why is this comp so cheap?

[powerup]

Is has a AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ and a gig of ddr2. Why is this under 400 bucks?

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm...m/ccd/productDetail.do

 

[ch33zw1z]

Standard business practices, buy low in bulk...sell at a reasonable price. Typically, HP won't be using awesome brand name mobo, psu, ram, etc either, which makes it even cheaper.

 

[stevf]

that is probably "last season's" model so they want to clear them out.

Only issues I saw with it was integrated graphics, and 1gb of memory. That price doesnt include a monitor either. Hard drive is only 250gb too, that helps lower prices. The power supply is also probably only powerful enough for what is included plus a little extra for minor upgrades. You could add a video card, but not a mid or hi-end one as that would probably be to much for the power supply

If your father in law doesnt game much beyond solitaire or does a lot of photoshop or video editing then that looks like a good price for a machine for surfiing the net, e-mailing, and basic word-processing type stuff.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Why is this under 400 bucks?

Gotta move 'em out.

Asus mobo, nVidia GeForce 6150 onboard graphics, PCIe 16x, 4x SATA2, 2 firewire, 7 USB, media card reader, WinV Home Prem

Sh*t, I'm gonna buy one . . .

 

[hardbench]

Exactly, they build these for near to nothing with the amounts they purchase at once...

 

[RebateMonger]

It's a good deal. You couldn't build it for that $400 price.

 

[dandragonrage]

What? Yes you could. Approximate prices, some may be slightly high, some slightly low, all will be close enough:

-CPU $80
-Mobo $70
-Vista $100
-RAM $35
-HD $75
-DVD writer $35
-Cheap case $25
-PSU $25

Especially with the AMD price cuts

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: dandragonrage
What? Yes you could. Approximate prices, some may be slightly high, some slightly low, all will be close enough:

The flaw with your selection is here:

-Cheap case $25
-PSU $25

The chassis used by HP/COMPAQ is significantly better designed and constructed than any case you could buy under $50. While the PSU doesn't build-in much overhead to accomodate upgrades with significantly higher power requirements (e.g. graphics card), the PSU used by HP/COMPAQ are also not inferior quality.

But we can free-up a little money for a better case/PSU by adjusting the cost of a few components where you overestimated a bit (all prices shipped from Newegg):

AMD64 X2 3800+ AM2 Retail - $66.00 ($14.00 saved)
WDC 250GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s OEM - $63.00 ($12.00 saved)
ASRock ALIVENF6G-VSTA AM2 GF6100/6150SE - $64.00 ($6.00 saved)

With that, we could put $10 more towards the PSU ($35) and $22 more towards the case ($47), but that still leaves us without a KB, mouse, and card reader. In addition, what is the cost of having to support the computer yourself vs. HP's one year warranty and free tech support?

 

[bigpow]

I don't think HP pays $100 for a copy of Vista that goes with every PC
anybody know how much vista for system builders nowadays?
I once got an XP Pro for $40 from Microsoft when I was a certified one (it was selling close to $150 at the time)

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: bigpow
anybody know how much vista for system builders nowadays?

Well, not many folks know how much Dell and HP pay for XP or Vista. When Dell started selling PCs with Linux, they were charging about $50 more for the Windows PC than for the Linux PC. But they weren't including support for Linux with the Linux boxes....

 

[powerup]

Wow thanks for all the replies. Unfortunatlly my father in law is not a big time gamer. lol. He mostly just uses it for business and web stuff. I will let him know that this is a good deal. Thanks.

 

[RebateMonger]

There's a similar deal at Circuit City this week. A bit faster, 2GB of memory, and $50 more.