This is the sixth article in a series where I am looking at finding the best desktop PC I can build for myself in $1,200 or less with a small monthly budget to improve it as we go. The last article, I showed off the monitor and video card I planned to get. At this point, I have used up $806.18 of my $1,200 budget.
This round, we are going to look at the RAM and hard drive storage for this PC. Remember that we need to keep within the budget and do plan to make some upgrades later, so this will influence our purchase in this article.
Hard Drive
Samsung 850 EVO-Series 1TB 2.5″ Solid State Drive
Price: $343.26
Solid state drives are amazing, but they are not perfect. At the same time, because they are a new technology, you are going to be paying a premium for them. So the price right now is not worth the amount of space you get as recording speeds on other drives are great and the desktop tower is not going to move around like a laptop would.
Western Digital Black 6TB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Price: $289.99
If I was trying to get tons of memory, I’d go with this. 6GB/sec SATA and low cost for the amount of memory. But if I want to keep to my budget, I need to skimp on the hard drive space now and go premium elsewhere.
Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Price: $62.10
Of all the 3.5″ hard drives available, this is the one I went with. Best part is the 6GB/sec SATA connection. I want the most bang for my buck and further, I plan to upgrade with more hard drives in the future.
RAM
G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Price: $144.99
32GB of RAM for one PC? My last computer had 2GB, so this would be an upgrade x16. Honestly though, for what I plan to do, this is over kill and a waste of money. RAM is always getting cheaper and if I need it in the future, I’ll get it then.
Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Price: $74.99
This RAM is most compatible with my motherboard as I have a 4 slots and a limit of 32GB of RAM as well as it supports DDR3. And with that price, this is my best solution!
Eric Dye says
I really like the idea of running an SSD for the OS and apps, though. 😀
Jeremy Smith says
Within the constraints of this experiment, couldn’t do it. I don’t disagree though.
Eric Dye says
With your upgrade allowence, however, you could make it happen.
Jeremy Smith says
And do intend to. 🙂