Matt Witherow - All-rounder & Gaming PC

Matt Witherow is the computers go-to-guy amongst friends and family. When asked to build a new system from scratch for a friend he decided to build himself one too. He wanted a system that he could take to a LAN party, was overclockable and would fit into his strict budget.

CORE SYSTEM

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 - $330
I managed to get this CPU on special because the store was overstocked. It was very appealing to me as it appeared to be the entry level of the Quads, the lowest of the best. Has a nice large cache (8MB) and is overclockable.

CPU COOLER: Xigmatek Red Scorpion S128 - $45
All I wanted was performance, noise and price. Answer: Red Scorpion. It delivered even more than I expected and abolished my doubts about the direct-touch approach. As an extra bonus, it looks awesome too.

MOTHERBOARD: ASUS P5KPL-CM - $80
I was tight on budget and settled on this bargain board. It could overclock and met my basic needs for a board. However, I now have concerns the bottle-neck of my system will be its G31 Chipset. The next upgrade will certainly be my motherboard. I’m thinking of a P5Q PRO (mmm).
 
MEMORY: Team Dark 800MHz DDR2 2GB - $70
My budget board only allowed for two modules so I decided to cut a bit of cost and, instead of getting 4GB of Kingston memory, I bought this higher-quality overclocker’s RAM for less. It had better clock timings and it was equipped with heat sinks and an overclocking warranty.

GRAPHICS: Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512mb - $200
I was pleased to hunt down such a scarce card. Many people overlook this card but it can really perform. My friend bought a 9600GT at the same time for twice as much and our cards perform identically (except mine falls behind in pixel shading). The 8800 equals bargain performance.
 
HDD: Samsung HD501LJ 500GB - $75
Nice HDD with room for all those games patches and large RAW images I store. It seemed a sensible choice.
 
PSU: SPEED Power Series 800W - $130
I know, it’s a lot. It was on offer when I bought all my parts and I couldn’t pass up the sale, especially when I had a much more impressive LAN machine in mind for the future. I knew least about PSUs and I was assured this particular unit, which was designed in Australia, was extremely efficient.
 
CASE: Cooler Master Elite 334 Tower - $55
Looks very sleek and was nice and cheap. It just needed to be able to fit my cooler. Vibrates sometimes, but paper fixes that.

Core system cost: $985

EXTRAS

MONITOR: BenQ 22in LCD Monitor - $250
An unbelievable difference from my old CTR monitor; that was like looking into a rear-view mirror. This is literally like having twice as much space.

KEYBOARD AND MOUSE: Logitech / Mouse combo - $20
Basic but does the job.

OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 7 Home Premium - $199 (upgrade)
Like everyone else, I could not wait to put Windows 7 on my system.