What is the PC Perspective HW Leaderboard? The PC Perspective Hardware Leaderboard is going to become the first place you look to find the components that will make up your next computer. On this page you will find our editor's combined opinions on the best systems you can build based on three different budgets. You can expand each of the systems (High End, Mid-Range and Budget) to show you all the components that we believe represent the best products in their price ranges.

Why a Leaderboard? We like the idea of a Leaderboard because it presents a no non-sense way of looking at the best hardware available. On this page, you won't find paragraph after paragraph telling you why this processor is better than that processor. Instead you'll find the quick and dirty on our editor's choices for the best hardware you can get. No beating around the bush here. Of course, if you still want to get our full and detailed opinions on various hardware, you can look through our reviews page. But the HW Leaderboard is going to give you our final decisions in one quick look.

Updated Apr 28, 2008:

First, let me take this chance to point everyone to the new PCPer Hardware Leaderboard forum!  Use this area to discuss my selections here, offer you own suggestions or just about the new system build you are working on even if it's NOT based on anything here.

Big changes are afoot with this overdue update to the Hardware Leaderboard!  Starting with the biggest dollar systems we see that the price on the Dream System jumped from $2800 or so up to the $3600 we see now!  Where did all that extra cash go?  We kept the processor the same even as the QX9770 started to show up in a couple of select online retailers but went with the new NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset instead of the 780i chipset.  This new core logic ups overclocking performance quite a bit but also forces us to move to DDR3 memory - another source of the big price jump.  I definitely didn't want to step back from 4GB to 2GB just to keep the price in check so our $420+ DDR3-1600 memory kit is definitely a blow.  We also migrated from the 8800 Ultra to the new 9800 GX2 graphics card - a dual GPU board that is essentially two 8800 GTS 512MB cards in one.  There are some other changes so be sure to give it a look.

The High End system also saw a price increase going from $1245 to $1399 - a modest increase I think considering the changes I implemented.  First we moved to a new Yorkfield, 45nm Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 processor but kept the 780i SLI chipset motherboard.  I also upgraded graphics card in this system as well with the new 9800 GTX card - a great single-GPU board that offers 8800 Ultra-like performance at a lower price.  And the BFG model I picked is also overclocked right out of the box.  The 4GB of memory I chose is now priced as low as $61 with rebate - simply amazing.

The Mid-Range leaderboard got a noticeable boost in price after comments from readers suggested I try to space out the budget/mid-range/high-end configurations a bit more.  For the first time in a while, the mid-range system returns to AMD's domain with the Phenom X4 9850 processor at its heart and an AMD 790FX motherboard from MSI as the backbone.  I upgraded the graphics to the 9600 GT OC2 model from BFG that should boost gaming performance and also was able to squeeze in the 4GB memory kit on this leaderboard as well - DDR2 memory is too cheap to pass up!

Finally on the Budget leaderboard we have another AMD system starting with the Phenom X3 8450 triple-core processor.  This is AMD's lowest priced Phenom part and pairing it with the AMD 780G chipset that currently has the best performing IGP solution was a no-brainer.  I did include a 9600 GT card here as well - the lowest priced one I could find was from Leadtek and with a rebate is priced under $130.  These changes really didn't increase the price too dramatically yet will offer quite a bit more performance compared to our previous configuration.

That's it for this month readers!  Don't forget to drop by the Hardware Leaderboard forum to share your comments!

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Dream System Leaderboard

Estimated Cost: $3686

High End System Leaderboard

Estimated Cost: $1399

Mid Range System Leaderboard

Estimated Cost: $956

Budget System Leaderboard

Estimated Cost: $616