I'm trying to put together a cheap PC for my roommates. They each need a new one (one of them desperately), so I've been looking at options.

I want to keep it really really cheap. Like in the $300 range, which is entirely possible.

I'm thinking this mobo that Rob linked me to. Then I'm suggesting a lower end XP processor like the 1600+. That's up to about $110.
Then all I need is a cheap case/PSU, 256MB memory, and possibly a hard drive. Oh yeah, and a video card. Hmmm. I'm seeing this going over $300. but I'm sure that's fine.

Any suggestions?

Check out this machine I built a couple months ago based on the Asus A7N266-VM nForce motherboard. It was designed to be very inexpensive while still giving good performace and quality. Most components were bought at newegg. The customer has not had a single complaint, so all is well....

Try checking www.gotapex.com. They have a dell posted for $350 including free shipping. Not a bad system. I picked one up a couple weeks ago for $364 after tax with 256mb and a 40x burner.

http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/17422
has some more details on the offer ragoopumpkin mentioned

Rob, can you post more details on that budget box you built? or is it just the motherboard, CPU, Ram, modem & case?

It had a burner and hard drive as well, but that's about it. I did not provide a monitor. I eneded up charging just under $400 (no profit) and the thing was quite fast. I naturally used the onboard sound, video, and NIC.

I don't know exactly what you're looking for, but have you considered those cheap WalMart PCs?

Those are a little too cheap, I think. But I'll look at them again.

I've never been straight on this, what is different in a Celeron?

Thanks, guys, for your suggestions.

Mostly, it's got a smaller built-in L2 cache.

and a slower front side bus
or does this apply to the current celerons?

and a slower front side bus

Correct. Celerons have generally been one step below the high end processors for FSB speed. Current Celerons that fit into Pentium 4 boards run at 400mhz FSB, while the modern P4 chips run at 533.

In the past, raising the speed of the FSB was an easy way to overclock the Celeron and get good peformance boosts. But due to other crippling that Intel has done, a Celeron will not match a P4 of the same speed. (Unlike the Celeron 300A glory days).

My main machine at home is still a Celery 566 OC'd to 850 with just a regular fan. I've been playing with the idea of getting an upper level XP, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

The slower current P4s have the same FSB speed as the Celerons, IIRC. But the faster ones have a faster FSB.

Thanks guys for the tips, but I'm just going a different direction. I do want to build them a good quality machine, and I'd like to avoid the Celerons and Durons if possible. It's okay to have lower speeds, because they can always upgrade later. I mean, look how long it's taken them to get a new PC this time.

So I'm probably going to go with the mobo I originally mentioned. Then I'll probably also try the cheapest 1500 or 1600 Athlons. After that, I need help on these things, and if you can find good ideas that might be sold at Newegg, that would be great too:

-video card
-hard drive
-case/PSU
-memory (256 at most)
-possibly a monitor for one of my roommates **

Again, I'd like inexpensive, but not cheap on quality. Looking forward to any advice.

**what does it mean when you turn on a monitor and for the first minute or so that it's on, everything is an orange hue, then it slowly goes normal? I'd call it a crappy Gateway, but what would you?

I'd call it normal warming up for a lower-cost monitor. The Dell 17" monitors we have at the office (well, not _me_) are really slow to warm up, 30-40 seconds. They just slowly fade in from black. My Viewsonic EF70 17" and LG Studioworks 995SE 19" snap right on. A minute would drive me nuts.

-Zeke

If the computer that monitor goes with is still under warranty, Gateway will replace just the monitor with no problem. I once owned a Gateway Pentium 75 (shudder) and it came with a 15" Trinitron tube. A couple months before the warranty was up on the machine, which was now disassembled, the monitor started whining. I called up Gateway and they sent me a newer model Trinitron a couple days later with return instructions/labels for the busted one.

I was very impressed with their service.

That does sound like good service. I'm sure his is not under warranty, I think it's in it's 4th year of existence.

Unfortunately, he hates Gateway. He has one of those desktop/tower thingies that comes with a little stand. Unfortunately, it's so thin that when he got a new graphics card for Christmas one year, it wouldn't fit inside the case. So it's just been sitting in his room for a year or two. That sucks.

Memory - stick to a reputable manufacturer such as Crucial (who are very reputable, and available at newegg or direct from www.crucial.com)
HD - you're going to have to read around a bit. Every HD manufacturer has had horror story series of drives... As long as you avoid those particular series, there's not much in it IMO. Go for the cheapest big-name (are there any others??) branded drive in your desired capacity. You might want to consider 5400rpm drives for cost efficiency - seek times are slightly longer, but bandwidth should be comparable.
Vid card...What's the intended use? Office, gaming or AV? Do you require DVI output (ie, do you have/intend to buy a flat panel monitor). This is probably where your greatest additional cost or saving will be made, so decide carefully..
Case/PSU. It's still hard to beat Antec for a case/PSU combination in terms of quality and value. I'd avoid 'no-name' brands, especially for PSUs.

Go for the cheapest big-name (are there any others??) branded drive

I saw vpr Matrix drives at my local BestBuy a month ago or so. I'd never heard of them before, but maybe I'm out of the loop. Looking at their web site, they look like they're probably rebranded WD drives, which is odd considering BestBuy also sells WD.

vpr-Matrix is a Best Buy-only brand. So, I would assume it's like CompUSA branded hard drives. Once you open the CompUSA box, there is a Maxtor drive inside.

Other than that, the only non-big name brand hard drive is probably Samsung. Not that they're a small company, but you don't assosciate them with hard drives. Before that was JTS (Atari), but I have not seen a drive from them in years.

I like that board, in fact I just picked one up from Newegg for a machine for my sister for X-mas. The built-in audio and ethernet save a few bucks. The RAM option (SD or DDR) also really helps, I picked up a pair of 128MB Kingston sticks from Best Buy for $9.99 each. SDRAM's on sale everywhere right now it seems. I ordered a chip from TCWO (Thompson's), always had good luck with them as well as with Newegg. Duron 1.1 was about $35 shipped. Of course depends on the app if you want to spend for the XP (my sis is just going to do college papers on hers).

Just wanted to put my vote in for that being a fine board for the price.

Thanks for your input. Glad to hear that everyone has had no problems with this board.

I have another question. It's very difficult to find a decent cheap monitor. What would you suggest in 17" or better?

The monitor is the one thing that you'll keep and use as long as it works properly, so, unless you can find one for next to nothing, I'd say not to cheap out on it. Samsung seems to have the best quality and lowest price combination right now from my perspective.

I just bought a Samsung VGA panel for my parents. I'm using it right now as I've yet to deliver their machine. The whole machine was built quite cheaply as well. I went the Celeron route for them and built on an Aopen MX4B (MicroATX) mobo in an Aopen H340 slim desktop case. Had to use a low-profile video card but everything else (LAN, sound, etc..) is built into the mobo. 40GB IBM drive, 256MB of DDR RAM (too bad I wasn't paying PC133 prices).

They've yet to see the system but I'm sure they'll be happy with it. Everything's black to match, including keyboard (Compaq with 7 extra top soft buttons, USB) and mouse (logitech optical - had to pay a premium to get it in black - MS optical is nicer and cheaper, IMO)

And for myself, I've built a cheap, but not so cheap, Shuttle system (SS51G) - my living room/TV system. It'll probably have a RADEON 9700 All In Wonder in it when done (using built-in SIS right now). I'm really pleased with the whole Shuttle experience - I've become extremely tired of the mid-tower format.

I went with the shuttle as well, YOu can put together a good shuttle for about $500 and lower.

I went with about $600 for a shuttle box and motherboard, 512 megs ram, and a 2.4 ghz pent.

I actually added some more cost by buying a new 80gb HD with 8meg cache that really makes it fly, its really quiet too.

Future mods coming this week is maybe the glowing front face, a TDK 52x burner , a Wireless (D-link) PCI card and a matrox triple head parhelia card.

The onboard 5.1 audio and video is excellent for games and other stuff

YOu still get one agp slot and one pci slot for anything else
with oodles of usb and firewire ports as well as network connection

www.shuttleonline.com

(follow the reviews link fr tom hardware review.
Im never ever getting a tower again

Yeah, I've been looking at the shuttles a lot in the past few days. I was designing a system for my girlfriend, and have been quite fascinated by the whole design concept of the Shuttles. Unfortunately, yes the price would be around $500, but that's also without a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. For her she would need those things because we would be replacing a laptop.

I wouldn't get a Shuttle for myself as my main machine. Too small for the man who owns a Lian-Li PC75. Sort of like polar opposites.

I'll have to read about the Shuttle. My daughter is going to buy a computer after Christmas and is looking at HP's and I'm trying to steer her away from them. Her boss is going to be paying half and it will be used for her work and her husbands business. I would enjoy building her a nice computer. She wants to keep it around $1300 including a new printer and monitor.

It knocks those clumsy towers out the box. It has tons of inputs and outputs and it's quiet. Why would you want a huge noise tower? Espectially if you never use more than 1 PCI slot. You can save a lot of desk space.

Everyone who sees mine wants one. It's the best.

Can I ask exactly what you bought and where you got it at? And you said you spent about $600 on it right?

Hehe, I'd love one of the shuttles as well, but I'm me, and... I have a RAID board jammed with devices, and need my tower! I have every PCI slot used, plus some of those metal pieces that fit over the PCI-slot-holes (the case has more holes than the board has slots) with connections from the motherboard. Add some switches, variable fan speed pots, etc. along the front, and I love the big case. Of course, it's slid under the desk, so it doesn't really matter what size it is.

I was looking at a shuttle for a multimedia PC for the living room, but figured instead of that, I might as well just get some long cables and run things off the server in the basement. It's already made, relatively unused, and already paid for (the server hidey-hole is underneath the living room and running a wire would be easy here). Video up to the TV, sound to the stereo, and perhaps a KVM switch to extend a mouse and keyboard.

Also - I know you know, but just have to say - size does not equate to noise. I have a low-noise Antec power supply, two Panaflo's for the case (that I very well might not even need), and a variable speed YS-Tech fan over a huge Thermalright heatsink. When the heat or A/C turns on in the house, the airflow out of the vents is louder than this tower is.

My next acquisition in that area will probably be a year or two off - and it will be the baddest-assed laptop you ever saw

I'm with you, man. Well, not entirely. I don't have my case nearly full at all, but I still love it. In fact, I just have 2 PCI cards and a couple of CD drives.

But you're right about disk drives. I'm planning on putting a 3rd hard disk in and that's something you just can't physically do with the Shuttle. I think it's cool and has it's place, but I love my beautiful silver tower. Plus, the neons inside are nice