Damn kids! GET OFF MY LAWN

[mtu_squirrel]

So my parents have informed me that my bro's tower died on him and he needed a new computer at some point. So as a Christmas/birthday present to him, they wanted me to go online and see what I could come up with, preferably under $500. Hell... preferably under $300.

Comments

[antler3649]

Hey - you should get a newer mobo with an onboard card. I think they're putting 256mb geforce 4s in the majority of the cards now-a-days. My boss just built a computer for under $500 for his dad using this route - I'll ask him what he used.

[antler3649]

Oh, and you don't want any "Micro" board, because it's just smaller than a regular board - they're so fucking hard to work with :'( I remember Pengy got one on accident once, but he ended up sending it back in after it crashed while updating his bios.

[mtu_squirrel]

yeah, I remember all about Micro boards. They're typically used in smaller cases, but I don't have a problem with them when they're in a midtower. Now if it was a micro in a small case... death unto them.

I just priced out a system on Newegg (just because it's easiest there) for just under $500 after rebates. It looked something like this:

GeForce 7600GT 256mb GDDR3 vid card
2gig DDR2 800 RAM
Athlon64 2.3ghz dual core proc
Biostar board with all the usuals
320gb 7200rpm 3.0g/s SATA HDD
500W PS
Pimpin' case. some X-Cruiser thing with gages and LEDs and shit
then the cheap DVD and Floppy crap, or otherwise shit I can gank from another system and install.

Total cost with shipping was something like $490. When I added in things like a DVD burner and a 19" WideScreen LCD monitor... it was just under $700.

Fucking kids. Their computer shit is cheap as hell nowadays. I remember when 64mb on a vid card was freakin' unheard of. Now it's onboard the Motherboards. If I wanted to spend $300 I could even get a 640mb video card now.

[beldolor]

NERD!

[mtu_squirrel]

Shut up. Computers hate you.

[beldolor]

hey, i've been doing good lately! i even set up my wireless netwrok on my own! and the house didnt burn down!

[zoomer69]

Computer Shopper has an article about building a computer for $250 on their site: http://computershopper.com/feature/build-a-250-pc-that-doesnt-suck-200707

The idea is kinda tempting. My P4 is starting to show its age, though with 2GB of RAM the processor and motherboard are the limiting factors. I wanted to wait on a new computer until I had the coin for a laptop, but I might change my mind.

The outlet specials at Dell are tempting too. :)

[clme]

Damn man.

I almost started to give you crap for going into 'old man techie' mode, but as soon as I typed up appropriate crap to give you I started in about trying to run windows 3.0 on a 286 and how happy I was to get a hand-me-down 386 computer with 4mb of RAM in 1996.

Somehow you've made me feel old and young at the same time.

I dont know why I always loaded windows on those old POS computers. Probably because it reminded me of the old Deskmate software I used on the Tandy. Either that or I really had a thing for reversi or solitaire.

Meh.

Good find on the computer parts though. I've had to buy quite a bit of component parts in the last year as things failed and I couldn't reuse the old parts anymore. AMD is still more bang for the buck when you're on a budget.

[mtu_squirrel]

heh, well I have tossed Win95 on machines that just fit the bare minimum requirements to get it to run.

In my Comp Hardware class I fried my 386 running 25mhz for the option to use the newer systems that came in: A P133 that was overclockable to a 266mhz. Found a 2 gig drive, tossed it in. Took 2 days to find the only 4 16mb sticks of RAM in the entire room and put those in. The CD-ROM was one of those that you had to put the CD in the case first, then insert it into the drive.

Got yelled at because I was playing Doom II when there was a tour going through the classroom.

The computer I grew up on? Atari.
The first "new" computer we had? P133 running Windows 3.11
Lands of Lore and 7th Guest were the SHIT back in the day. 4gig hard drive baby!

Now these kids have the fucking Xboxs and PS3's and computers with the dual core processors and more computing power than they'd ever honestly use. And they BITCH because it takes more than 2 seconds for something to load. Fuck yeah I'm ok with bein' in old man techie mode!

[clme]

Weird. Could have swore i was logged on earlier. Ignore those invisible anonymous posts :)

My first computer was a Commodore Vic20, and it was a hand-me-down. I got that at age 7. (1985)

At ten I got an 8088 Tandy with no hard drive and 256k of RAM.
At 12 I got a hand me down 8088 with a 10mb hard drive and 640k of RAM.
At 14 I got a free 286 with two 10mb hard drives and an EGA card.
At 15 that was replaced with a 386 with VGA when the 286 burned up. Lots of smoke.
At 17 I got a 486/100 to use for about 4 months with the understanding I would set it up for my aunt and fill it with software. Still running DOS and win3.1.
At 19 I built my first windows 95 computer. 200mhz Cyrix processor and 48mb of RAM.

I've almost always been at least two years behind on the tech front. As soon as I catch up the standards all change :)

[mtu_squirrel]

heh, kind of obvious who they were from, but tis ok.

Mine started with the Atari... skipped a lot of the computer stuff for a while until the P133 was out. Grabbed that. Then upgraded to a P2 400mhz after a while. Eventually when my parents upgraded to an 800mhz system, I grabbed the old 400 and used that as my machine for a while.

Eventually made my own system, the XP2500+ Barton. That bitch is dead, but had a P2 400 mhz laptop at one point till I wanted a new one. That was the laptop I currently fried, when I got THIS laptop (the 1.6ghz). My tower's dead, but the laptop works, so just sticking with what I've got for now.

Besides, it runs most of what I want it to. So no need to rebuild a tower just yet. Nevermind the cost...