a Lian-Li case. They're good stuff. AMD still makes the price/performance CPU. Now I usually go for the one-gen-behind chip because that makes your price go WAY down, so I might go for the Phenom II X4 965 ($180 @newegg), but I'd be very very tempted to go for the Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition (~$300 @newegg) because hey, six cores. There's a non-black-edition 2.8GHz version of that CPU for about $200, too. Those won't be as super-fast as the Intel i7, but they cost a HELL of a lot less (the i7 six core 3.2GHz chips are like $1,000). I /do/ start at the CPU and work my way from there. One of those CPUs tells you you need an AM3 motherboard. Then you go for the features you want on a motherboard (how many/what kind of SATA, LAN, etc). Newegg's advanced and power search are great for this. Then you get whatever kind of RAM you need for that. Case and PSU are independant of the rest of the computer (well, you need to make sure the PSU has the right connections for the motherboard). I usually then get enough silent fans to install and/or replace in the case, as well as a silent CPU cooler. Dammit, now you've made me want to build a computer! On Tue, 27 Jul 2010, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote: > So I'm finally breaking down and going to get myself a new desktop machine, > because Youtube is unusable on a 1.1GHz K7, and Gmail is pretty doggy > sometimes when editing. > > Thing is, I don't have a clue what's good hardware on the market these days. > I figured I'd start with a case and go from there; but perhaps I'm being > backward and should start with a CPU and narrow down my choices that > way. > > I'd really like a nice big case with lots of room to work in; ideally very quiet. > I've been using a Yeong Yang YY-022 for the past 10 years or so; it's a > scaled-down version of a double-wide server case. Looks like a black > cube-ish thing about 13"x13"x16". It's a bit of a pain to route cables tho; > so I'd be happy enough to go back to a conventional layout. > > Anyone have any good experiences with cases they want to relate? > > Any good advice on which CPU is at the sweet price point these days? > > In case you didn't know, I'm not physically in the Twin Cities area (I'm in > New Hampshire) so telling me to go down to Tran Micro is not useful. :) > > -- > Carl Soderstrom > Systems Administrator > Real-Time Enterprises > www.real-time.com > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > -Yaron --