Holiday Hardware Buyers Guide

[Rob Williams]

The holiday season can be a rough time if you are not sure what you buy, or ask for. We have taken out the hassle and delivered a comprehensive guide of our top picks that covers every type of component inside your computer.

You can read the guide co-written by Matt, Greg and Rob here and discuss it in this thread. Expect a gaming related guide in the coming days.

 

[Greg King]

Good stuff!

 

[madmat]

I actually had set my rankings as "Ultimate", "Great", "Better" and "Good" but somehow ended up with several double goods and a stocking stuffer

 

[Rob Williams]

"Better" didn't follow the scheme of things =)

AKA: I wasn't going to create a new color code for it.

 

[Greg King]

Where was my "Bestest" category?

 

[Rob Williams]

I had to remove it alongside the Betterer and Gooder category.

 

[madmat]

"Better" didn't follow the scheme of things =)

AKA: I wasn't going to create a new color code for it.

I had to remove it alongside the Betterer and Gooder category.

ROFLMAO!!!

 

[madstork91]

what is up with the 7200 hdd's? Nothing better in your opinion for the $ or what?

 

[Rob Williams]

I don't consider 10,000RPM drives to be "Ultimate" in any sense, simply because their storage capabilty is serously lacking. $300 for 150GB cannot be considered ultimate by anyone, regardless of whether the drive is a little faster or not.

As mentioned in the article, Seagate claims that the 7,200's beat out the Raptors due to the ability to use SATA II 3GB/s instead of 1.5GB/s. I don't have a Raptor here to test that fact, but I'd much rather have a single 7,200RPM 750GB drive over a 10,000RPM 150GB drive any day.

 

[GeekGirl]

Gadgets have now been added to the guide - have another look!

 

[Rob Williams]

What she said