Building a high-performance inexpensive PC
A few times each year, Woody, Jeff and I are called upon to come up a cost-effective upgrade or "new" PC. Not nearly often enough to be an economic venture in itself, but sufficiently often to keep our nose in the market for "best of class" products. A few people have asked recently what we would build "today" (one week before Christmas). For the "adventurous", this constitutes a parts list for an evening DIY project. For the less adventurous, we will assemble this system or upgrade yours, transfer your data, install a core set of "free" software for a fixed price of $200. For those in between, the experience would make a good mini-course - "A Hands on Introductions to the Personal Computer". Might be hard to get this under the tree by Christmas but easy to put the deal together before the end of 2008. You might beat these prices elsewhere by a few dollars, the references below are all at NewEgg.
Motherboard.
The most cost effective motherboards are going to be based on Nvidia 8x00 or AMD 7xx Chipsets. They will all support Socket AM2+, 4 core Phenom processors, DDR2 1066MHz memory, SATA 3Gbs hard drives. I want an HDMI connector for that big screen TV and enough channels for the "home theater". There is an open box (2008-12-17) - ASUS M3A78-EM AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - $53.25. That saves about $40 and I have never had a problem with an "open box" but I suppose there may be a first time.
CPU
AMD Phenom 9600 Agena 2.3GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 95W Quad-Core Processor - $119.95. Hard to imagine really needing 4 cores at this speed but at this price - why not?
Memory
Kingston HyperX 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Desktop Memory - $23.99. Order 2.
Hard Disk
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - $74.99
DVD-RW
OS - Case
Don't do Vista. If you have an XP machine, use the COA (Certificate of Authority), case and power supply. If you have to call Microsoft, call it an upgrade. If you don't have an XP machine that you want to sacrifice to the cause, buy one from this man - Sales@rectech-inc.com - $109.
If you must buy a case - APEVIA X-QPACK-NW-BK/420 Black Aluminum 1.0 w/ ABS plastic front panel MicroATX Desktop Computer Case 420W Power Supply - $74.99
As an upgrade, the hardware will cost about $350 with shipping (you have to order the parts yourself). Assembly, data transfer and setup - $200 more. Call Jeff at 877-465-7638 to coordinate.