Multipurpose PC – Store Bought, Online Store, Ebay or Home Built.

[Airscrew]

One of the biggest reasons I prefer to build my own rather than buy a "brand name built system" is you can get screwed over on the motherboard.   You buy it then find out 6 months or 1 year later that your upgrade choices are severly limited or almost impossible.  
My wife bought herself a Compaq something or other about 4 years ago.   added some memory later, no problem.  Added a new harddrive, no problem.  I notice a few weeks ago a noise from her pc, look at it, the CPU fan was making the noise, I figured the bearings were starting to go out and need to replace the fan.   Pull the heatsink and fan out and go shopping.  Every where I went no one had that size fan, so I figured I would replace the heatsink and fan.  the motherboard as a particular kind of mounting system for the heatsink, you cant find a generic heatsink for this pc you need to get an original Heatsink made for Compaq.   Online searches I found several priced from $40 to 50 dollars.   Stopped at a local PC repair shop in town and one of the guys had the exact same heatsink with a fan in a parts box.  I gave him $5 for it.

[Nomak]

Originally posted by eskimo2
That looks like a great machine for the money.  Is that enough RAM?  Is the water cooler worth it; does it help that much?

I think its enough Ram.  2 gigs would be better however I think that machine would run AH just fine.

If I were to water cool I wouldnt use the Thermaltake set up.  At least not with the pump it comes with.  Its known to fail.  The  Koolance set up is supposed to be excellent.  

Does it help that much?  Depends on application really.  If you are really into overclocking than yes.  I think air cooling is simpler and more dependable.  I use Zalman air coolers and they are much better than the OE coolers.  On a Zalman 9500 I ran a D805 to 4.0 Gig.  Reality is that getting that much overclock on a D series with air cooling is the exception not the rule.

Conroes on the other hand overclock like crazy on air cooling.  I recently read about a 80% overclock on a e6300.

Dave

[Brenjen]

If you have your own monitor & keyboard & mouse (you know the peripherals) you can build a decent rig for $700 to $800 buying all your parts online. Just drop me a line if you want some one on one guidance. It really depends on what you want to do with the P/C. The video card is the single most expensive piece in a system today unless you are going to put a really high end monitor on it. (or a ridiculously priced CPU...but why?)

 I have over $600 in my video card & another $200 in the water cooling for it; so that should give you some idea how expensive certain things can get. (& it's a few months old)

[Torque]

Originally posted by Nomak


Conroes on the other hand overclock like crazy on air cooling.  I recently read about a 80% overclock on a e6300.

Dave

85% stock air on a DS3, haven't even played with the voltage much...

[Tigger29]

I just bought parts for an E6300 system myself.. cost $470 with shipping for:

Motherboard
Processor
Hard Drive
2GB DDR2 ram
Combo (CDRW +DVDROM) drive

I'll be reusing my XP Home, KB/Mouse, Monitor, Video Card, Case + P/S, and Wireless NIC Card

but... for less than $500 you have a bit of room to play.  Good luck

[Easyscor]

While you're shopping be sure to look for deals on Windows XP as part of the package or additional option. XP Pro cost me around $100 US from Newegg when I bought my system parts compared to ~$400 in the stores at the time.

Like others have said, your price range is a little bit short with an included monitor and video card so look for packages with motherboards that will accept high end upgrades when you can afford it.



Dux, be sure you received, or purchase, the XP system disks for that machine, they don't all come with the XP CDs which can be a major problem if something goes wrong. I have to try and clean up one of thier machines next weekend.

[CHECKERS]

eskimo2,
 What ever you do , Do Not purchase anything from Velocity Micro !!!
 Used or otherwise, their service and products suck .




 Bob/CHECKERS