MaximumPC 2007 10

POWER SUPPLY: Gordon

immediately thought, “Let’s

hope we don’t have a burnout,”

when he considered running

this bargain-bin system on the

free 380-watt power supply

that Raidmax includes with its

case. But, hey, at least Gordon

thought to buy a case....

CPU: Intel’s budget Allendale CPU core

features 2MB of L2 cache and an 800MHz

front-side bus (down from the Conroe’s

1,066MHz FSB). But it still rocks the

Celeron D’s world.

44 MAXIMUMPC OCTOBER 2007

The 90-Minute

Shopping Spree

MAXIMUMPC

CHALLENGE

ANOTHER

Neither editor expected to use the

full time allotted to them, but the vast

selection of parts had both guys men-

tally mixing and matching possible

confi gs, recalculating their price

lists, and waiting on pokey

sales clerks until the very

last minute

PART PRICE

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 $130

MOTHERBOARD: $59.42

ECS P965T-A

RAM: 1GB Crucial DDR2/667 $39.99

VIDEOCARD: EVGA $113.99

e-GeForce 8500 GT

HARD DRIVE: Maxtor $49.99

OPTICAL DRIVE: (refurb) $24.99

Hewlett-Packard DVD840ri

CASE: Raidmax ATX528B $39.99

MISCELLANEOUS: $2.99

Ghirardelli chocolate bar

SALES TAX (8.25% ) $37.82

Total $499.18

GORDON’S PURCHASES

SALES TAXSALES TAXSALES TAX (8.25% ) (8.25% ) $37.82 $37.82

GRAPHICS: With just three minutes left

to grab a GPU and get to the checkout

line, Gordon reached for a rock-bottom

GeForce card, which actually offers

DirectX 10 capability! His big worry is

that DX10 support is nothing more than

a checkbox feature, due to the budget

card’s low clock speeds.