Grand Experiment alternatives
We have some alternatives to suggest here, too, in case you'd like to save a few bucks or prefer components from another manufacturer (cough fanboy).

Processor
Quad-core CPUs are great, but some users would rather pay a little less for higher single-threaded performance. With two 3.16GHz cores, 6MB of L2 cache, a 1333MHz front-side bus, and—best of all—a $189.99 price tag, the Core 2 Duo E8500 is a perfect alternative to our main recommendation for those folks.

Motherboard
We selected the Gigabyte GA-P45-DS3R on the previous page because of its well-rounded set of features and our first-hand experience with the board, but users who like cramming their PCs full of hard drives may prefer the Asus P5Q Pro. The P5Q has eight 300MB/s Serial ATA ports to the DS3R's six, although it doesn't have a second Gigabit Ethernet port, a secondary FireWire port, or as many USB ports.

Graphics
AMD's Radeon HD 4870 performs better overall than the GeForce GTX 260, but the two cards are pretty closely matched. The Nvidia card also supports hardware PhysX and CUDA general-purpose GPU voodoo. Whether you're interested in those features or you just don't like AMD's control panel software, the GTX 260 is a very capable alternative to the 4870. We went with this particular Asus model because of its low price tag and positive user reviews.

Storage
Western Digital was the only company to make a 640GB desktop hard drive for several months, but it now has some competition. Seagate's 640GB Barracuda 7200.11 costs $5 more than the Caviar, but it has five years of warranty coverage instead of three. If this drive is anything like other members of the Barracuda 7200.11 series, though, it should be a little slower and louder than the SE16.