Tom's Holiday Buyer's Guide 2008, Part 4

Welcome to the fourth installment of this year’s six-part Tom’s Hardware Holiday Buyer’s Guide, put together by editors from Tom’s Hardware, Tom’s Guide, and Tom’s Games. We’ve all worked together to compile the hottest list of PC components, gadgets, and gaming titles, which we’ll introduce one part at a time throughout the months of November and December.

Here’s the breakdown for what you can expect to see as the series progresses. Each time we publish a new piece, we’ll update those that came before with links to the newest guides. By the time we ring in 2009, we hope you’ll be enjoying at least a couple of gifts from our six stories!

• Part 1: Tom’s Hardware—No Hassle Hardware Gifts, Good To Go
  
• Part 2: Tom’s Guide—Top Kid Tech Gifts For 2008
  
• Part 3: Tom’s Guide—Great Gifts For Tech Gurus
  
• Part 4: Tom’s Hardware—Hardware For The System Builder In Your Life
  
• Part 5: Tom’s Games—Keyboards, Mice, Headsets, And More Games
  
• Part 6: Tom’s Guide—Great Gifts For Tech Novices
  

Each guide is organized to center on a slightly different theme. The first hardware guide zeroed in on gifts that you could buy and use right away—they weren’t tied to a particular system build or anything.

This fourth one is all about the power user with a penchant for building his or her own box, so it’s filled with individual components. Some are great for the enthusiast. Others are better for value-seekers.

And by the way, if you’re looking for a little more guidance on builds for specific budgets, check out November’s System Builder Marathon machines. We had one $625 dollar configuration and one $1,250 dollar setup. We wrapped the whole project up with an analysis of performance per dollar spent on Day 3 of the series.