I was inspired by Toms article and decided I didn't want to play the waiting game where you put off building a decent system because of the dreaded "better/newer architecture coming out soon" excuse.
I have a 3500+/6600gt system I built in Oct 94 and I can still play all the games I own including Oblivion. However I do a lot of video work from building dvd's from scratch to re-encoding, and have been wanting a dual core system.
One thing I have noticed, is that I haven't heard anyone talk about how loud or quiet their system is compared to the speeds they are running at. I know anyone can build a really fast system that sounds like a jet engine, but that's not very enjoyable.
I also haven't seenmany posts on how much they are spending building a computer based on the 805 overclock.
I have my last shipment of parts coming this week, and will post build results from sound tests to overclock and performance numbers.
BTW, my build cost for my new system was under $1100

. I was also pretty happy to discover that my current system is still worth between 1200 and 1500 retail, so I should be able to recoup near or all of my build cost if I can sell it locally.
Only time will tell if this new build will keep me satisfied for another 2 years
