05-01-2003, 01:59 AM
UPDATE :
on a tip, I was informed about some small business specials Dell was having on PC's that expired today. I ended up getting a video-ready Dell 8300 with the Intel 875 mobo and a P4 2.66 CPU @ 533 Mhz - and the board supports 800 Mhz FSB meaning down the road I can toss a P4 $ 800 Mhz in there instead of keeping it @ 533 - sweet!
It's sorts bare bones, there were free upgrades involved :
P4, 2.66 Mhz @ 533 Mhz
512 MB of Dual Channel 333 Mhz PC2700 RAM (I paid for 256, the other 256 was free)
64 MB DDR Nvidia GeForce4MX - I plan on changing this right away, to either the Ti4200/4600
60 gig ATA100 HD, 7200 rpm - I plan on adding a secondary drive, probably 120 MB
48x24x48 CDRW drive - this was a free upgrade from a 48x cdrom drive - it was either this or a free upgrade to a 16x DVD drive. I opted for the burner because DVD drives are dirt cheap and the Dell burners are pretty solid - they're not a Plextor, but it'll be covered under a 2 year warranty)
XP Pro
integrated 10/100 Ethernet (frees up a PCI slot)
no modem (don't need it on this machine - another free PCI slot)
SB Live! card - they wanted $130 for an Audigy 2 card, I can get that much cheaper and a plain old Audigy for even less than that - so I went with the SBLive.
all that with a $300 rebate, free 3-5 day shipping plus all the upgrades that expired tonight brought me to a total of $670 :5: :5: :5: :5:
Thanks to all for the help in getting to this point - I'm still gonna build a machine, but now i can do it more for fun and not for power/gaming which would've cost me a lot more $$ than the above machine did.
on a tip, I was informed about some small business specials Dell was having on PC's that expired today. I ended up getting a video-ready Dell 8300 with the Intel 875 mobo and a P4 2.66 CPU @ 533 Mhz - and the board supports 800 Mhz FSB meaning down the road I can toss a P4 $ 800 Mhz in there instead of keeping it @ 533 - sweet!
It's sorts bare bones, there were free upgrades involved :
P4, 2.66 Mhz @ 533 Mhz
512 MB of Dual Channel 333 Mhz PC2700 RAM (I paid for 256, the other 256 was free)
64 MB DDR Nvidia GeForce4MX - I plan on changing this right away, to either the Ti4200/4600
60 gig ATA100 HD, 7200 rpm - I plan on adding a secondary drive, probably 120 MB
48x24x48 CDRW drive - this was a free upgrade from a 48x cdrom drive - it was either this or a free upgrade to a 16x DVD drive. I opted for the burner because DVD drives are dirt cheap and the Dell burners are pretty solid - they're not a Plextor, but it'll be covered under a 2 year warranty)
XP Pro
integrated 10/100 Ethernet (frees up a PCI slot)
no modem (don't need it on this machine - another free PCI slot)
SB Live! card - they wanted $130 for an Audigy 2 card, I can get that much cheaper and a plain old Audigy for even less than that - so I went with the SBLive.
all that with a $300 rebate, free 3-5 day shipping plus all the upgrades that expired tonight brought me to a total of $670 :5: :5: :5: :5:
Thanks to all for the help in getting to this point - I'm still gonna build a machine, but now i can do it more for fun and not for power/gaming which would've cost me a lot more $$ than the above machine did.