The $300.00 Challenge

[Terminal23]

While waiting for my tax refund I was wondering what I could get to upgrade my PC with the money.Here's what I came up with.See If you can do better.

AMD ThunderBird 1.2 GHz $87.00 http://www.econopc.com/
GeForce2 MX400 64MB $66.00 http://store.yahoo.com/lib/hoct12/pw.htm
Maxtor EIDE 40.0 GB Ultra DMA/100 9.5 MS $77.00 http://www.thecomputercenter.com/pw.htm
Kingston 256 MB SDRAM $39.00 http://www.computergiants.com/
Total $269.00 + Shipping

[Hellmund]

Change to a 32mb Geforce MX. The extra RAM is a waste on a MX, it doesn't have the bandwidth to effectively use that much ram. The difference from 32-64 is %5 at best. That'll reduce the price. Or just get a Radeon LE, install the 32mb DDR Radeon BIOS and it'll kill the MX performance at any res about 800X600X32. Those can be had for $10 more. Well worth it IMO.

Also recommend a HS/F. That's an oem cpu and doesn't come with one, A WBK68 is quite quiet and does an excellent job, can be had for $18-$25.

[NDD]

And the money you saving on extra 32MB memory for GF2MX you can put to replace that Maxtor HD you planning to buy with killer IBM 75GXP/60GXP of same size.

Best Regards ...

[jamis]

I try to find a single place that has the best average price. I just put together:

1.13ghz T-Bird (266MHz fsb)
DFI AK76-SN motherboard
256MB DDR dimm
CPU heatsink and fan

Total: $316 with second day shipping.. and they assemble and test the components. (Best to make sure all the components work up front)
http://www.tccomputers.com

They have a decent motherboard/cpu bundle configurator and they don't charge to put it together and test it. Plus they are a bit more reliable than the typical fly by night shop on pricewatch.com (I don't trust 90% of the shops that offer the lowest prices)

[This message has been edited by jamis (edited 07-30-2001).]