El Cheapo PC
 

I was looking into putting together an "el cheapo" PC, with parts from my local supplier.

So I'm looking at a Celeron 1.3 with either:
MSI's MS-6368

or

Biostar's M6VLQ

Opinions?

Out of those two boards I would go with the MSI. However unless you have some reason to stick with Intel I would go with an ASUS A7N266-VM It will probably run about $20 bucks more but you can use a real processor with it. Its microATX so I dont know what your plan is with it but the only issue depending on your case is heat with an AMD.

Hum... thanks for the reply.

My local store is out of that one, but they have a Biostar M7VIG, and Epox 8KLM2 and 8KMM+.

Maybe I can order something elsewhere on-line.

I'm looking for something to hold me over, until Barton comes out, but since there's so many variables, it's hard to choose something that I know will work.

I'm tempted by the Asus A7N8X, running an old TBird or XP, but I want to see what KT400A can do first.

you can get that asus a7n266vm board i was talking about at newegg for 73.00 and a 1600+ for 55.00 both have free shipping. That would be my choice but hey im biased.

i've had a _lot_ of experience with biostar boards, and if you don't need to overclock them, they are very stable and reliable.

just my $.02

At the "el cheapo" price point, can you honestly do better than just picking up the e-machine or Dell on sale? I no longer can compete with Dell for people at work. I point them to ubid or dell or best buy...

I can build a system for about the same price as dell etc... but thats with no profit for me. Its a sad sad day:(

agreed... that is suck. however, we in my area have been recently blessed with a small computer store chain that acutally _beats_ pricewatch most of the time on a lot of parts... which again puts me back to where i can occasionally beat out the other guys :)

they have quite the purchasing strategy, but dammit it works :)

Does your small computer chain ship?

I can still beat Dell's prices, but only by about $100 (this is a NICE machine, not one of the cheap $300 "specials"). I use a local computer store, Fry's Electronics (a bit of a drive, but worth it), and a few websites...

But, Del's computers come with support, warentees, all that extra software joe schmoe will never use, and other stuff.

Makes you wonder, though. They probibly get all their stuff OEM, if I can buy it retail for $100 less than they sell it for, just how much are they pulling in (rectorical question, BTY)?

Well I would guess they have enormous buying power for bulk purchases and get kick backs from manufacturers for staying with their products exclusively. They also probably buy parts that don’t fully qualify as standard OEM/retail parts, i.e. running at lower speed making them cheaper to manufacture. So they are probably making an ok profit and doing a huge amount of volume.

yah... i've heard about fry's... impressive :) the place i shop at owns a truck... not sure if it's a semi or a strait truck, and when they buy stuff, they drive to the mfr and get it cheap :)

I would recommend an MSI-6378X-L for the mobo. It's only $61+free shipping, and I'm sure you've got some SDR laying around to pair it with. It has onboard video, sound, DEC Tulip-compatible ethernet built in, and 3x PCI slots if you need them for some reason.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...scription=6378

I also like this case: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...er=Description
Too bad it's out of stock until next week...

Oh, and did I mention that this thing is absolutely stable? And an Award BIOS, with (a few) tweaking features?