Okay, so I've been coveting some new hardware for some time now, I setup pretty much my whole family and most of my friends with updated hardware over the holidays, and wanted to get something for myself after the tax return came in.

I tried to pick hardware with decent value along with some higher customer ratings on various sites like newegg and amazon. For the most part I wanted to strike a performance balance. With my son's computer I went with a Core i7-750 and a massive ATI Radeon HD 5870. My goals were slightly different, I don't have a need for maximum gaming performance, and wanted a bit more CPU oomph for today's video encoders, and for my virtual machines. I went with Windows 7, simply because I like the UI. I considered Ubuntu's 10.04 development release, but decided to go for the stability of Windows 7. Cable management is usually a concern for me, as I like to be proud to show what's under the hood, so to speak. I also really wanted the performance boost that an SSD gives, I'm really happy the pricing has come down to a fairly reasonable point. All in all, the build cost me around $1350 altogether. I'm including links to the products I used on Amazon, but you can find it all on newegg pretty easily as well.  More...