DoD, I think my wife and I could scrounge together about that much. What else would I need besides a monitor, keyboard, & mouse? Would I have to assemble anything? (I'm good at fixing most things, I've just never messed around with computers before.) ------------------------------------- When you guys talk about "crashing" Windows, what exactly are you experiencing? I've had it freeze up on me, or do some weird stuff, but I don't know if I've experienced a "crash". I always thought if your computer crashed you lost everything.
Do you have a hard drive already? Otherwise, you would need a hard drive. I think I've got a couple of 5 gigs or a 7 gig (don't remember what all) hard drives lying around I can give you. You would need a floppy drive, too if you don't already have one, but they cost around $9-$10. No biggie (I can even give you the cable to connect the floppy since I don't use them anymore... hehe). I usually end up throwing a lot of this stuff away because nobody wants them. And yes, you'd probably have to assemble it. Unfortunately, when you start looking for the best prices on the 'Net, they usually come from various places. You may be able to get the case and mobo put together for about $10 at some places if you're lucky. I'd buy the case in town if you can find cheap prices on it, because a lot of places may screw you on the shipping charges (tower cases are fairly heavy, thus a bit more expensive to ship). When you're looking for prices on computer equipment, go to Pricewatch.com to check out prices. Also make sure you find out what the companies' shipping costs are. Don't pay outrageous shipping prices to save a couple of bucks on the equipment itself. The best thing to do is get a list of things together you'd need, and find out what their prices are on the 'Net. Then go around Houston asking various mom & pop stores how much it would cost for you to buy all the stuff from them and have it assembled. If you can afford what they're asking you to pay, go that route as opposed to ordering from various places on the 'Net. I say this because it may save you the heartache of having to assemble stuff you may be clueless about assembling and shorting out a motherboard, RAM, etc. A crash in Windows is usually a lockup, a blue-screen of death (an error message with a blue background), etc. You can also have a hard drive crash which means your hard drive died.
So I guess I should just hang on to my mystery RAM, DREAMer? As for assembling something yourself, it's truly easy, especially if you have some degree of mechanical aptitude. If I can put one together with no direction or prior experience, you know it's simple. I can't believe you guys being happy with your windows crashing once or twice a month. I can't recall Win98 crashing on me in the last six months, to be honest.
Have you used it in the last 6 months? If a week goes by without my Win98 installation crashing, I'd be shocked. But then I have so much crap installed on my machine it's ridiculous. I format my hard drive and re-install everything every 6-12 months.
Dod- Can you help me out? I was thinking of putting together a machine for myself. Where in Houston is good for parts and such. Can you tell me exactly what i should get? Thanks.
DoD or anyone, What do y'all think about "kits"? Computer Kits I'm almost positive I will be building our next computer sometime late this year, but I'm not sure the best way to acquire all the parts.
building a pc isn't too difficult. the only problem i had was getting the processor and fan onto the motherboard. it's a little tricky (for Socket A mbs anyway) by the way, best buy has 20GB hard drives on sale this week for only 60 bucks. a great deal.
This would be a good reason to go with a kit. The only hard part that I know of on putting a PC together is the case/motherboard/processor. the rest is plugging stuff in and putting in some mounting screws. Also dont forget a 56k modem which you can get for under $20
The barebones systems are good if you don't want to worry about mounting motherboards or plugging wires the right way. Just make sure you're not getting screwed pricewise. Sometimes you can get a good mobo + good cpu + case + assembly for slightly more than the crap mobo + good cpu + crap case assembled you sometimes get in kits.
DREAMer, If you won't be putting a pc together till the end of the year, don't buy anything except maybe a keyboard, mouse, or memory right now. Whatever you do, don't buy a hard drive, motherboard, or processor now thinking you're getting a great deal... in 3-4 months, there'll be better deals. I tried telling somebody to not buy his Pentium 4 machine about 1 month ago, but he didn't listen. Intel just dropped the price on some P4's by about 50-55%.
I know there might be a better bare-bone kit, but this is off the top of my head: http://www.overstock.com/cgi-bin/d2.cgi?PAGE=PROFRAME&PROD_ID=28617&fp=T Use 20$ off of 100$ coupon found here: http://www.techbargains.com/coupons.cfm Micro Case w/ 250watt ps via kt133 mobo w/ 1agp and 3 pci slots built in sound pci win-modem floppy drive ----------------- $89.00 Voodoo3 agp (free) Dr of Dunk 128mb $24 AMD duron 750mhz 42$ Volcano II cpu fan 10$ maxtor 20GB 5400rpm hd $84 sony 52X cdrom $37 ===================== ~$286 All the parts were taken from http://www.directron.com I didnt check out http://www.axiontech.com they are also based in Houston. You might be able to reuse your cdrom or harddrive which would make the system's price lower. Check out anandtech's hot deals forum http://forums.anandtech.com/categories.cfm?catid=40 that forum is more addictive than clutchcity Nomar, whats your budget? are you planning to reuse any componets?
Hmm. I'm about to start building my second computer. I went Pentium last time, but I'm looking for budget-building now. Should I go with a Pentium 4 again? Or is an AMD the better deal? This is the age-old question, isn't it?
AMD's are by far the better deal and in a lot of cases have out preformed the P4s. Definatly go with the AMD!
When they don't tell you who made the mobo, be worried... Overstock.com for the most part, sells ancient stuff. I'd rather pay for a good mobo that he can upgrade the CPU on. For example, he can get a Duron 750 for about $40 now. He can then upgrade to a TBird 1.7 GHz when they're about $40 1 year from now if he wants. I have to agree with you. If there's one site that's even more addictive than CC.net it's anandtech's forums and also fatwallet's forums. Deals to be had everywhere on those sites... as long as you can ignore the kiddies with the "me, too" posts.
AMD's are definitely the better deal. What's sad is even after the P4's were slashed in price by as much as 50-55%, they still can't beat the AMD's bang-for-the-buck. Their Duron blows the doors off the Celeron in terms of performance and price. Their TBirds are just as fast as the P4's in most apps and still are priced well under the P4's. And now that AMD's come out with multi-processor-capable processors, I don't plan to go back to Intel anytime soon. The SMP mobo's are damn expensive now, but they'll come down... Go AMD!
The Duron 750 can be had for under $30 now. I bought a 750 + fan for about $45 a couple of weeks ago. You can get 40 GB drives for about $80 + shipping now. So even more savings. Regarding memory, if you want to buy Crucial/Micron memory (good stuff), and want a 15% discount, use the following link to get 128 MB of RAM for less than $18. : www.crucial.com/evguide If you order the memory by Aug. 31st, you get free 2nd day shipping to boot.
If you're planning on building a PC, the best one-stop place is Fry's by IAH. Built my dad's computer with parts from there in June. 256MB- $50 (more like $35 now) 1.13GHz AMD Athlon T-Bird + EPOX KT133A+ Mobo- $250 20GB Seagate HDD: $70 Antec Mid Tower + 300W PS- $60 8x8x32 CDRW drive: $77 52x CDROM: $25 Floppy: $10 8MB AGP Video: $8 (w/rebate) 56K Modem: $6 Case Fan: $8 --------------------------------------------- Total: ~$580 This machine absolutely kicks ass.
DoD, Isn't that always the case? If not, what makes now different? I mean, won't you be telling me not to buy anything at the end of the year, because there will be better deals by April? ----------------------------------- Also, what do you guys think of those 120Mb SuperDisks? They read and write to both the super disks and the normal 1.44Mb disks. I think they're better than a ZIP drive. Less room taken up and more memory storage capability.
You don't need more memory, you need to fdisk your hard drive. I had the same problem with 512 mb of ram but once i fdisked my harddrive I installed it okay.
Re : always the case. It's always the case, but I think you misunderstood. If you won't have money to buy a complete system all at once, don't buy a hard drive now because you can afford it when you won't have the rest of the stuff till December. I didn't mean to make it sound like "the prices will be lower, so wait". I meant "don't buy parts of your pc now thinking you're getting a great deal, when you won't have the whole thing until December; buy it all in December." Re : the LS-120/SuperDisk I don't believe they're being made anymore. I could be wrong about that, but they're hard as hell to find. I bought a couple of them and think they're better than ZIP drives because they can read floppies, too. I tried looking for another one for my parents' machine about 3 weeks ago and could only find two or three stores that had them and they were all external drives. I went to Imation's site (they had a version of the drive) and they say it's not made or supported anymore. Bummer.
