Every few months Ars Technica puts out three system guides; the budget box, the hotrod and the god box. Each one tries to get the most bang for the buck. They don’t just put the cheapest stuff they can find in the budget box or the most costly into the god box. There is an actual attempt to evaluate each item on its own merits and how it fits into the overall system. I have certainly disagreed with some of their recommendation (most notably the use of an AMD CPU in their hotrod this time around; not that I have anything against AMD, but right now Intel is clearly the performance king). That said, I usually find their recommendations to be well thought out and support by detailed technical data.