Building my own computer?

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I am certainly looking over components. I have put together several computers in the past. I have the parts list stored at Egghead. And it is a machine every bit as top notch and lasting as I can reasonably ponder, perhaps too much. I am considering an Intel 3.46ghz 6core chip, an Asus P6T7 motherboard, an Asus Ares video card (crossfired 2ghz chips on one card), a Soundblaster sound card, 12gb of 1600mhz RAM, a 1200 watt power source, 2 'cd' players one of which is blue-ray read/write and the other a dvd read/write, a 50gb ssd, 2 150gb x 10k rpm hard drives, and a 2gb back-up hard drive, 3 25" monitors, a (non-liquid) cooler for the cpu, and a very good case. The price tag, so far, is about $4.5k. Okay, probably fantasy. But it gives me something to look at. Something that cannot be an impulse buy.

In looking over components, getting past the "gee whiz", and "oh boy", of easily impressed boys or zealous salesmen is the first trick. Why, everything brand new and top of the line is the most fantastic thing ever, if you go back and look at their previous "reviews". When you get to the nuts and bolts of having apples compared to apples, quite often the improvements are modest or non-existent. Although, you have to really read the results, then compare costs and complexity and stability of the components being tested. The video card, for example, actually comes in a bit behind several other card configurations. The problem? First, the comparison is done without overclocking usually. Second, the other board configurations are dual, so you would have to buy two of them, then configure them, then, hope for stability, and often add cooling systems as they as a system run a bit hotter. So many things must be examined, several sources need to be reviewed, and still, in the end, it comes down to making a decision and hoping it is the correct one.

You can spend huge amounts of money and all but guarantee, in many cases, both good product and good service. You can step that down to extreme hit or miss with companies that might fold on their first call for a return. Some times, with some things, I am willing to compromise or outright gamble. On other things, no so much. Some products are all questionable, as the products are so simple that competition is extremely fierce so that producers are all bottom lining it, and praying. I can only imagine this is not that too dissimilar from buying components to build a custom vehicle.

I see a lot of kids who, somehow (pot sales? drug running? something not right to be sure) with loads of cash buying machines they can and do over clock, water cool, and still manage to burn up in months to a year. It amazes me to see them back in, doing the same thing, over and over. I suppose I would think it nice to have that kind of cash flow, but I would rather have a machine that outperforms chipsets that came out even three and four years after my machine, and able to perform quite well eight to nine years after it was made (other than a hard drive problem, and that hard drive actually being new). I would choose right what I have, less cash, more wisdom or intelligence... Something like that.

Well, on to more looking. I have other topics to research. I am trying to stretch my days back to real days. It is a weekend and I have little else I could otherwise do. I stayed up until 18:00 yesterday. A bit more of a stretch today would be good. What I can, as I am want to say, when I can. Later.