It's pronounced ay'ohs.

On a college student budget, I decided to build a desktop to the tune of $500, avoiding mail-in rebates and maximizing savings where I could.

Also included (but not present) is a Sceptre X322BV-HDR Westinghouse WD32HB1120 television monitor, given to me in exchange for work helping to prep a house for sale (pulling out carpets, cleaning out sheds, etc). I have a lot of peripherals lying around, so I'm recycling my keyboard and mouse.

FYI: I chose the name because personally, it is the dawn for a new era of computing, etc.. It also sounds very modern.

Updated July 29, 2016

Early 2014, a friend steered me towards building my own PC, advocating that I could get better performance for the same price as a retail PC. Starting in late July 2014, I began to build lists and dreaming of the day I'd put together my PC and run whatever I wanted to. Now is that time.

• CPU: an AMD Athlon X4 860K Quad-core CPU. The then-newest release in the Athlon line, top-of-the-line. Intel CPUs were too expensive for my price point and anything under four cores I figured was inappropriate for any PC that I wanted to build and use.

• CPU Cooler: an Cooler Master Hyper TX3. This was an after-thought. A friend chastised me for not getting the EVO 212, but I didn't feel the need to spend an extra $12 on an extra 3 cm and slight temperature difference.

• Motherboard: an ASRock FM2A88X Extreme 4+ motherboard. The only ATX-sized FM2+ motherboard with decent reviews. It was also under $80... a risk that was well-taken. Very well taken.

• RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB DDR3-1600 RAM from Newegg. Cheapest RAM I was able to find at $50 at the time. (As of late July 2016, prices have dropped to $30 and lower, which suuuuuucks.)

• HDD: a Western Digital Caviar Blue drive. $45 from Best Buy (+local tax). Worst shopping experience. Thanks to two ice storms and incompetence from both UPS and Best Buy, I received it nineteen days after I ordered it. On the upside, I ended up receiving one for free after my troubles.

• GPU: a HIS IceQ Radeon HD 7950 Boost, a R9 280 equivalent. 3GB of memory at 925 MHz, drawing 200W. It's 11.75 inches long, but my case can take this beast. I bought this refurbished from gpuShack, and it saved me a boat-load of cash.

• Case: Fractal Design Core 3300 ATX Mid-tower. This thing is huuuuge. 9in. wide, 17.75in tall, and 20.35in deep. Usually retails for $75, but got it for a steal (along with the CPU) at NCIX for $35. Would've never bought it for retail, just doesn't seem worth the price.

• PSU: an EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze certified PSU. I'll admit that I bought this before I decided on the 7950, so not having enough power is a problem, but I have yet to run into that wall. Ran into a problem where the fan kept hitting the grate, but flipping it over did the trick.

• OS: Windows 8.1 Professional. I was able to back-arm my college into giving me Windows for free. As of this writing (Jul 29, 2016), Windows 10 has become more stable and the Anniversary Update is right around the corner.

I had planned on EOS being the inexpensive build in which you bought all parts and a discrete GPU but I'm unsure of that due to my Windows OS "freebie" and a lack of optical drive. To split hairs, you don't necessarily have to install Windows or have an optical drive to install an OS. You can do so much with Ubuntu and a flash drive.

Deals/Discounts

• CPU & Case: Used "new customer" coupon code for $10 off a purchase of $100 or more at NCIX. Divided b/w CPU and case.
• RAM: Sleuthed on /r/BuildAPCSales and came upon a $5 Newegg discount on G.Skill Ripjaws RAM.
• HDD: Bought for a slight discount from Best Buy and paid for it with my time.
• GPU: Bought from gpuShack, used a $10 off coupon code.
• PSU: Bought for $35, but saved $15 using a mail-in rebate (processing time: a month)

All parts (sans CPU cooler and MRP): $424.75

Benchmarks (CPU/GPU temps on-demand):

3DMark

• Cloudgate: 10,105
• Sky Diver: 12,678
• Fire Strike: 5,075

Unigine Heaven

• Ultra: 762
• High: 1188