First post, by athlon-power
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Out of all of the builds I have done, this build has been both the least and the most confusing, in different ways. I ended up getting ahold of a Core2Quad Q9550- when it was first released, it was the highest-end processor available below the Core2Extreme chips (It was also US$500 less- and it wasn't a huge performance loss, either). I decided to create a mid-2008 build based around that processor, and here's what I've come up with so far:
High-End 2008 Build parts listed in order of acquisition (I already own all of the parts in this list, using 2008 prices):
Graphics Card: PNY XLr8 GeForce 9800 GTX
US$294.99 - newegg.com - June 29th, 2008 (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?I … N82E16814133219)
CPU: Intel Core2Quad Q9550 2.83GHz
US$559.99 - newegg.com - June 18th, 2008 (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?I … N82E16819115041)
Case: APEVIA X-SUPRA G-Type
US$69.99 - newegg.com - June 17th, 2008 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16811144217)
Motherboard: ASUS P5K SE
US$92.99 - newegg.com - June 14th, 2008 (https://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?i … N82E16813131189)
CPU Cooler: Arctic Freezer 7 Pro
US$26.99 - newegg.com - June 17th, 2008 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16835186134)
Current Total: US$1044.95
Adjusted for inflation: US$1,233.74
Already, it's a quite expensive machine (at least, for its time)- however, it's the first machine I've ever build that is going to be built with parts exclusively from that 2008 time frame, right from the get-go. I have been choosing my parts from 2008 newegg, using the Internet Archive. My only specifications for a part are that they need to be available between May 2008 and June 2008. I already have a GPU, however, once June 17th hit, so did the GTX 200 series of cards. Compared to even the GTX 260, the 9800GTX I own is flattened. So far, I am confident that the build I've created is fairly balanced, with a budget of roughly US$2,000. My question is whether or not this build should use a GTX 260, or a GTX 280.
The rest of the parts are quite high-end for the time, and I'm even planning on using 4GB of factory overclocked DDR2 1066 RAM. This motherboard not only supports the 1333MHz FSB of the Core2Quad right off the bat, but it also supports factory OC'd DDR2 1066- this Core2Quad is also unlocked, meaning that I could potentially overclock it, but I will likely avoid that seeing as my cooler probably won't handle that too well. I also learned my lesson on custom OC'ing a little while back when I killed a Rage 128 Pro while trying to overclock it- I'll certainly be sticking to factory overclocks for now, if I mess with overclocking at all.
Where am I?
