Memory, Hard Drives, And Optical Drive
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Tactical 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3-1600 Memory Kit
Despite our lower budget, you've made it clear that you want to see at least 8 GB in this mid-range build. Crucial's DDR3 kit does the job for a reasonable $53 on Newegg, and with good 8-8-8-24 timings at 1,600 MT/s, too.
Read Customer Reviews of Crucial's BLE2KIT4GD31608DE1TX0 8 GB Kit (opens in new tab)
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500 GB
Read Customer Reviews of Seagate's ST500DM002 500 GB Hard Drive (opens in new tab)
With no money for an SSD boot drive, today's system relies on a 500 GB Seagate Barracuda.
It's true that 500 GB isn't very large by today's standards. At least the 7,200 RPM spindle and 16 MB data cache help on the performance side, though. Make no mistake: the reason we went for this disk was its $60 price tag.
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224BB DVD-ROM
Read Customer Reviews of Samsung's SH-224BB DVD-ROM (opens in new tab)
To put it simply, we chose the DVD-R drive with the lowest price. On the day we placed our order, Samsung's SH224BB earned that distinction for $18.