Building My PC 5 - Hard Drive and Video Card

The hard drive decision did not offer a challenge. The price range and 7200RPM quickly narrowed it down to a few choices. Around the 60-70 mark I opted for a slightly larger cache. Initially I went with the Western Digital because that’s just how I roll. Later in the day Tomshardware pointed out the Seagate offered a better warranty, increased reliability, and then it showed up $5 cheaper on newegg. Game: blouses, I mean Seagate.

Aside from the processor, the video cards spent the most time jumping in and out of my shopping cart. Long story short, Tomshardware came to the rescue with their monthly roundup of video cards chipsets organized by price range. I went with the $50-$100 range to find the Radeon 4670 chipset recommended. I went with the slightly more expensive 4000 series than the 3000 series because I wanted a little bit more life out of my GPU.

An interesting Tomshardware video card article revealed that SAPPHIRE is ATI’s largest partner and manufactures many of their boards. I took that as enough reason to go with SAPPHIRE brand because frankly after experiencing the overwhelming volume of different video card manufacturers I would have taken my dog’s expert opinion on video card manufacturer. Tomshardware's recommendation came with less slobber. Customer reviews on newegg supported my decision although some warned about a loud fan during video gaming. As long as it is quiet during normal use (surfing/email/iTunes) I can just crank up the volume when playing a game.