5) Hard drive
Featuring half a terabyte of storage, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 is not only capacious for the ridiculously low asking price, but its speed credentials are impressive to boot. With 16Mb cache and its SATA300 interface, you can expect some pretty swift level-loading.
6) DVD-RW
NEC AD-7170A-0B Multiwriter Black 18x DVD±RW
No frills here: this model from NEC plays and records DVDs, and that’s all you really need, especially when the asking price is so low.
7) Chassis
Antec NSK6000
While we could have gone for a pricier, sexier chassis, this baseline model from Antec fits our bill nicely. There’s room enough for all our components, and the price is right. However, if you want your PC to look as good as it plays, feel free to shop around.
8) PSU
EZ-Cool PS900Tornado 700W
700W is enough juice on tap for today - and indeed tomorrow, should you decide to change your mobo for an SLI model, and whack in a second graphics card. This model from EZ-Cool is also perfectly quiet, and rather pleasing in its shiny black. There are much higher specification PSUs available - up to around 1200w - but that would be overkill for our system. If we were running an 8800 Ultra, or maybe a pair, plus a quad-core processor and a bunch of drives, we’d consider it. As it stands, 700w is quite enough.
Shipping
Many component vendors rely on professional couriers rather than standard mail to deliver your goods. If you’re out when they deliver, your bits are stored overnight at the nearest depot, and they’ll try again the next day. These depots are often out of town, and only near cities, so it can be a real pain to get hold of your stuff. If you’re at work during the day and there’s no one at home to take delivery, get them delivered to your workplace instead.
