junkgalore

ok, so you guys lost me bit in the last few replies...

but the general consensus I seem to glean from here is basically to go for the fastest I can afford.

I've ended up with:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 5000+
and
memory: 3072MB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM
and
hard drive: 400GB 7200 rpm

about how long can I expect this system to last me? Any educated guesses?

PC eye

You could easily go for 2gb of PC2-6400 memory. That would be DDR2 800 over DDR2 667 for the faster memory there. As far as how long a system lasts depends how it is taken care of as well as when simply deciding to upgrade.

If you simply run the system stock and not planning to rush into the next new "bells+whistles" that come out you should see several years out any good build. Finding replacement if needed on old systems? That's a different matter there.

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