$500 gaming comp, can it be done?

[kj1980]

Probably has to due to the fact that Taiwan is so close to Japan, a lot of computer parts are fairly cheap in Akihabara (reference kakaku.com):

Asus P4G8X motherboard: 8980 yen (USD$83)
Pentium 4 2.66G: 17700 yen (USD$165)
Seagate 160GB IDE-HD: 7890 yen (USD$73)
ATI 9600PRO: 12860 yen (USD$120)
no-brand DDR3200 512MB: 4300 yen (USD$40)

comes to a total of 51730 yen (USD$483).

I know, I know, what about computer case you say? Computer cases over here a quite expensive...it's actually rare to find one less than 15000 yen (USD$140).

[Shift_]

hmm that's not a *very good* upgrade for that price.

I could certainly do better...

What I would do is spend money on a better motherboard.

Get the Asus P4C800 or P4C800-E
Pentium 4 2.4 C (the 800 mhz quadpumped fsb) with HT
remember that P4s run on dual memory bus, so you always want 2 sticks of IDENTICAL ram.
So for 512 you'd get 2X256MB DDR400 generic ram.
Run that in a memory divider of 5:4 set the FSB to 450mhz and get an instant 3.0ghz computer

Might cost a little more, but you're not going with an olderchipset, and you're getting the benifits of hyperthreading, which if you have a P4 you want.

For 500 Canadian, this is what I got: Athlon 64 3000+, Gigabyte KT8V800 Pro mobo. I already had the ram however...1 gig Kingston Hyper X PC3200 ram. I didn't need to buy a HD, or Video card however, since I got 500GB of space, and a radeon9700 pro :/

However it's not working atm, mobo is shorted, and it's on RMA.

[durrem]

ameoba has a lot of good advice

Originally Posted by ameoba

One thing about overclocking; if you're going to do it at all, make sure you do it -right-. Test that machine & make sure that it's not going to crash under heavy loads. The two most important things are RAM and CPU. For testing RAM, leave it alone with memtest86 (google for it) for 12-24hr. For testing the CPU (assuming you're using windows) nothing beats a prime95 (again, google) 'torture test'. An nForce2 board shouldn't have problems overclocking a 166MHz (aka 333) or a 133(266) CPU since it's designed to do 200(400)MHz chips.

Two other things that are very important to stability are the motherboard and power supply. For the motherboard it is important to get a decent name brand motherboard, that is stable for overclocking, because even if you are not going to overclock, these boards have more stability overhead. You can get a decent motherboard for about the same price, or maybe a little more, as some no name board. For the power supply, it is important to get a good one to keep voltages stable under load. If you use the cheapo 300W power supply that comes with a case your voltages may drop (example, your 12v rail will drop to 11.5v) under heavy use, such as gaming or overclocking. This leads to those mysterious crashes people may normally attribute to a windows crash.

As for where to get the parts, I reccommend only dealing with 1 or 2 (3 at the most) reputable dealers. This helps keep shipping costs down since combined shipping is almost always cheaper than ordering all components individually. As for what 'reputable' means, check out http://www.resellerratings.com to see if you're dealing with somebody who's gonna rip you off. Here's a few of the places that you can generally trust to get you started :

http://www.newegg.com my favorite
http://www.zipzoomfly.com
http://www.mwave.com site's kinda hard to browse; good for -exact- items
http://www.heatsinkstore.com good place for cases & cooling; mediocre prices on other stuff

I have used those stores, except the last one, and they are good, especially newegg. zipzoomfly.com used to be known as googlegear.com, but they had to change their name (probably sued by google). One other store that I like is 2cooltek.com for cooling.

That being said, I want to try

AMD Barton 2500+ Retail $90
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-379&depa=0

Abit NF7 $70
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...127-144&depa=0

2x256 PC3700 Buffalo $96
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...150-603&depa=0

WD 80GB, 8MB cache $75
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...144-122&depa=0

MAXTOP CSX-147K2F-GF-USB-GRAY case $25 (case is subject to your personal opinion. I thought this one looked good for a cheap but decent case.)
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...150-017&depa=0

Lite On 52x CDRW $36
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...106-199&depa=0

Mitsumi floppy drive $9
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-104&depa=0

Fortron ATX350GU 350W Power supply $20 (one of the more reliable power supply companies around... Antec is also good)
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...104-986&depa=0

SAPPHIRE RADEON 9600 Video Card $109 (Sapphire makes the ATI cards for ATI, so they're reputable)
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...102-305&depa=0

Total $530+26 s/h

Ah well, couldn't quite get it under $500. I tried to keep it in one store for convenience. You could shave some money on the memory and hard drive, and maybe the video card. You could also probably get a better deal on the hard drive if you go with a local vendor/rebate.

If you want to overclock, you need a couple more case fans, a better heatsink/fan (thermalright is a good brand), and some thermal compound (Arctic Silver Ceramique is good, plus nonconductive to boot). Keep in mind if you use 3rd party thermal compound on your CPU (AMD policy), or the instant you overclock, you void the CPU warranty.

Edit: Hey p3psi, how about an update?