NEED A BUDGET PC

[tkim]

ok, got a cousin who has dsl for his business. he runs an auto shop. he will do some stuff (ie. invoices, etc) and surf the web. he might watch dvd's too. what should i build him?

he's an intel fanboy but will go amd if i tell him so i think a xp1800 is good. now the deal is, should i get him a video card or should i go with onboard?

as for the rest, i will get him a 30-40 gb hd, pioneer slot dvd, 12 or 24x cdrw, and mayber even a sound card (this also might go way of onboard depending on what you guys recommend)

ok, so what should i do? also, based upon your choice, what should i get?

thanks doods!!

 

[FishTankX]

If it's a budget machine, this will suffice

MSI K7N420D 140$ after shipping
Duron 1GHZ 45$ after shipping
Excelet onboard NForce sound
Mediocre (Good for non 3D) Nforce video
2X128MB PC2100 DIMM 80$..
Nice big case with lots of pr0n pasted on it with 250/300 watt AMD reccomended PS (oops, J/K )
WD/maxtor 7200RPM 40GB HDD (Maxtor D740X or whatever it's called is dirt cheap, 80$)
Pioneer slotload 60$
Liteon/Cyberdrive CDRW ~80$
Zip drive 100MB IDE internal(For floppy duties and also as a rewritable disk, simpler..) 30$ offa Ebay or something..

Grand total...?
Heh.. my amount came out to 555$.

Then get him a nice monitor.

 

[tkim]

thanks fishy....bump for the day crowd^^

 

[ahsia]

All prices from Newegg or Googlegear:

Intel System

$78 Gigabyte GA-8SRX P4 Titan DDR SiS645 P4 Motherboard (googlegear)
$131 Intel Pentium 4 Processor 1.6A GHz Retail (googlegear)
$68 Samsung 256MB PC2700 333MHz DDR Memory (googlegear)
$77 Maxtor 40GB 7200RPM Model # 6L040J2 (newegg)
$73 Lite-On 32x12x40 CDRW (newegg)
$42 Lite-On LTD-163 16x DVD-ROM (newegg)
$9 Sony 1.44MB 3.5 INCH Floppy Drive (newegg)
$39 ATi Radeon 32MB DDR 4X AGP (newegg)
$9 D-Link DFE-530TX+ Fast Ethernet Adapter 10BT/100BTX
$42 Evercase 10-Bay 300W Truely Screwless ATX MID Tower Case (newegg)

-------------------

Total: $568 (before shipping and taxes)


AMD System

$105 Asus A7N266-C nForce 415D Motherboard
$117 AMD Athlon XP 1700+ 1.47GHz Processor Retail
$63 Samsung 128MB DDR PC2100 266Mhz Memory x 2 (googlegear)
$77 Maxtor 40GB 7200RPM Model # 6L040J2 (newegg)
$73 Lite-On 32x12x40 CDRW (newegg)
$42 Lite-On LTD-163 16x DVD-ROM (newegg)
$9 Sony 1.44MB 3.5 INCH Floppy Drive (newegg)
$39 ATi Radeon 32MB DDR 4X AGP (newegg)
$9 D-Link DFE-530TX+ Fast Ethernet Adapter 10BT/100BTX (newegg)
$42 Evercase 10-Bay 300W Truely Screwless ATX MID Tower Case (newegg)

-----------------------

Total: $575 (before shipping and taxes)

Both system should provide excellent performance. I think the AMD system will edge the Intel system out of the box, but if you know anything about overclocking, the Intel system will OC nicely, and should give you performance comparable to a 2.2GHz or Athlon XP 2000+ system. Otherwise, everything else should be very similar, besides you need to two sticks of the same memory for the AMD system because the ASUS nForce motherboard can take advantage of the dual channel DDR, so having two sticks will give you better memory performance. Search for a good deal on the Hotdeals forum for a monitor from Dell, and you are ready to go. Don't buy it from Newegg or Googlegear because Dell doesn't charge shipping....

 

[amdskip]

Just some advice, stay away from googlegear, bunch of crooks.