$500 gaming comp, can it be done?

[p3psi]

yes, i saw that tech tv one, but thats old, and they suggest that pricewatch.com is the best place to search for parts, but there are alot of crooked dealers on there. Also, im having a hard time getting a good comp for just 500 bucks.

Im taking a whack at building a new custom game comp, with practically no hands on knowledge whats so ever of building one, boy am i smartzor!

ok, i figured the following things im ordering and the cost:

case+480wattPS+case fans+all cables
http://www.str8buy.com/alatxpremblu.html- $85

Motherboard Almost completely lost on this one, all i know is that i need 8xagp, with 3-4 memory slots. and its gonna be an athlon cpu, so socket A, correct? And to save money, intergrated sound and ethernet. I was customizing a comp, on this web site that had ati swap controls and such as customiable options, but dont motherboards come with these already? please help! my pricerange:about $100

ram however, since im not sure on the mother board, i really cant make any choice about ram, but it has to be at least 512mb
so just a guess 2x256mb ddr2700 333mhz, price: about 120

video card I have four diffrent cards to pick, two around the 150-160 range, and two around the 50-60 range. if i run over budget, i will go with the cheaper ones
ATI Radeon 9600-$160
XFX GeForce FX 5600~$110-130
or
XFX GeForce FX 5200-$60
Radeon 9200se~$60
Do you know any better ones for the same price ranges?

Cpu gotta go cheap but fast, so amd athonxp 2800+
price: $120

heat sink+fan+thremal grease+cpu shim thermaltake volcano 7+fan, $50

hard drive 80gb, $60

cd burner 52x $30

Total cost=625~690(with the better video cards $690)
125 bucks off!?!?!??!

now:
1. am i missing anything? besides a monitor, speakers, mouse and keyboard? And im a student so i get the basic software and OS cheap.

2.How can i cut corners so i can get down to or close to 500? of course im probally not gonna get the more expensive videocards, unless you guys suggest something like i dont need 2800+ cpu but more like a 2500+ would do well? in other words, what can i sacrifice to save money, but it wont really displenish my gameing expreince?

Thanks for taking the time to read this, i appreciate those who help.

[lordwu]

I believe most of the components can be found at lower prices. For example, don't buy any HD higher than 50 cents per gig. 512M ram for $120 seems at the higher end as well. Even a decent case and power can be found for around $40 or so. Check Fatwallet Forum constantly for latest deals.

[Shii]

OS cheap? There's no student license for Windows XP. You'd have to either buy it for $300 or use Linux.

[Thelastguardian]

CPU - you sure you want to get 2800+? I think you are streaching it a bit too far with only a $500 budget. Get 2700+ or even 2600+ if you want to go a bit further. Also the retail version of CPU comes with heatsink and fan, so don't worry.

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...2&searchdepa=0
$124.00

Graphic Card - Why buy a GeforceFX 5200/5600 when you could get a Radeon 9600? The DX9 performance is much better.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...102-327&depa=1
$97
Ram - 512mb 333mhz seems to be pretty standard nowadays

http://www.accupc.com/itemDetail.jsp...&refer=bizrate
$73.45

Motherboard - to go really cheap I will get MSI Socket A KT4VL (KT400), decent performance

http://www.accupc.com/itemDetail.jsp...&refer=bizrate
$56.00

Hard Drive - since you want 80gb hd you need to get space over speed.

http://www.accupc.com/itemDetail.jsp...&refer=bizrate
$68.25

CD burner - I think if I go any cheaper I should not live as a human

http://store.yahoo.com/meritline/tdk...-rw-drive.html
$34.99

Case - alright looking, comes with SP

http://www.str8buy.com/str8buy/raalplascawp.html
$38.00

Total: $491.69
If it goes any lower I would not run any games on it, since I am already setting the standard quite low (for exp radeon9600se).

As for OS, just use Linux

[FinFangFoom]

Have you ever read a gaming mag called PC GAMER? It comes out monthly and can be found at most fair sized magazine stands. They have a monthly section called Hardstuff where their Senior Editor (a dork they call "The Vede") puts together 3 gaming rigs using parts almost exclusivly from pricewatch.com. They have the Dream system for someone spending $3000 or more, mid-range for around $1250 and Entry-Level for $750. They break it down by saying every recomended part and the lowest price they found on pricewatch. If you subtract mouse, keyboard, speakers, gamepad, joystick and monitor it's about $450 not including shipping subtract another $15 if you take away the modem and $8 for the floppy drive.

The motherboard they recomend in the newest issue is Asus A7V333-x for $80 with 256MB PC-2700 DDR SDRAM for $22 and a AMD Athlon XP 2000+ processor for $57

For the low end system they recomend the GeForce4 MX 440 64MB DDR for $50, for the midrange they recommend a ATI RADEON 9600 PRO for $136

For soundcard they recommend a Creative Labs Audigy (white box) for $59

You might want to check out an issue of the mag or let me know if you want me to type up the whole list.

[p3psi]

Originally Posted by ashibaka

OS cheap? There's no student license for Windows XP. You'd have to either buy it for $300 or use Linux.

payed 5 bucks for xp pro, and 15 for xp office. all legal too, but had to sign a contract that i can only buy 1 copy, and not buy it for anyone else's use.

[FinFangFoom]

Originally Posted by ashibaka

OS cheap? There's no student license for Windows XP. You'd have to either buy it for $300 or use Linux.

Or know someone that works for Microsoft, my cousins wife hooked me up with xp home for $25 (I know. I should have got 98 ) They get everything extremely cheap.

[Thelastguardian]

one more thing, you have to remember to add in the transportation fee into your budget! If you are not living in US your choice of hardwares from internet would be serverly limited for two reasons:

1. Most companies don't ship outside of US

2. Right now as for christmas most companies have free shipping, but if you buy hardwares with shipping, you will find you haven't save a lot of money.

[p3psi]

its starting to look like that $500 gaming comp techtv talked about a long time ago is crap. I think they used like a geforce 4 or something, what a piece of dung

For the games i want to play, it looks like the budget must be more like 650 atleast.

[Thelastguardian]

well that depends on the games you want to play is whatever DirectX 7, 8, or 9.

And yes Geforce4 MX is shit, only DX7 supports with speed that match the Geforce2 MX.

[FinFangFoom]

Originally Posted by p3psi

its starting to look like that $500 gaming comp techtv talked about a long time ago is crap. I think they used like a geforce 4 or something, what a piece of dung

For the games i want to play, it looks like the budget must be more like 650 atleast.

Yeah I think so too, unless you can get free shipping or order most of the parts from the same dealer to save on shipping cost. Do you have a computer already that you can scrap parts from? If you can cut the cost of the floppy drive, soundcard and ethernet card you might be able to pull it off for around $600.

If it makes you feel better I only have a Geforce2 GTS 64mb that will be 3 years old come january, and I havn't had any problems running any games at decent graphic levels yet including Call of Duty that just came out.

[p3psi]

Scraping this comp for parts would save me me maybe 100-150, but im thinking of giveing this hunk of junk to a relative or a computer deprived friend

[FinFangFoom]

Originally Posted by p3psi

Scraping this comp for parts would save me me maybe 100-150, but im thinking of giveing this hunk of junk to a relative or a computer deprived friend

DONT! Not only does being unselfish cost you money, but from my experiance there seems to be some unwritten rule that when you give someone a computer you automatically become their tech support slave as well.

[dragonz20]

LOL. That is so true. I'd be wary of giving away computers unless the person you are giving it to has enough computer knowledge to fix it on their own if they ever encounter problems.

Originally Posted by FinFangFoom

DONT! Not only does being unselfish cost you money, but from my experiance there seems to be some unwritten rule that when you give someone a computer you automatically become their tech support slave as well.

[Izzy]

Originally Posted by ashibaka

OS cheap? There's no student license for Windows XP. You'd have to either buy it for $300 or use Linux.

yes there are, some colleges and universities have license agreements with MS, my college are giving away MS pack with WinXP pro, office, and .NET stuff, but once the license ends we have to destroy the discs if you don't graduate before the license ends .....but this is offtopic I think....

[jir0]

this thread is like an eye-opener for me...i never knew computers can go as cheap as under 500 bucks...but still maintain a relatively standard performance. i've never had any experience with putting together a PC so i'm still pretty hesistant to try, i know my friend got a personal made PC off ebay, it's around $1000, with ultra high performance, high speed and everything, but the only thing missing is the reset button, so she has to unplug the thing every time she wants to turn it off... and since i break things easily, i rely on my warranty A LOT to fix things. sorry...off topic, but probably i'll grab PC home and consult some of the experts here.!! linux, i want to try that system. windows sucks.

[Thelastguardian]

lol I don't think he will put together the system that I purpose (or even read it)

Originally Posted by jir0

this thread is like an eye-opener for me...i never knew computers can go as cheap as under 500 bucks...but still maintain a relatively standard performance.... and since i break things easily, i rely on my warranty A LOT to fix things. sorry...off topic, but probably i'll grab PC home and consult some of the experts here.!! linux, i want to try that system. windows sucks.

500 bucks can get you a lot these days, also computer parts are so easy to put together nowaday even I wonder why am I still helping people assembling computer. Back to topic, the only hard part about putting your own computer is clamping the heatsink on top of the cpu, the rest are easy.

As for Linux, its easy if you know how to change the settings.

[jir0]

Yeah, I'm a little dense when it comes to computers, i'll probably be getting a few extra bucks around christmas time....I want to get my own system, my 1-yr old Dell sort of lacks in...may aspects. sorry, this is way off topic.

thanks for the information Thelastguardian, hope you don't mind me PMing you when i do get stuck on putting together the system. As for Linux, i think i saw compusa selling this package called Suse Linux Professional Edition 9.0, it's like $70....but supposedly it's gonna teach your way around the system.

[Esperchld]

2 sticks of 256mb pc 3700 ... 80$
MOBO 64$
gforce 5200 54$
AMD XP 2700 108$
ATX case (400W) 36$
mouse 6$
keyboard 4$
CD Rom 14$
60 Gig drive 48$
17" monitor 84$

Total: 498$

[p3psi]

somone mentioned that a heatsink and fan already comes with any retail athlon processor? is this true, and is this heatsink any good?