Oh my! Those American prices are insane!!! The USD prices are exactly the same prices as I pay in Euros for...which is 1.3x more expensive [:|]


Anyway I have looked around a bit at the websites that you both mentioned and it seems like you have all sorts of other brands and prices, so it's hard for me to give good advice about the buying part.


I still hove some remarks:


Alex, does your budget also include the monitor(s). You can better buy 1 good IPS monitor than two bad TN monitors. I have bought the NEC EA231 WMi myself about a month ago and it's truly amazing for photography and video-purposes. Highly recommended.


And yes the on-board soundcard. Mostly 5.1 or 7.1 is good enough for most people. Obviously a true soundcard would produce better results, but you would need good speakers as well and a very sensitive ear []


Daniel, I like your recommendation in general. However I'm not getting the 16GB ram part. I personally have plenty with 6GB 1600MHz. And honestly I don't see the benefit of 16GB. It looks like quite the overkill to me. I think 99% of the time 8 will do great (4 would even do good). Plus Alex could update the RAM later on if he thinks he needs more and safe some money now.


Also there's no W7 included in the package.


About the SSD, I think it's still too expensive and I'd rather buy a faster processor for the extra cash. Again an SSD could be a great future update when prices get lower. At this point, I think they're just too expensive per GB. Please convince me why this is necesary.[:P] A RAID set-up would be very fast aswell and a lot cheaper.


Oh I also see you use a mini-atx case in your second list. Wouldn't that be too small and tight. I personally have a CoolerMaster CM690 which is quite large (ATX) and easily fits multiple HDD's, PCI-cards a big processor cooler etc. The Antec probably has a better build, but if it's really worth it...


Good luck Alex!