So, Tom's Hardware are running articles on building what seems to be a midrange-ish pc.

It's a $750 computing challenge over here- the object being to build a pc for the best blend between power consumption and performance.

So far only the US and German sites have submitted their rigs for the challenge, they're still waiting for Italy. (Maybe France and the UK will join, but I'm unsure)

This has caught my eye as I'm also looking into buying a pc- though one a bit higher specced than the two in the article thus far.

So my question is, if you were to join this challenge, what would your rig consist of?
$750 at current exchange just exceeds R6 000. Lets assume we use R6 500.
(If this would pose a problem- import cost and all- then keep as close to that total as possible for reasonable and similar performance)

Note: this apparently excludes keyboard, mouse and monitor. You can add that as extra and specify the price difference.

And, GO!

Well its not exactly that simple. We'd probably have to double (or triple) the budget to get the same kind of hardware. I'm guessing the main reason would be, SA feels the need to protect local manufacturers (and custom officials back pockets), and therefore has to charge import duty on everything which the country cannot actually manufacture itself . All of which makes me feel like the back pocket is the actual reason for SA's wonderful take on import duty. What's even more fun is that last time I phoned up to get a semi-solid import duty rate, I was told that they don't have one so its often just safer to buy the hardware off local vendors than get a nasty surprise when it arrives, but hey, reasons to be cheerful!

A good example would be, the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 1 GB off newegg would set you back $149 ( R 1,206.10) while the same card from prophecy shop would be... well... R3316.58

I understand it may be more expensive, but R3 300 is a bad example, Very bad...

Since at current exhange rate, $750 would equals roughly R6k, why don't we up it to a balmy R10 000?
(I'd still like to keep closer to the $750 mark though)
Any suggestions?

I understand what your saying man, but both of those 'brands' seem to be cheaper on both sides. Not to mention, for some unknown reason some hardware comes through at a semi-reasonable price while others are just bat-**** insanely priced. And this, I will never understand.

But ya, R10 000 sounds good

Bump

It's Monday, where are all the techies?

I started on one but the realised i needed ram and a hdd and that went over 7k. But it was a quad core.

It is kinda tricky... I have one I'm looking into but at this stage I'm nowhere near the price mark

Remember the important criteria....

Yes, but that's also a tricky part, how do you test for something like that without the resources of a site/company like Tom's Hardware?

Or do we simply go on the product's specified power requirement? (which isn't always listed?)

It ain't always true either.