How did I do on price?

[sgtmattbaker]

This is rather irrelevant now, but I am going to post the specs of my PC that I built 3 years ago and would like to see your opinions on how good of a deal I got.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (Perpendicular Recording) ST3250620AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $74.99

CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X2048-6400C4 - Retail $308.00

ZALMAN CNPS7700-CU 120mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan - Retail $43.99

Acer AL1917ABMD Black 19" 8ms LCD Monitor - Retail $188.99

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - OEM $5.99

ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail $229.99

APEVIA X-PLEASURE-BK Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case - Retail $129.99

XFX PVT70GUD2B GeForce 7800GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported VIVO Video Card - Retail $279.99

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80557E6600 - Retail $317.99

Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 550W ATX12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready Power Supply - Retail $89.99

I also bought a soundblaster audigy 4 for whatever price they were going for back in 2006 and got some 5.1 speakers for $50. I had a DVD burner from an older pc.

So the total price was about $1800 by the time shipping was included.

Since then I have upgraded the video card to an 8800GT 512MB, bought a new DVD burner, bought 2 more GB of RAM, upgraded the PSU from the TPII to the TruePower Trio 550 watt continuous and overclocked the CPU to 3.15GHz. I am contemplating extending its gaming life by getting a nicer widescreen monitor, a new video card and a quad core processor (and maybe an SSD or a RAID array).

So, how did I do (remember, it was the year 2006)? The last major hardware intensive PC game I played on it was Crysis and I could run it as medium/high settings (some DirectX10) at 1280x1024 with the 8800GT (processor was at stock then and RAM was 2gb).

 

[FallenSniper]

$300 for 2GB of memory. Oh my...

It's really impossible to say how well you did without knowing the other available parts and their prices at the time. I for one don't really remember. I do remember the E6600 was madly popular so I think you mad a great choice there.

This just reminds me of how much I hate it when prices drop after I build/upgrade.

 

[Twoboxer]

You did a lot better than I did on my last purchased PC of the same vintage, a Dell XPS 710 H2C with a 3.2GHz factory OC'd quad and 2x8800GTXs . . . a couple thousand dollars better lol. Though mine is running very well with zero upgrades.

EQ2 and other MMOs taxed it most, since SLI was counterproductive to virtually useless in those. But it ran perfectly even in raids with particle effects off.

Get a 24" or 27" WS running at 1920, and then a 275 to drive it if need be. Otherwise hang in a couple months for the new cards. Leave the cpu alone until last. You might be pleasantly surprised.

 

[jitpublisher]

I barely remember what I paid for my stuff 6 months ago.....That is pretty amazing.
Everything looks to be in line, but the the RAM. Holy cow that number looks big, but I do seem to recall there was big demand, low supply of DDR a few years back and RAM prices did spike for a while.