Storage components

Memory

1GB Corsair ValueSelect DDR400 - $90.50 Newegg: As I mentioned in the $1,000 build article, buying quality brand name RAM is incredibly important today. With dual-channel memory controllers in use by both AMD and Intel platforms, and bus speeds constantly improving, it’s important that memory manufacturers use quality parts which have been tested and verified for use on these newer platforms.

Back during the transition to DDR400 for the 875P “Canterwood” chipset, Intel’s validation team tested numerous modules from a wide variety of manufacturers and found that a decent portion of them weren’t quite up to snuff for use on the platform. Many enthusiasts also noted that their “CAS 2” RAM that had worked so well for their Athlon XP system couldn’t run at the same timings with their 3.0C “Northwood” Pentium 4 processor system.



The high-end memory manufacturers such as Corsair, Kingston, and OCZ test countless memory chips from a wide variety of manufacturers in order to find just which components they should use in their memory modules in order to hit the highest clock speeds with fast timings. OCZ even goes one step further, providing their Voltage eXtreme (VX) line of memory modules, which are specially designed to run at higher voltages than your typical stick of RAM.

If you don’t have that kind of money to spend on RAM though, both Corsair and OCZ have their own lines of value memory which are tested just as thoroughly, only they haven’t been designed for all-out performance, instead opting for the right balance between price/performance.

For the $600 build, we once again selected Corsair’s ValueSelect DDR400 memory line, priced at $90.50 at Newegg.com. These modules are good for a CAS Latency of 2.5, which isn’t bad for $90. The price has gone up 75 cents since we last used this memory in our $1,000 system, so it appears memory prices are going up.

Hard disk drive

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L200S0 200GB - $90.50 Newegg The hard disk drive is probably one component that any PC user recognizes the importance of, whether you’re an enthusiast on the bleeding edge of technology, or you’re new to the world of computers and you don’t even know what a motherboard looks like, much less how to install one.

Because of this, we feel this is one component that most readers will likely be able to pick out on their own based on their needs. Performance junkies are going to want a drive that spins fast, features NCQ, and boasts a large onboard cache, while those who are more concerned about getting the most bang from their buck will likely want to focus on that amount of storage you can get per dollar.

Since I’m building a $600 system here, I’ve got to lean towards the latter camp – I’m shooting for the most storage capacity I can get for about $100, but I don’t necessarily want to compromise too much on technology if I don’t have too.

And luckily as you can see, I didn’t, as Maxtor’s DiamondMax 10 6L200S0 200GB is based on the same technology used in the $1,000 system build. Its key features include support for native command queuing (NCQ), and a large, 16MB cache. Finally the DiamondMax 10 6L200S0 sports a 7200 RPM rotational speed.