Originally Posted by pawoSD

I just rebuilt both mine and my wife's PCs today for less than $550, and that included a new 19" LCD for her (I already have a 20" ) We both have identical systems except that I have a faster CPU (Black Edition AMD 7750) and better/bigger hard drives) Hers is beyond fast for what she needs, so she should be set for a while. The main goal for hers was to be cool and quiet....it runs so cool with the Athlon X2 4400+ that the CPU fan shuts down half the time! As in it comes to a complete halt! Crazy efficient. The rest of the time its running at like 800rpm....its essentially dead silent unless you put your ear against the case.

She is running Windows 7beta and likes it. I have XP still due to some older devices I need.....eventually I'll move to 7 though.

Bah to MACs.....they are unnecessary and waaay too expensive. When you can build an apple to your own tastes for under $300 and get a good performing system out of it....then I will be interested.