In the comments, Peter Schroeder asks me to post the specs for the new PC I’m having built by Mwave.com. OK, here goes:
- Antec SLK1650B (Black) Mid Tower W/Smart Power 350W ATX Power Supply
- Intel Pentium D 830 3.0 Ghz 800MHz Retailed Bundle
- Intel Boxd 945 PSNLK
- Crucial 1GB (1024MB) PC24200 533Mhz 240-Pin DDR2 DIMM (2 pieces -total 2GB)
- Seagate 250GB ST3250823AS SATA 8MB 7200RPM (Bare Drive)
- NEC ND-3520A/3540A Black 16X/16 DVD Dual Double Layer Rewritable Drive
- Asus EN6600-TD 256 MB DDR PCI Express. W/TV&DVI (Retail)
- Assembly & Testing
- Microsoft Windows XP Pro Media Center Edition 2005
Total price with shipping and tax: roughly $1230. So, what would you choose?
Ed Bott 
The configuration looks good. Only watchout, based on my own PC building observations: these Seagate drives run unbearably hot.
In a tower-type case, that issue can be dealt with much better than in a “Media Center” type case (e.g. the Ahanix cases). If you’d used one of those (much smaller, horizontal layout), and plan to put the PC into a living room environment where noise is an issue, I’d advise against Seagates and go instead for cooler drives (e.g. Western Digitals)
Are you recommending these parts? I ask because I’m considering that NEC DVD burner to replace my Plextor that died a month out of warranty. I was waiting on the Plextor PX-716AL, which is a slot-loader, but its release keeps getting delayed…
Well, I guess I recommended them to myself, because these are the ones I chose to buy.
I’ve been a Plextor fan for some time, but their prices are noticeably higher, and I’ve had good luck – very good luck, in fact – with NEC drives in recent years.
At a $50 price delta, I chose the NEC because I really couldn’t see anything aside from reputation that made the Plextor stand out. The specs are essentially identical.
Very nice component quality, but why only 1G of memory with such a nice motherboard? RAM is so cheap right now, go ahead and get 2-4G, unless you tend to get a new box every year.
Ah, I guess I didn’t paste the Count field! I got two of the Crucial 1GB memory modules, leaving two empty RAM slots to upgrade to 4MB later.
I’ll edit the post to make that clearer.