The computer I've been borrowing for a few years has finally taken a dump. Looking for a barebones system, I came across this . Even that looks like over kill. I'll be using it primarily as a case to store big hard drives and share them on the network. My wife will be using it to write papers. I might fire up a game on the thing, but it's not really a concern at this point. Does anyone have an recomendations?

I also have an OLD server case at my house. The thing is HUGE and load. But it also has ttons of room and I assume a good power supply. Should I instead look at getting a motherboard for that? As it is, the thing won't even run Win2K, and I don't feel like messing with NT4.0, so I would need new guts for it. It even has hot-swapable bays, but I assume they are out of date. Would photos help?

Both TigerDirect and Soyo are known for not honoring rebates, so I would say your final price on the machine linked is $389.99. At that price, the deal isn't that good. Plus, I wouldn't support TigerDirect anyway because of their phone card scam a couple years ago.

Walmart is actually selling barebones machines. They may be lacking a bit out of the box, but they're easily upgraded. I bought a couple a year or two ago and it used quality components. Enlight case and power supply, MSI motherboard and optical drive, and Maxtor hard drive. These don't carry the same brand name, but they may be OK for the money...
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product_listing.gsp?cat=86798

Thanks Rob, I think you have me on the right track...

I've never been much of a computer hardware guy so I'm amazed at the selection there is out there!

Is it just me or have processor prices gone up in the last year for the same thing?

Hey Brad..

If you get your own components, I'll put it together for you for a few beers...I am a hardware guy

Oh, and of course, the finished work

Yikes!

What???

You've never seen a Heathkit laptop before???

Thanks everyone, your posts have been really helpful. I wanted to order the guts of my systems this weekend, and thought I'd run a selection by you. I already have the case and 450watt power supply on order (found a killer deal). Basically, if I'm going to spend money on anything, I'm thinking the motherboard should be the thing I should splurge on since everything else is so easy to upgrade. I'd hate to build a system, and then have the motherboard be my limiting factor (i.e., if I wanted to go with serial ATA down the road).

Initially, I had built a system on newegg.com that included the following motherboard and processor as a combo deal that saved me 20 bucks. The deal is no longer offered, so here are the two seperately:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=13-128-259&depa=0
And
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=13-128-259&depa=0

Also, I notice they have this deal today on this processor:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=19-103-342&DEPA=0

So, basically, my question is: Is there anything that you'd recommend at this price point instead of these guys? I don't mind spending the amound I've picked out, but since I don't know much about hardware, I wanted to be sure that there wasn't anything else out there for the same money that was a better way to go.

EDIT: It looks like they are offering some sort of motherboard and CPU deal again, one with a video card, that may be the same as the one that I let slip by:
http://newegg.com/app/combspecial.asp?listtype=bundle

Well, I'm not sure if you noticed, but the motherboards you linked are for 64-bit CPUs, and the processor you linked is a 32-bit.

I think you're wise to go with a good mobo. Take it from me, having a bad mobo in your brand new system is NOT fun. I had a Soyo that turned out to be total crap, and it's not cool to have to disconnect everything in your machine, RMA your mobo, and wait for the refund before you get a new one shipped to you. Hell, by the time I got my system back together and running for the first time, its value had already depreciated tremendously

I have one more recommendation, though. Actually, it's more like something you have to do: GET GOOD MEMORY. Above all else, you must have good RAM. I went through two pairs until I got a decent set that didn't cause me headaches from random reboots and memtest86 errors.

Now that I think about it, it seems to me that you're aiming for something as future-proof as possible. Well, I'm not sure how cheap you'll get if you want to go all out in that regard, but it looks to me like the major trends that impact this are the AMD socket 939 processors (if you go AMD), and PCI Express. Again, those things will probably set you back a bit of dough, but I saw you were possibly going for 64-bit processors with those mobos, but they support the type of chip that AMD isn't thinking of sticking with.

PCI Express appears, at the moment, to be the next big thing. It's intended to replace both AGP and PCI, while being backwards compatible with regular PCI. It has a much higher bandwidth, and there are already a number of video cards out there for it. However, it looks like it's mostly an Intel thing for the moment, so you might not want to bother. I think for a year or two it'll be mostly video cards taking advantage of it. I'm planning on a new system, and I'm not thinking about PCI Express.

Anyway, those were just some things I was thinking about. I'm probably completely wrong, too. It's hard to get info on some of these things. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but there seems to be very little info out there on the current state of 64-bit processors. I've had to sort of piece together my own understanding of it. Please correct me if my interpretations are wrong.

*edit*
by the way, if you've thinking of the CPU you linked in that post even though it's a 32-bit (it's still a very nice CPU), then I heartily recommend the Asus A7N8X. It's my current mobo and I think it's fantastic. SATA, two LAN ports, 4 rear USB 2.0 ports (and pins for two more), and it's been very reliable. It's also good as far as not being awkward to work on. There aren't really any poorly placed connectors which can make it frustrating.

Oops, one of the processors I meant to link to is 64 bit, but I linked the mother board twice!

Thanks for the tip on the Asus motherboard. I heard they were great from people, but they offer so many models, I didn't know which to pick. It's about 10 dollars more than I was going to spend on the other motherboard, but I also found this deal on a CPU:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDes...ufactory=BROWSE

This is the "retail" version of the OEM chip I intended on linking to earlier today. And it's actally 3 dollars cheaper than the OEM version! Not only is it 3 dollars cheaper, but it includes a heat sync and fan, so that'll save me around 17 or 20 bucks...

What's a good brand for RAM? I'm thinking I'd rather get a good brand and settle for fewer MB's if I had to choose.

Well, I love that mobo I linked, but it's for the 32-bit AMDs.

I'd say Corsair or Crucial memory.

Is anyone able to view www.newegg.com ? For two days now I can't view the site.

That was odd... I viewed a Google cached version of their page, to try to find a phone number, and now the site is viewable to me. Before, I got "no website configured for this address" or something like that. A Mozilla bug?

Works for me...

I've been on it constantly for the past two days

Quote:
That was odd...

Well, maybe Tony needs to give the net a reboot. It's been a while since the last one.