Cheap, Fast, Reliable, & Somewhat Current

[forlorn_ronin]

Looking for parts you would suggest if you wanted to have a good decent bare minnimum system. Not Barebones. But, want some feedback as to what parts you would consider from case to hardrives, power supplies, CPU chip, motherboard, optical drives & memory. Basically build a complete system and heres the challenge... Keep it under $400. Remember... CHEAP but reliable.

 

[desiboi]

WOAH!! Under 400? I don't think your going to get a reliable PC. A reliable PSU and hard drive costs as much as 400 dollars!

 

[Codeine]

forlorn_ronin, 500$ is pretty much barebones........ Anything under 500$ is striaght barebones...

 

[forlorn_ronin]

LOL. Ok guys put aside the superior high tech ultra heavy duty sweet gear and get down to te knitty gritty. Notice I own my wn shop. I can obviously get good pricing on parts and pieces. But I have only sold mainly peripherals. I am now starting on building pc's. I have recently built a monster system because of this board. Thank you all. I am now wanting to build affordable cpus to sell around 500. Pretty much keeps in line with my competitors. Now what I'm asking is for some help. I need to see some systems that you guys think would fall under those guidelines. I want to see what parts you would put together for a build. I am thinking of making this a contest nd giving money through paypal to the winner. I am looking for a whole complete system. Either in pentium or AMD. Let the GAMES BEGIN! LOL

 

[Trotter]

At that price, you'll have to look to Semprons or Celerons. I'd go with the Semprons (socket 754) and stock cooling.

Stay with a basic board, say Soltek K8M800I-RL
http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813180071
Nothing overly expensive, but functional with onboard graphics.

Look for a good deal on hard drives. 80gig, if possible.

You can go with cheap memory, so long as it has been tested. Don't go with less than 256MB, 512 would be better if it will fit in the cost.

Plain vanilla case, but with a decent (if small) PSU. Your warranty would be worthless if the PSU fried it all. Some of the low end cases actually look fairly decent.

 

[Trotter]

Check my sig. My basic system was $496 two years ago, but it only had 128MB of RAM, no graphics card, and no DVD. It did include the monitor. It is an eMachine W2040, and I bought it at Wally-World.

 

[turtile]

Intel LGA 775 2.8 to 3.0 = $160 to $180
Asus P5GD1-VM (on board graphics) = $100
Corsair Value Ram 512MB to 1GB = $50 to $85
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 80GB = $65
RAIDMAX Case and PSU 420w = $50
LG DVD-ROM to NEC 16x DVD-RW DL =$28 to $50
Linux or Windows Home = $0 - $85

With Windows its $538