Welcome to the fourth installment of this year’s six-part Tom’s Hardware Holiday Buyer’s Guide, put together by editors from Tom’s Hardware, Tom’s Guide, and Tom’s Games. We’ve all worked together to compile the hottest list of PC components, gadgets, and gaming titles, which we’ll introduce one part at a time throughout the months of November and December.
Here’s the breakdown for what you can expect to see as the series progresses. Each time we publish a new piece, we’ll update those that came before with links to the newest guides. By the time we ring in 2009, we hope you’ll be enjoying at least a couple of gifts from our six stories!
- Part 1: Tom’s Hardware—No Hassle Hardware Gifts, Good To Go
- Part 2: Tom’s Guide—Top Kid Tech Gifts For 2008
- Part 3: Tom’s Guide—Great Gifts For Tech Gurus
- Part 4: Tom’s Hardware—Hardware For The System Builder In Your Life
- Part 5: Tom’s Games—Keyboards, Mice, Headsets, And More Games
- Part 6: Tom’s Guide—Great Gifts For Tech Novices
Each guide is organized to center on a slightly different theme. The first hardware guide zeroed in on gifts that you could buy and use right away—they weren’t tied to a particular system build or anything.
This fourth one is all about the power user with a penchant for building his or her own box, so it’s filled with individual components. Some are great for the enthusiast. Others are better for value-seekers.
And by the way, if you’re looking for a little more guidance on builds for specific budgets, check out November’s System Builder Marathon machines. We had one $625 dollar configuration and one $1,250 dollar setup. We wrapped the whole project up with an analysis of performance per dollar spent on Day 3 of the series.
- Introduction
- Intel Core 2 E8600
- Corsair Flash Voyager 64 GB
- MSI X58 Eclipse SLI
- Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB
- Vigor Gaming Monsoon III LT
- Cooler Master UCP 1100 W PSU
- Intel Core i7 920
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB HDD
- Diamond Radeon HD 4870 X2 Overclocked Edition
- Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R
- Corsair And OCZ Triple-Channel DDR3
- Samsung 64GB SATA II SSD


I did notice there were two girls in there, but even if you add them up you still get too little meat to call that a woman.
Were you looking for "fat girls gone wild" when you opened this review? Seriously, this had to be the dumbest complaint of the year.
does anyone know if intel really can tell if your CPU has been just mildly overclocked? with no burn marks ect. i wonder about that cause id love to overclock it's fun to tinker with, but could not afford getting a bum chip, and it not be under warranty.
Yeah, but the point is compared to Sarah (particularly with long hair in 2006) these ladies aren't in the same league. Some of us like women who look at least a little curvy.
I know I should probably comment on the products not just the modeling talent, but since this is where the conversations begins, I'll jump in to the fray.
the actual dumbest "comment chain" of the year were on spotlight where hundreds of comments criticized Tamara for using a mac, dressing to casual, dressing to formal, being to expressive, being not expressive enough, being sexy, not being sexy... well I just find it amusing that nobody cares how Ben Meyer and Rob Wright look or dressup.
Fat girls gone wild... how drastic. What about water-cooled hot chicks ?
lmao
Ben and Rob posing in Christmas gear, that would be funny.
Keep your flash drives in your pockets. ;-P