A few days ago I experienced something which I’m still scratching my head over… massive hardware failure across several independent systems. It started when my external hard drive which houses my backups died. The next day, my laptop died, and the day after that, my netbook started running extremely slowly, failed to boot once or twice, blue screened once, and has been showing all sorts of other symptoms (sporadically though, it works fine at other times).

Since I don’t have the money to buy a new laptop, I’m building a desktop (currently on Newegg.com, but I’m buying the parts wherever I can find the best deals). To that end, if anyone has any hardware recommendations or ways I can make my purchase a bit cheaper I’d love to hear them. I’m currently looking at an Intel based machine (Core i7-920 or 930), but if anyone has AMD suggestions I’m willing to hear those too.

My current build is here (clearly this is not complete and has duplicates of some parts which I am considering). Any and all suggestions are welcome, this list will continue to change as I get feedback from those more knowledgeable than myself.