Date:
Monday , November 27, 2006
Author:
Keith Dugger
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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Newegg [H]oliday 2006 System Build Guide

Do you have money to spend, but don’t know what to spend it on? Today we reach out to help simplify the system build purchasing process with two Intel Core 2 Duo based systems built to fit different budgets. And both are overclocking monsters to boot!

Introduction

For this [H]ard|OCP System Guide we’re building out a reasonably priced $1500 system and a second system at the $2800 mark with each price target having specific goals. For the budget system, we concentrated on a solid price-to-performance ratio while still getting known overclocking components to improve the ratio even more. For the higher-priced system, we wanted to showcase some of the newest technology available. NVIDIA’s newest 680i chipset and an 8800 GPU were practically requirements for this build.

If you are not aware of the Core 2 Duo overclocking abilities, you will want to check out this HardForum thread that has documented hundreds of succesful Core 2 Duo overclocks and the components used.

In both cases, we’ve built out complete systems and included all the components needed for a problem-free implementation.

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We strive to provide foundation systems that can provide some upgrade room in the future. It is not uncommon for our own systems to survive one or two upgrade rounds before every component is replaced with new. This allows us to stretch our buying dollar into the future by leaving room for upgrade paths for CPU, memory, or video cards without buying an entirely new system. We also want to give readers a look at the kind of components we’d spend our own money on. Obviously you could base a system upgrade on the components we have selected as well.

Why No AMD?

Editor’s Note: Given that both of our system builds have overclocking considered, it is hard to suggest to our readers that you even look towards AMD at this time. AMD builds great processors and the system I am using currently using runs an AMD 4800+ processor. But the fact of the matter is that looking forward, given available overclocking products, Intel’s Core 2 Duo far and away delivers a better overclocking value.

A note about our sponsor

Newegg is a long-standing sponsor of HardOCP.com and of our hardware buying guides. As a service, Newegg provided direct links allowing you to click through to Newegg for up-to-date pricing and purchase options. While Newegg is sponsoring this article, the full content and component choices were left entirely to HardOCP's discretion.

This may be a "sponsored" guide; however, HardOCP does not receive any monetary compensation from the sale of any hardware. That said, surely Newegg will be tracking how many people use the links in this guide to make purchases. So if you are going to use our suggestions here, please click through our links. Those sales keep Newegg happy and keep them advertising with us. Many thanks!