Ian Reschke - ASUS Master Challenge Top 10

NOMINATED ASUS MOTHERBOARD    Maximus III Formula

 NOMINATED ASUS GRAPHICS CARD    ASUS EAH5870

CPU: Intel i7-920
At the moment, the i7-920 is hard to beat both on paper and in the wallet. Choosing a higher model may not provide as much performance for the money spent.
    
CPU COOLER: Coolermaster V8
The Coolermaster V8 cooler provides superb cooling, equivalent to that of its bigger Brother, the V10, despite the lack of refrigeration. With a 120mm sucking cool air from the intake fans at the front of the case and exhausting the hot air towards the rear exhaust fan on most cases, the cooler is well designed and takes full advantage of the cooling strategies implemented by top manufacturers of popular cases. Reducing ambient heat inside a case is just as important a job for the CPU cooler as it is cooling the CPU itself. The Coolermaster V8 performs both of these tasks comfortably and looks stylish in the process, suiting the design and colour scheme of almost any case and motherboard.

MEMORY: 4Gb, Corsair Dominator GT, DDR3, PC3-16000
Good solid and reliable memory manufacturer without the huge price tag. The Dominator GT series offers great performance, great style, and a cooling solution to boot, saving money on the need to cool if the use of overclocking is ever required.

AUDIO - Onboard 
Using on-board due to the Maximus III being fitted with a Creative XF-i as standard. They say that the visual experience offers only 50% of the enjoyment with the audio making up the rest, this is all too true with Creative's XF-i range. Whether your enjoying a round of Call of Duty, listening to iTunes or watching Bruce Willis kick some butt, why settle for HD when you can have XF-i quality and features?

HARD DRIVE 1: Intel X25-M 80GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Despite the small size and the price tag, the Intel X25-M is without a doubt one of the fastest consumer HDD's on the market. The size is justifiable if your aware of how to properly manage your operating system storage location (ie. Users Documents) and should allow the other hardware components to reach their full potential. If the hard drive is the bottleneck of all systems, which it is when it comes to current technology, why settle for something that is too slow and too large, leaving gigabytes of space un-touched.

HARD DRIVE 2:  Seagate Barracuda, 1000Gb, 7200rpm, 32 Mb Cache
In my experience, Seagate offer reliability and great pricing for a storage drive. This particular drive boasts great speed for a mechanical drive despite not having the largest cache available on the market.

OPTICAL DRIVE: Pioneer DVR-218LBK
The Pioneer is a great budget choice offering SATA connect-ability. Whilst DVD remains the mainstream choice of media, this seems like a logical choice above the over priced Blu-ray offerings.

PSU: Silverstone ST70F 700w
Silverstone hold a good reputation with their power supplies. I chosen this particular PSU simply because its modular, the output allows for future upgrading, including SLi or Crossfire and more power loading devices. When looking inside a PC case, I prefer to see it neat and tidy, having my attention grabbed by the meat of the machine (ie. CPU, GPU, RAM and motherboard) with everything as colour co-ordinated as possible. It is for this reason that I like a PSU with relatively little decals, lights and painted to match the finish of the case.

CASE: Lian Li Armorsuit PC-P50R-SE
The mother of all cases. Boasting Lian Li's new trademark tool-less design, all brushed aluminum, superior craftsmanship and a striking black and red finish to suit all components. I've used many different brands of cases across many different builds and I have yet to see any other manufacturer come close to the quality of Lian Li cases.

MONITOR: Samsung SW2333
Fantastic monitor, great picture and an absolute bargain at less than $300 for 23" goodness.

KEYBOARD: Logitech G15
Standard layout including macro keys and an LCD panel for keeping an eye on things whilst gaming, etc. The G15 is well built and easy to use even in the dark with the back lit keys, and we all know gamers like late nights with no lights.

MOUSE: Logitech G9
Takes a little to get used to, but with the swappable grip and many other customisable features, its hard to beat Logitech's gaming orientated mice.

SPEAKERS: Logitech Z323 2.1 Speakers
For showing off that hilarious Youtube video to your friends and family.

HEADSET: Sennheiser PC 161 Headset
 The most comfortable headset a gamer can buy. This headset provides a great audio experience whether its used for music, movies, games or voice chat. For LAN parties and late night gaming sessions, you need a comfortable headset that you can wear for hours and not have sore ears 10 minutes into a gaming session.

OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
The latest and greatest, managing resources better than previous versions of Windows and offering far superior performance.