System Builder Marathon, March 2011: $500 Gaming PC

Case, Power Supply, And Optical Drive

Case: Xigmatek Asgard II B/O CPC-T45UE-U01

The Asgard II features 0.8 mm SECC steel construction with an aluminum front bezel and the finished black interior that many builders who like showing off internal components prefer.

A single 120 mm PWM exhaust fan comes preinstalled, with room to add up to three additional fans.

Read Customer Reviews of Xigmatek's Asgard II

Xigmatek addresses varying personal tastes by providing a choice of black, orange, or silver bezel highlights. Unfortunately, black was not in stock at our time of purchase, so we went with orange.

Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts EA-380D Green

Read Customer Reviews of Antec's EarthWatts 380 W

Quiet and efficient, the 380 W EarthWatts 380D Green offers the kind of value and reliability we seek from a PSU. The maximum combined +12 V rating of 28 A is sufficient for this system’s needs, while the single six-pin PCIe power connector can feed our Radeon HD 6850 graphics card without the use of any Molex adapters.

Optical Drive: Lite-On 24x DVD Burner SATA iHAS 124-04

Read Customer Reviews of Lite-On iHAS 124-04

Given our budget, we look to spend as little as possible on a reliable SATA DVD burner, and again choose this 24x OEM Lite-On drive to fill the system’s optical needs.