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 Sep 17, 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.

Apologies for the late update, but let's move right into the discussion.  The Dream System sees a pretty big shift this month going from an NVIDIA-based GPU system (as it has been for quite some time) to the AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB card.  This of course forced our hand into removing the EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard from the list so that we could in fact enabled CrossFireX support up to 4 GPUs on two of the 4870 X2 cards: welcome the ASUS Rampage Extreme X48 motherboard!  The remainder of the components remained unchanged though we saw some minor price drops including the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 dropping to its initially advertised price of $999 for the first time.

The High End system saw the least movement - all we did was upgrade the processor from the Q9550 to the Q9650 running at a full 3.0 GHz and basically matching the speed of the QX9650 priced twice as much.  We still continue with the ASUS Rampage Formula motherboard that uses DDR2 memory rather than the DDR3 memory of the Rampage Extreme in the Dream System.

The Mid-Range System moved from an AMD-based GPU system to an NVIDIA one and thus the tables have turned in the exact opposite way compared to the Dream box; now we are using an NVIDIA 9800 GTX+ graphics board and an nForce 750i SLI motherboard from EVGA to complete the build.  The Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 processor remained at the same price level so that component remains but I did upgrade the hard drive from a 750GB model to a Samsung 1TB (!!) drive that is selling for under $140 - pretty sweet.

Finally, the Budget System sees a couple of minor upgrades including a move from the GeForce 9600 GSO to the 9600 GT that is faster, yet selling for just about 60% of the price - just $89 after MIR.  I also decided to throw the same Samsung 1TB hard drive from the mid-range system in here in for nothing but bragging rights.  This is a HELL of a system for under $620!

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: $3761

High End System Leaderboard

Estimated Cost: $2025

Mid Range System Leaderboard

Estimated Cost: $1055

Budget System Leaderboard

Estimated Cost: $616