Building My PC 7 - Order Complete

With the machine ordered I moved into wait mode. At this point I've switched from researcher to stalker, as I visit UPS multiple times a day to track the pieces of my PC during their journey across the country. Thus far I experienced very little buyers remorse, or regret of what I purchased. Since I normally languish in the post-purchase quagmire I take this pacificity as a sign my due diligence paid off. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the work thus far as building my own PC proves a wonderfully stressful experience. You might take stressful as a bad word, but in this case it means I felt a tension. The tension resulted from wanting to define the optimal configuration for the given price target. From the moment I quasi-spontaneously decided to begin the project to when I place the order I had trouble breaking away from the computer. The old machine became the gateway to research and investigation. I worked to solve a puzzle, and it spun my brain to the point I had trouble lying in bed after I woke up in the morning. I enjoyed getting into something so passionately, but on the downside I spent the better part of the day withdrawn from society, the wife, and even my trip to the gym was half-hearted. 

Once I placed the order I feel the stress pass and the excitement of assembling my own PC started to build. With the parts en-route so ends part 1 of the Building My PC saga. I've recruited an aspiring engineer to help me with the assembly, so look forward to Part 2 coming soon!

Total S&H: $6.99+$15.87
Tax: $32.26

Total Hardware Cost: $647.02

Part	Product	Price
Case	Antec Sonata III 500	$99.99
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R	$119.99
Video Card	Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB	$79.99
Memory	G.SKILL (2x1GB) F2-8500CL5D-2GBPK	$34.99
Hard Drive	Seagate Barracude 7200RPM 500GB ST3500320AS	$64.99
CPU Fan	Arctic Freezer 7 Pro	$26.99
Keyboard	Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000	$14.99
Processor	Intel e8400	$149.97

Other notes thus far

• Apparently most mail in rebates for motherboards, memory, video cards and other computer components are little more than smoke and mirrors. I read a couple horror stories about manufacturers that just won’t pay it unless you call and complain, some that took over 8 months to deliver, and others that lost the information the buyer sent it. I treated all prices as final and ignored mail-in rebates during the decision making process. 
  
• While reading the postings and articles I think I the overclocking bug bit me. Some user comments indicated they could get the 3GHz processor to nearly 4GHz! I’m still quite risk-averse when it comes to tampering with my computer, but it does sound like a fun endeavor.
  
• Notable “fat” trimmed to stay under $650: 2GB instead of 4GB of RAM saved about $35. 512MB instead of 1GB saved $10 on the video card. I had a sound card, but dropped it to save $25 (I’ve used the motherboard integrated sound all my life, so why stop now). Actually I could have “bumped up” every part in the PC for another $15-$30, but it starts to add up FAST. It's a budget death by a thousand cuts and I manage to avoid the temptation.
  
• Some parts from the old PC I won’t scrap. For example, the mouse and at least one of the DVD ROM drives will migrate over to the new PC. I originally thought about recycling the video card, but AGP Ain’t Gonna Process in the new motherboard. I threw in a new keyboard from MS since the current one is a PS/2 and USB makes the world a better place. Once again, the Newegg narrow-down yielded the MS Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000 at $15.