@deth420: Leland Yee, and it was more than just firearms, he also sold political favors, contracts and his votes in the state legislature and was involved in drug smuggling as well. Pretty interesting read on how much he was involved in.

a "beast pc"? what are you talking about an overpriced alienware? did you get the absolute best on the market? heres a tip: SHOP AROUND. do the reasearch, find out which stuff is damn good but doesent cost an arm and a leg and get that instead, youll save a lot of money. here: 8800gt: \$100, 4850: \$150 core 2 quad q6600: \$180, core 2 duo e7300: \$120 4gb ddr2: \$50 dvd burner:\$20 250gb hdd: \$50, 500GB HDD: \$55 motherboard: \$84 (you could however go for a cheaper, albeit less eqipped one, but one that will get the job done) 600w power supply: \$60 case: case is a decision youll make based on if you like how it looks or not, but there are other factors. a VERY good, yet cheap and astetically pleasing case is the cooler master cm 690: \$50 22" 1080p, 2ms response time lcd monitor: \$210 seriously, yes its more expensive than a console, but number one you get better graphics (want to see what pc graphics are REALLY capable of, try crysis), number 2 a pc can do more (hell, you can even make your own games on it), number 3 the internet browsers on the pc DONT OUTRIGHT SUCK! number 4 youll have the satisfaction of knowing that you built your pc instead of just buying something that someone just put together, youll also have the knowledge to build others and a knowledge of computers, something that you will most likely lack a good deal of, if not lack completly, with just buying a console, and unlike the consoles building pcs is something that can actually make you money (ive been bulding for 3 years now and in that time ive made around \$4000 building computers for various people, including 3 of my bosses at my last job). number 5: MODS. and if you dont think thats a big deal then go look up some of the mods for half life and half life 2. number 6: NOT PAYING \$10 FOR A MEASLY 10 MAPS. COD4, ps3 and 360 versions, \$60 plus \$10 for each map pack add on, pc: \$50 and ALL THOSE MAPS FOR FREE AND THEN HUNDREDS OF CUSTOM MAPS AND GAME MODES. same for tf2, those of you that have the 360 version congratulations on being able to pay \$10 sometime next year for updates IVE ALREADY GOTTEN. number 7: cheaper games (\$50 vs. \$60), and the games even drop in price after only a few months, whereas console games usually dont drop until at least a year after coming out (unless they suck and dont sell worth a damn). you get so much more out of building a pc then just buying a console. and you get so much out of doing it as well im not saying consoles suck, there are advantages and disadvantages to both consoles and pcs. but some of you act as if a gaming pc is only good for that when there is so much more a gaming pc excels at. again, there are advantages and disadvantages to both consoles and pcs, but PLEASE stop acting as if pcs and pc gaming is the antichrist, its not, its has a lot of things going for it and its here to stay. all prices taken from newegg.com for quick refrence, if you take my advice and build then put more time and effort into your reasearch. newegg is one of the best, but there are many others such as tigerdirect.com. parts were chosen for their performance, quality and price/performance ratio as well as to show its not as expensive as so many think it is to get a gaming pc.

"So i have a geforce 8800gt and 4g of ran with a AMD dual core 3.2ghz...And i notice you only tested Intel's, why? Amd is as good if not better than INTEL imo, or at least comparable, I'm assuming that Intel bought your review? Could you at least disclose that ahead of time so I can not waste my time reading all the way to the end of your biased review to see the difference between 7 intel chips" not even close. in benchmarks conroe (core 2 duo, core 2 quad is kentsfield) DESTROYED amds k8 processors in EVERY benchmark. when compared to amds phenom the conroe processors still beat out amds processors in all but server and memory intensive benchmarks, neither of which apply at all to games. in terms of gaming performance the quad core phenoms lost out to the dual core core 2 duos in many benchmarks, and lost out entirly when compard to the core 2 quads. while nehalems performance is on par with the yorkfields (45nm core 2 quad, or the q9xxx series) the fact remains that the power consumption is quite a bit lower, in the case of far cry 2 specifcally close to 100w loweraccording the anandtechs benchmarks. point being, amds not even close to touching intels processors in any arena at the moment, espically when it comes to gaming performance. maybe shanghi/debenm (neither of those are spelled right) will change that as ive seen some claims from people who have them that they can overclock to 4.5ghz on air cooling, but as of now amd is very much behind intel when it comes to processors. with graphics cards its completly different, but not processors.

"@apkoolguy92... u need to upgrade your processor....RAm actually reduces the loading time not the graphics hiccups..." actually if theres not enough ram then putting more in WILL seriously increase framerates. reason being is that with not enough ram the computer has to resort to using a page file or virtual memory, that is hard drive space that is acting in the place of physical ram. using a page file for games seriously bottlenecks the entire system signifantly slowing the whole thing down to the point where it WILL cause a very noticable decrease in framerate. however, if thats not the case and there is more than enough ram then adding in more will do little to nothing (at best an decrease in loading times by a second or 2, only putting in faster ram will signifantly speed up the loading times, and even then it wont be too much).

"I love PC games, but hate to have to upgrade my system to play them. The cost of upgrades are usually more than the cost of a console. I can see why people shy away from the PC when it comes to games. " theres a difference between playing them and playing them all maxed out. your refering to the latter, in which case anyone who does so is an idiot or has too much money to spend. the first computer i built was back in december of 2005 and included a pentium 4 @ 3.0ghz, geforce 7800gt with 256mb vram and 2gb ddr2. that computer, which now belongs to a friend of mine, is running both this game and crysis. hes not running them at max settings of course, but hes still running them none the less. when you talk about consoles the fact is this, after a few years that consoles games wont be looking any better from a technical standpoint (as in artistic direction aside as most games go for a purley technical aspect) to the point where you have to upgrade to a new console to get better graphics. my point is this, you can get away with a lower end pc for at least a few years. you wont be playing games with all the eye candy, but you will sure as hell still be playing them. and if you actually LOOK AROUND for componenets youll find that building/upgrading a computer is actually much cheaper than everyone (or at least the very uninformed) says. the upgrades to my computer im using now, which is a new processor, motherboard and graphics card, amounted to a total of around $350, LESS than the cost of a ps3 and a 360 (the orginal model before the price drops and currently the elite model), and only $100 more than a wii. if you look around its not that expensive and you shouldnt be upgrading but every 2 years at the earliest.

solid state drives today are hardly a worthwhile replacement for traditional platter based hard drives. current ssds are still a good bit slower in read/write/access times when compared to todays traditional hard drives, meaning for the most part they are much slower, not to mention how expensive they are as well. current top of the line ssds have about a 100mb/60mb read/write speed, while traditional hard drives have well over 150mb/120mb read/write speeds. within the next year and even beyond that though the speeds of ssds will increase dramitcally, seagate has announced their plans to release one with speeds ov over 200/150, and intel has announced large gains in the market as well. ssds just arent worth it right now, they are worse in performance and benchmarks compared to traditional hard drives and are MUCH more expensive to boot, in the near future that will change, but as for now dont even consider it.

"come December, I'll get this baby" by that time we'll be looking foward to nehalem, if it hasant already come out that is, native octal core processors, as well as better dual socket support that with core 2/skulltrail and at a cheaper price most likely.

"Yeah, seriously, the PC industry has to slow down for the average consumer. "Skulltrail" = Completely useless. Who needs that much hardware on one board?" the pc industry is slow engouh for "average" consumers, the average consumer who buys a computer with a core 2 duo now wont need to upgrade UNTIL THE BLOODY THING DIES IN 5-6 YEARS. if the industry slowed down we would be looking at quantum computer in 2100 instead of 2012, that and you all who whine and **** just need to actually READ, its not difficult to keep up with in the slightest if you TRY.

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this board isnt for regular users or even most enthusists, its meant almost soley for those who are always trying to one up each other in cinebench and 3dmark, otherwise intel wouldnt have released this. as everyone has said, unless your one of those who has TOO much cash and/or is trying to one up everyone and get the highest 3dmark06 score, skulltrail is useless. wait for nehalem, intels next archeture, native quad and navie octal core models, with hyperthreading (which allows each processing core to run twice the number of threads as without it) as well as being built with dual socket motherboards in mind (similar to amds now partially defunct 4x4 and 4x4+) means 16 physcial processing cores and 32 logical processing cores on a single computer, and probably at a lower price than skulltrail with 2 qz9770s. this is however assuming that nehalem isnt the second coming of prescott. also just a quick note, it doesent REQUIRE 2 qx9770s, this uses lga771 sockets, meaning you can throw in any dual or quad core xeon processor, doing so can bring the cost of this with 2 quad cores down to under a thousand dollars, and core 2 extremes ARE NEVER worth it unless, as said before, your in the market for the highest 3dmark score.