[jat850]

Your profile doesn't have a contact e-mail address. Drop me an e-mail at (my username) at gmail.com if you'd like, because I have some interest in discussing this a bit.

I had begun working on a site that tracks current hardware trends, pricing, shopping, and recommendations but I haven't looked at the project in a while. If anyone is interested in collaborating on something like this, please feel free to contact me as well.

[jasonlbaptiste]

There's probably significant value in building something that works like a DELL build your own PC tool, but pulls in components from all the sites over the net, then puts together the shopping cart for you:

1) Takes you through each component choice: memory, case, cd/dvd, hd,etc.

2) As you choose the size for each one. 1tb hd? 8gb of ram?, it pulls together the lowest price, and sets up the shopping cart for you.

Problem I see- getting orders from multiple vendors.

[jat850]

Roughly what I had in mind - along with other shopping options, such as (mentioned by the OP) "what is the best computer for application X for $Y?"

[thefool]

You could do it exclusively on newegg initially.

Their service and selection is great, and prices are pretty fair.

[pcarmichael]

I've actually been working exactly that as a side project. Not only will it walk you through the component choices, it will also allow you to limit choices to components compatible with what you've already picked out.

If anyone is interested in beta testing when it is ready, drop me a line and let me know.

[zokier]

Also something that would aggregate benchmark results from different sources would be awesome. Then it could interpolate results for arbitrary hardware combinations and search for bottlenecks.