On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 9:55 AM, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom
<chrome at real-time.com> wrote:
> Anyone have any good experiences with cases they want to relate?
>
> Any good advice on which CPU is at the sweet price point these days?
>
> In case you didn't know, I'm not physically in the Twin Cities area (I'm in
> New Hampshire) so telling me to go down to Tran Micro is not useful. :)

Are you near one of the MicroCenter locations?  (No I don't work
there, but their prices keep luring me back in the door!)
If so, here is the shopping list for a decent computer I just built
myself.  I was inspired by an article about building a linux box for
under $200, but I wasn't willing to stick with that budget.
I would recommend a different motherboard than I used, though, as I
can't get this thing to boot off a linux thumbdrive.  Grr.  I had to
swap a CDROM in there to install.  Gigabyte's updated BIOS didn't help
at all, even though that was one of the fixes listed.  I don't really
feel like trying the beta BIOS.
I actually ended up splurging for 4GB of RAM instead of 2 once I got
to the store.  Maybe that's overkill.
This thing won't break any speed records, but my wife is impressed
that she doesn't hear it when it's on.  The CPU is a dual-core 3ghz,
but under normal operation, I'm seeing both cores usually sitting at
800mhz.  The BIOS tells me that the case fan (120mm exhaust) runs
around 700-800 rpm.

Case - Coolermaster Elite 331 mid-tower - $49.99
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0250924
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H (AM3) - $94.99
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0334912
CPU - Athlon2 X2 250 (dual-core) - $62.99
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0317382
Memory - Crucal 2x1GB DDR3-1333 - $54.99
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0307433
Hard drive - have one...

Total - $262.96 (add tax, and hard drive, optical drive, etc, if you need)
Even with the 4GB of RAM, I was out the door for about $310.

Not a bad price for new parts to make a working computer, and it
should be easy to upgrade in the future.
- Justin