outland88 - 8:53 pm on Sep 3, 2011 (gmt 0)

If you read what the fellow was initially using Acer, Sony, NVidia those companies are not US centric to begin with. Most American products are now imported. NVidia I believe was initially French and may still be. Based upon what I said and what was previously used there should not be considerable price differences.

In the US you have taxes that are state, federal, city, local, and more that could be grouped such as in the EU but aren’t. So I don’t think you’ll find many Americans claiming we enjoy considerably lower taxes than elsewhere.

As for quietness of machines that’s the real art of knowing what you’re doing and balancing the parts. You can have outstanding specs with a Lite-On CD drive but a cheap Memorex drive may be quieter and more reliable than a more expensive one. Plus the specs are always changing and the manufacturing plants also.

The fellow said it was a educational purpose not a commercial one. So it's what's you're attempting to achieve.