if you only have a $600 budget, how will you build your comp? (budget gamer type, not workstation)

[littlegohan]

Well, I only have a $600 budget (not including monitor) and advices will be greatly appreciatd

the things that must be part of the rig are:

z560 speakers (130)

so I guess I only have 470 left😱

P.S I dont want a duron or celeron

 

[MrCodeDude]

If they still have that $30 case at Compgeeks. You are now down to $440.

Gigabyte 7VRXP
XP 1900+
combo should cost around $200 with a little change

GeForce 3 Ti200's are around $100 in the FS/FT forum.

Not a big fan of sound, but the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz's are good, or so I hear. That's like another $100 though.

2 Sticks of 256mb of PC2100 ram from Crucial for ~$100

That is $500. You could either get a cheaper sound card, only 256mb of RAM or settle for a slower CPU.
-- mrcodedude

 

[littlegohan]

dude, you forgot hd

how bout
1800xp
save some money on that
and radeon 8500 le instead of ti200?

 

[Syborg1211]

Amazing the things you can get for so little money... (this is a "back in the day" story) I remember back in the day when a measly Pentium 1 was like over 1000 bucks...


Sound card: Since you want the z-560's (good choice btw), all you need is a 4.1 sound card so you can save a lot of dough on that with an older creative 4.1 sound blaster

Graphics card: You can find an Ati 8500 oem for close to 100 bucks nowadays

Hard drive: either 80 or 40 gb seems to be the sweet spots... I just found a maxtor d740x for 66 bucks plus 5 shipping which is awesome

CPU: Athlon XP 1800 is the processor sweet spot for around 90 bucks

Motherboard: check out anandtech's recent mobo roundup and take your pick

 

[littlegohan]

i might take out the sblive 5.1 sound card from my old computer

planning to get the 800JB, hd is important to me

 

[DeRusto]

if you do end up getting a new sound card, i would recommend the hercules fortissmo II..very nice card for around 40 bucks

video card: radeon 8500le would be your best bet right now for around 100 bucks

hard drive: prolly, a 40gig; i would recommend maxtor - newegg price of 76 bucks

case: as long as you are at newegg, go with the evercase with a 300 watt psu for 40 bucks

ram: you could probably settle for 256 crucial for around 50 bucks

cd/dvd: toshiba dvd-rom is going for 40 bucks now

proc: amd athlon xp 1700 for around 100 with a hsf

mobo: a number of good boards sell for around 70-80 bucks

MSI KT3 Ultra, SOLTEK SL-75DRV5, Gigabyte GA-7VRX all based on the KT333 chipset

this comes up to about 530 bucks..so you might want to drop that sound card, settle for a cdrom, and possibly go with a slower cpu to hit your budget🙂

 

[ShadowDJ]

I second the Maxtor, Z-560s, and the 1800+. A good $8.50 non-overclocking cooler is the Speeze SuperRock. (70*15mm fan@31.5db, a bit better performance then 6cu and other solutions). The ECS K7VTA3 kt333 mobo is good and cheap. Anand thinks it has the best sound quality, comes with lan and raid for $77 at Newegg. If you want a CD burner, the Cyberdrive 32-12-48 rings in at $50 and has performace equal or better than the Lite-On and other models.

 

[MisterPants]

 

[Booster]

Looks like you're getting a nice rig for not too much money! If you can reuse your old CDRW or DVD, skip on a soundcard (what are these things for anyway? 😀) going with onboard sound (I can't tell the difference, I swear) you'd be able to get a nice MSI 645 Ultra and a P4 1.6A combo, and if you want to spend a few more bux for an ablosutely lovely rig, the ASUS P4S533 looks very appealing to fit your budget, IMO.

 

[rchang713]

I would get the ABIT NV7-133R. It uses the nforce chipset without the integrated video.

For $89 you get almost identical performance to the via kt266a chipset plus a lot less headaches, integrated dolby digital hardware sound (six channel analog and digital), intergrated NIC, onboard usb 2.0, and RAID. Just add 2 256 dimms (37 * 2 at crucial.com), the athlon xp of your choice (1900xp = $90). You have 217 left for HD and video card. Get a geforce3 ti 200 and a maxtor hd, both can be had for that.

 

[Bartman39]

How about this for $445 + shipping...?


AMD Athlon XP-1600, 1.40 GHz 266 FSB
PCCHIPS.COM M830LMR DDR BOARD
ThermalTake Volcano 5
256 MB DDR/266 MHz RAM
1.44MB Floppy Drive/internal
WD 40GB 7200RPM, ATA100
52x CD ROM Internal, IDE
64MB GeForce2 MX/400, 4xAGP
32-Bit 3D/Surround Sound
56K V.90 Fax/Data/Voice Modem
10/100 Base-T Port
ATX, MID TOWER 300W PS, 2 FAN
104Key Win98 PS/2 Keyboard
MS IntellIipoint Opitcal Mouse
100W Multimedia Speakers
Fully Assembled w/ 1-Year Part & Labor Warranty