Memory, Hard Drive, And Optical Drive
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws series 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) 240-Pin DDR3-1333 Kit
At $54.99, this dual-channel kit offers solid value with attractive 7-7-7-21 latencies and a 1333 MT/s rating. And, we have to admit that the Ripjaws’ saw-toothed heatsink looks good, too.
Read Customer Reviews of G.Skill's Ripjaws 4 GB DDR3-1333 Kit
Hard Drive: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1 TB
Read Customer Reviews of Samsung's F3 1 TB
We’ve been using Western Digital’s Caviar Black drives in our $1000 enthusiast systems for some time now, but we thought it was time to give Samsung’s Spinpoint a try.
With 1 TB of capacity, this 7200 RPM model with 32 MB cache offers a good price/performance/capacity ratio for $64.99
Optical Drive: Asus OEM DRW-24B1ST SATA 24x DVD Burner
Read Customer Reviews of Asus' DRW-24B1ST
We’ll give Asus' low-budget OEM drive a try this time around. At $18.99, this model has a 2 MB cache and 24x DVD+/-R write speeds.