Heck it's cheaper just to buy than to build

Ok you guys bullied me into canceling the order, (That and I didn't read the fine print, it was only for businesses although I could have gotten around that) for 500 dollars what could I do? Piece by piece, where do you put more into. I already have a monitor, keyboard mouse

 

where do you put more into

what are you planning on using it for?

 

I am not the techno guy like you folks. No serious graphics, no watching DVDs. Mainly surfing, listening to music while I surf, some games (Links LS).

 

I have been using the same rule of thumb for about 7 or 8 years without fail.

Soend the most on the stuff you touch, look at or hear. People that spend a fortune on the computer innards and display it on a 15" monitor and $10 speakers baffle me. I had the same 17" monitor through 4 computers and only upgraded cause I got a ridiculously good deal on my 21" Sony FD Trinitron display. I've had the same 3 piece speaker set for 7 years. It aint dolby 5.1 surround, but it's already plenty loud.

Buy a motherboard with some onboard stuff. Snobs will tell you differently, but I use the AC'97 codec onboard sound on my motherboard and the onboard NIC. I read some benchmarks that show that my sound uses less CPU overhead than my old SB Live! sound card, so I tossed that out.

Depending on your budget, I'd probably get an Athlon 64 and a KT800 based mobo - or the SiS one if its finally out. The Athlon 64 3000+ is a pretty good bargain and will run 64 bit apps down the road when they go mainstream. The 3200+ isnt too espensive and has twice the L2 cache (better performance). EIther one should last you a while as a workstation cpu.

If you dont want that, then but a Barton core Athlon XP 2500+ and some PC3200 RAM. Can be had for very cheap. Spend about $150 on a good Radeon video card if you play any games. If not, just about anything with > 32MB dedicated video memory will do.

 

I posted this in dig-it's thread not to long ago, the prices are about the same I think. If you look around, you can build a nice box for cheaper than you think.

"P4 2.6GHz 800FSB ASUS P4S800 DDR400 BAREBONES ($329.00)

(or for those who prefer AMD- AMD XP3000 ASUS A7V600 KT600 SATA BAREBONES $359.)

Caviar WD800BB 80GB Hard Drive ($62.50)

512mb DDR memory ($72.60)

cd burner 52x32x52 ($37.00)

black floppy ($14.00)=====$515.10

If you want the links let me know. I went with the best for the cheapest money. I'm sure others here can probably do better "

 

It's all about NewEgg.com. There arent many other places worth shopping.

 

YOU DA MAN! I am not very familar with Caviar hard drives. What should I look for in cases since as Dave says Dell cases aint for shit

 

Here`s a nice one, just like mine.

 

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:huh:

 

It showed an Antec case without a power supply. I dont know if that was intentional. I will vouch for Antec though - they make good solid cases.

Paul, if you dont get a serial ATA HD, make sure you get one with an 8 MB cache. Western Digital (caviar) calls their 8 MB cache drives "special editions". Worth the couple extra $$.