Cheap PC needed for poor college student.

[VitaminR]

I'm planning on ordering some components and building a new system for cheap, here's what I plan on getting so far with prices including shipping and websites. Items with a 0 are ones I already own.

Enlight 7237 Mid Tower Case with 300 Watt P.S.
AMD XP 1600+ with heatsink and fan
Soltek SL-75DRV5 KT333 Motherboard
Samsung Floppy Drive
All of the above from AIC Micro for $271
256 MB Samsung DDR RAM from Googlegear for $52
Artec CD RW 32x12x40
Linkskey LKF-5100+ NIC
LEADTEK WINFAST TV2000XP TV Tuner Card
HP Deskjet 656C Printer
All from Newegg including keyboard and mouse for $194
Viewsonic 17 Inch M70B purchased locally for $117
GeForce 2 MX 200 $0
SB Live 5.1 $0
Maxtor 20GB HD $0

I could save even more money by going with a setup including an ECS K7S5A and using my existing 256 MB SDRAM and waiting for DDR, but if I'm going to go DDR I might as well go now. Does that memory look ok? I'm good as long as it's a name brand right?


So, any suggestions or ideas about this setup? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Actaeon]

Looks good... but what do you plan on doing this with rig? Gaming? Get something faster, for your sake. With that CPU, At least Ti200, or Radeon8500. Won't cost more than $100 for either. (I payed $69 shipped for my Ti200)

Other than that, the rig sounds nice.

You could probally save some money using the ECS mobo, instead of the soltek, if you want to use your old SDR, and truely on the budget, then that would be the best route.

Memory looks good. How fast is the memory? And what OS are you running? With WinXP, I'd recommend going up to 512mb, but if you on a tight budget, 256 will suffice.

 

[VitaminR]

Well, since I am on a budget I decided to keep using my old graphics card. In the future, I plan on upgrading that however. Maybe once I try to play a new game, I'll decide it's time. I found a site, AV Logic, that had a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 128 MB for around $130, I'd probably go with that once I have the money.

That memory was PC2100, but just now I found this: KINGSTON KVR266X64C25/256 256MB 32x64 PC2100 DDR RAM at NuTrend for $50 shipped, so that's what I'd be getting now. I'll probably be running WinXP with this rig, it'd be nice to have 512 MB, but for right now, 256 seems to be at my price point. Maybe when I order my new video card, I'll order some more memory along with it.

Thanks for the suggestions, keep 'em coming!

 

[VitaminR]

When I had even less money, I was considering the K7S5A for a while. I've read reviews of that along with reviews of the Soltek and decided that having the VIA KT333 chipset vs. the SiS 735 would be better for the long run. I'm not too up on chipsets so if this sounds wrong or bad, please let me know.

I'll take a look into the printer, I mainly chose it because of the price, which is pretty much how I chose everything in this rig.

Hard drives, well, I have an old one I could maybe pop in there after a format, I won't be building this til next weekend so we'll see what happens before then.

As far as a new video card, I'll have to make sure I have enough money first.

Thanks so much for your help guys.

 

[VitaminR]

I recalculated to see how much I would save by going with the K7S5A and using my SDRAM. Looks like the savings is around $70, which is substantial when the previous price was $509. Then I realized something, I'm not sure how much I'll be using the TV card so I decided to just ditch that for about the same savings. So my rig will be about the same except, no TV card, the HP printer is out and an Epson Stylus C40UX is in. Once I go over all this with my dad, I'll order it.