Introduction

System Builder Marathon, March 2008: The Articles

Here's a list of the System Builder Marathon (SBM) articles in this five day series.

• Day 1: The Low-Cost PC
• Day 2: The Mid-Cost PC
• Day 3: The High-Cost PC
• Day 4: All Three SBM PCs Overclocked
• Day 5: Summary - The Price/Performance Winner

Today, we double the budget of yesterday's low-cost PC to assemble a sweet midrange system. While the low-cost PC is a good all-round system, the mid-range PC should perform strongly at pretty much anything we throw at it.

While twice the budget rarely results in twice the performance, a mid-range system is desirable because it can provide tangible benefits in speed of applications and high-resolution graphics. Also, the extra money spent should give us a highly overclockable system. Our low-cost system isn't going to be anywhere near as overclockable as the mid-range system.

First, a quick overview of our chosen components, then a justification of our choices.

(Compare Prices on Core 2 Quad Q6700)