Student loan time. This means the part of the loan that is meant for decent healthy food, travel expensive, and a bit of entertainment to keep you sane is likely going to a bulk box of ramen and a new computer. So, from my notes, (still need to double check everything, nothing is set in stone) I think I'm looking at a system like the following. The goal of the system is something decent for games for the next year, kept very simple for now and upgrading with more ram and better drives in the spring/summer. I've already cut things back a lot, so there isn't much point in suggesting adding more RAM All funds in Canadian Dollar, and rough value. Still have to check for better deals on more sites. According to Yahoo, currently $1.00 CAD is $0.9472 USD. CPU: $217.26 Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 LGA775 2.66ghz, 1333 FSB GPU: $310.xx EVGA or XFX 8800GTS. Still debating which one is actually better and if I really want to spend that much at this time. MB: $100.xx Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L ATX LGA775 RAM: $ 70.xx 1GB (looking at Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 now, likely to be upped to 2+GB by summer) HD: $ 80.xx Western Digital 320GB SATA2 7200rpm Case:$141.46 Antec P180 (black) DVD: Throwing in a $30 DVD RW for now. Will likely add something else eventually. PSU: Still debating which to get, they never seem to give enough info. Not sure how powerful of one I actually need for this system. I'm looking for something with lots of head room to support 2 optical drives, 3 hard drives, the 8800GTS, the Core 2 Duo, and a handfull of USB items. It should also be reasonable quiet. (and no more than $100 if possible) Things to upgrade over the year after buying the above: 1. Replace Stock CPU Heatsink and fan. (actually I'm just assuming this comes with stock, if not I'll pick one and some paste up local) 2. Either replace the DDR2-800 with 2GB DDR2-1066, or maybe just add another 1GB stick. 3. Add new hard drives. 4. Eventually I plan to get a small home sever with a redundant RAID for main storage. But I may upgrade the mother board or add a RAID controller directly to this machine. I generally don't use up too much drive space as I don't collect music or video. (but I should get a portable drive for photos) I'm still debating if I actually want that graphics card or to get something around $100 and upgrade in the mid summer. Thoughts and suggestions on cutting prices? I'm planning on mainly running Ubuntu and WinXP. [rant] And I suggest there should be a law forcing hardware developers to limit the number of products they offer and have a minimum gap in performance. Started off with a goal of $800, nearly managed that, then started swapping things out for something better but no more than $30 more. A few hours later I was at $2000 or so. (And ram really needs 'fixing')

For the GPU, go for the EVGA. From experience on other forums people seem to like them a lot and they have a great warranty. They also have the Step-Up program, which means that if Nvidia comes out with a new GPU within the next 6 or 9 months (something like that) you can pay the difference between the two cards and get that new card. Although it may be better to buy something like a 7300 or an 8400 and hold out until December/January, which is when Nvidia is supposed to be updating it's lineup of stuff.

Also, spend a bit less on the case and put that money toward your other components. Current DDR2-800 prices are pretty low, you can get 2 gigs for around $60-80 US, so take that into account. Your CPU looks good, although you should consider a Q6600 if you work with a lot of multithreaded apps and can afford the added price(a lot of 3d art packages and I believe Photoshop would benefit). The CPU will come with a stock heatsink/thermal pad if you buy the boxed version and not the OEM version, and unless you're overclocking you probably won't need anything better. Your motherboard looks fine, although Intel will be coming out with the "X38" chipset relatively soon and it reportedly supports SLI if you care. HDD is fine, although for a little bit more you might be able to get yourself a 500 gig drive. Anything cheap and modern will work for your DVD drive, I'd recommend a Panasonic or Lite-On SATA drive myself, but anything should work.

As for your PSU, anything above 600 watts should be plenty. My personal recommendation is the OCZ GameXStream 700 watt, but that might cost a little bit more then $100 US.

Tigerdirect is a good place to buy your stuff. I'd recommend Newegg, but for some silly reason they don't ship to Canada =/. I'm not sure if Directron ships to Canada either, but if they do they have some good deals sometimes.

Forgot to mention, if something comes with pretty lights that will be glowing while on then I won't knowingly buy it.

As for the case, it will likely be my main case until either ATX standard cases no longer fit new hardware, or it wears out.

As for the powersupply, I'm debating, Antec NeoHE or OCZ StealthxStream. The Antec has the nice cable system, (and would work very nicely with the case) but they are far more expensive. I'm also concerned with the actual power supplied by these units.

Even with adding more drives and ram, the above system doesn't really suck up the juice. Before upgrades the base should be drawing under 300watts, the Antec Neo HE430 looks rather nice, despite costing more than the OCZ Stealth Xstream 600watt.

And I can't seem to find decent deals on DDR2-800 ram from Canadian sites, unless I've managed to overlook things, which wouldn't surprise me at all. So I'll still shop around.

Remember the goal, keep the price down for a system that I can use for the fall by not spending money on things easily added later: Like, maxing out the RAM and harddrives at a later date and going with barebone basic for now.