Quote Originally Posted by A. Jorge Garcia
About how much total time and money do you think you invested in this project?

TIA,
I'd say about $350. Keep in mind however that I'm using my existing keyboard, mouse & 17" monitor. I could get the monitor for $25 used, kb for $5 and the USB cordless mouse for $12 shipped. Let's just make it an even $400 for the whole machine. You could even do it for less. Go a little cheaper on the mobo and 512M RAM should be enough for a normal household pc. That could be $100 saved right there. Of course if you're into RAM intensive applications then maybe not.

For example: You can get an XP1900 for $50 shipped. Add one of the previously mentioned mobo's and for $100 you've got 2 of 3 expensive components. $60-$70 for RAM I see no reason you couldn't build a decent machine for $250-$300.

If you get a mobo that doesn't have everything onboard some of the easiest to add would be:

pci NIC- $5 shipped. Realteks work great w/ Linux as does anything w/ the Tulip driver. Plenty of others too.
pci sound $10 shipped. You can get a good sound card for this money.

I have an older Radeon AGP card that gets about 800fps in glxgears. You could get a GeForce2 MX400 64MB for $33 and a 32M version for $24. There are Radeons for the same money. I'm not really into gaming my self so it isn't a big concern for me to have the fastest graphics card available. As long as it works.

You should be able to run the suggested system w/ a 250W p.s. no problem that you can probably find for free. I am constantly amazed at what I find in old pc's. I have bought $5 or $10 pentium1's and a suprise 20G hdd. Get something in the 300-400Mhz range and you should have a case and powersupply at least. I routinely see all sorts of systems in the Thrifty Nickel, local & Denver paper & other local papers.

Personally I never go out and buy anything that costs more than $50 without doing some seriuous shopping around. Also, there was no hurry as I already had a functioning pc. Time wise I would say very little in actually assembling the machine and quite a bit in looking around for the various parts.