In hindsight, what was the best purchase you made?

[Anubis08]

I know mine had to be a Sata harddrive. It could just be my system total, but I notice a huge differenve in time over it and my previous system as far as loading and saving even on relatively small things.

 

[Manzelle]

Plextor 708A probably...while I love my entire system this thing has been flawless...I have burned around 200-300 DVDs without a single coaster...every 4x brand I have tried (thus far) at 8x too...

 

[Sonic587]

Mobile 35W 2400+ Barton

 

[Maggotry]

21" Sony trinitron monitor. I've upgraded lots of parts over the years, but this thing has remained constant. Looks as fine now as it did when I bought it years ago. The best single piece of hardware I ever bought.

 

[Schadenfroh]

2500Barton, A7N8X Deluxe, 6800GT

 

[mauiblue]

The best purchase I made was my old Dell Dimension XPS R400 five years ago. It is still a rugged old beast that still works today. It helped me get into this hobby and withstood all the abuse I threw at it. It was the platform that aided me to understand how to upgrade computers and learn the Windows OS (98, 98SE, XP Home, and now XP Pro).

Five years later, I'm rolling my own rig using the experience I've gain from my old Dell. I hope that the old Dell still has some life to it, though. I'm thinking of doing a home network...

Aloha and all the best.

 

[denon]

I'd have to say my new system. I did my research and picked exactly what I wanted. I did not cut any corners and am more than satisfied. I think what really gives it the "wow" factor for me is the 6800GT. A close second is the plextor 712a, first dvd writer I have purchased and I wish I would have bought one long ago.

 

[RiDE]

My LCD

 

[Corporate Thug]

6800 gt or dell 200FP

very close

 

[yhelothar]

Altec Lansing ADA880 speakers... got these from the first time I built my PC, still sounding awesome. Only thing I still have from my very first purchase.

 

[nageov3t]

Originally posted by: RiDE
My LCD

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

Hopefully my new rig which is in the post!

 

[Moltres]

Best: My Koolance PC2-C case....what a difference water cooling has made in keeping things quiet.
Worst: My Koolance PC2-C case....so many design flaws and "the leak" that destroyed a motherboard and video card.

Koolance eventually fixed the problems and I now use this case on 4 computers (including one of my dual Athlon 2600+ MP always-on servers) and the PC2-650 on my main rig. Cool and quiet...

 

[nick1985]

a 4200 back in the day. sucker lasted 2 years, and i resold it for half the price i paid for it. talk about a hell of a card. :thumbsup:

 

[George Powell]

Best purchase has to be my Samsung 191T LCD monitor, my eyes still thank me to this day.

Worst purchase has to be the CD Drive that came with my first ever computer, failed a total of 5 times in the first couple of months, eventually got changed for an LG drive which is still functioning to this day some 7 years later!!

 

[Oyeve]

My 250gig SATA drive was definately a great purchase. Bought it about 5 months ago for $189. Its a maxtor 7500rpm, 8meg cache. I see a great speed boost with it. But overall throughought my computer years, the best purchase I ever made that made me go "HOLY SH!T" was when I bought a SoundBlaster Pro back in the very early 90s and heard games in stereo! I paid almost 300 bucks on it back then and was running windows 3.1 when mulitimedia (remember that term?) was just becoming the new catch phrase. Still have the card somewhere. I also bought the DSP chip add-on for for spacial effects it and the wave daughter-card so i could hear games using wavetable instead of crappy MIDI sound. overall the card came out to nearly $500 bucks. Now you can get a SoundBlaster Audigy Platinum Pro for less than $200. Ah, to be on the cutting edge back in the day.

 

[Aftermath]

Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 930SB. In my personal experience, most beautiul display I've ever had the pleasure of working with.
If I can ever unload that Samsung 172w LCD I bought, I'll put the money towards a 21" Mitsubishi/NEC.

 

[Davegod]

the GF3ti200. glad i waited for pricedrop and spent a bit extra instead of going for the geforce2 overclocked very well also, so kept me going for quite a while!

otherwise the AMDxp 1600+, though at the time it was the obvious choice of processor for the money. the 40gb barracuda iv certainly wasnt bad either, nor was the audigy once i'd upgraded to winxp. neither was spending a bit extra and being very careful with my monitor choice (samsumg 757dfx), I spent more than i was going to, and it was an excellent monitor for it's price anyway, so ended up with a way better monitor than i'd of had otherwise.

 

[n7]

I can only pick one?

I'd say my 17" Sharp LCD...& my 9800 Pro.

 

[zzzz]

infocus X1

 

[cowdog]

plain 6800 (my first nVidia GPU in over 2 years)

Up until that purchase, my nForce3 250 socket 754 mobo and A64 3200+ took the cake for me when I upgraded from an nForce2 mobo/Barton combo. But I was simply stunned at how much I like this video card. I thought I wanted a 6800GT (at that point getting one was no easy task), but at this point I am plenty satisfied with the vanilla 6800 and the extra $100 or so in my pocket.

 

[dullard]

Tough call between my monitor at work (21" Cornerstone P1600) and my home computer. I'm going to go with the home computer, since that was purchased with my own money.

It was purchased 2 years ago (Sept 2002) for $600: Dell Dimension 4500, 2.4 GHz P4 (533 MHz), 384 MB RAM, GeForce 4 MX, 40 GB HD, Win XP Pro, 17" CRT, and all the accessories.

Today you can buy almost the same thing from Dell. Dell Dimension 2400: 2.4 GHz Celeron (400 MHz), 512 MB RAM, integrated video, 40 GB HD, Win XP Home, 17" CRT, and all the accessories. $484.

Looking at the two, my computer is better and the price 2 years ago was just over $100 more. That's a lot of mileage for $100. I always intended to upgrade the memory and the video card when prices came down. But it plays my games with enough detail to be fine with me. Sure I have to turn some eye candy off, but that isn't a big deal.

 

[ponyo]

Originally posted by: zzzz
infocus X1

Same here. Has made my movie viewing 100x better.

 

[zodder]

I'd have to say my Lian Li PC-65. It's the only piece of equipment that's survived all the upgrades.

 

[Jeff7181]

I'd have to say my Asus A7N8X Deluxe... the SoundStorm audio served me well for a long time, it's been through 2 hard drive failures, a PSU failure, and three different CPU's and it's still running great. My only complaint is the picky BIOS that doesn't like when you change more than one thing at a time.