A lot of you were recommending picking up an AMD over a Pentium when there was talk of building a new system from scratch. I'm looking into it now, and was wondering what kind of price range is decent. Sifting through Pricewatch, I can find a 1.6 gig Athlon processor+board combo for around 200-250 bucks. Is this about right? It seems rather cheap - even cheaper than I was expecting. Would you recommend going through this method? I have yet to look around Houston and check out places like Frye's. Would it be worth the time?
They've released a 1.6 GHz Athlon? You should be able to get a 1.4 GHz Athlon + a good mobo for about $180-$225. Just make sure the motherboard you're getting is a good one.
Oh, and as far as Fry's, just make sure you're not buying their used stuff (really no way to tell unless they've stickered it as such).
What's a good motherboard? I just built a computer about 4 months ago and I'd like to know if I have a good one.
4 months ago may be ancient technology... hehe. What mobo? There are several good ones out there. Most are made by companies such as IWill, Abit, Asus, AOpen, Epox, Gigabyte, Tyan, etc.
Don't do the 1.6 unless it is the Athlon Palomino (which has limited SSE that other Athlon TBirds don't). Stick with a Palomino, even if its at 1.4. Palomino: http://www.chip-online.com/products_tests/sp_products_tests_3780.html Want duals? Try the Tyan Thunder K7 MB. You will have to buy a special box, power supply and registered memory. Its only worthwhile if the apps that you will be running support multiprocessors, or if you generally run more than 1 app at the same time. If you just play Quake all of the time, don't waste your money on this board. http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk7.html That's what I will be building in a month or so, along with a RAID. You can build a box for under $4k (the RAID drives will drive up the cost) that would've cost well over $100k just a few years ago (some still want to charge $20-30k for a box like this one). If you want to keep your costs down, your could just use the onboard dual-channel ultra 160 SCSI instead of the RAID (not too shabby).
Unless you want to run Quake faster; Quake 3 Arena was optimized to take advantage of multi-processor systems. Carmack r00lz!
Thanks. I wasn't aware Frys sold used stuff as well. What about prices? Do they have comparable prices for the processor/board combo?
Shop at one company, and one company only: <a href="http://www.axiontech.com">http://www.axiontech.com</a href> Got cheap stuff, located at stancliff and wilcrest.
Buy a really big fan. You're saving alot of money on the CPU, so don't be afraid to spend $35 on the fan, unless you enjoy waiting for RMA's when you blow your cpu up. The smell of burning components is something you'll never forget.
If you want to buy in Houston, Fry's is good, and yes they sell good stuff. But like I said, make sure it isn't opened/used merchandise. Someone mentioned axiontech.com located in Houston and I've always seen that they have low prices, but I can't vouch for them since I've never bought from them. Another good place may be www.directron.com; they sell everything and are located in Houston. I've bought cases and CD ROMs from them before. I order them online, then have them hold it till I drived down to Houston once a month or so to pick it up. The cheapest places would be through mail-order, though.
Rumor in California is that they don't always mark the returned items as returned. It is widely believed that they return dysfunctional parts to the shelves until someone does not return them.
Chipsmart here in Houston is know to do this as well, as is the distributor Bass. I believe that its actualy more common than one would hope.
If you're building your own PC, look no further than Fry's Electronics. I went to the new Austin store the other day, and it was exactly the same as the Houston one. Cheap PC hardware, just make sure that you're not buying a refurb. product.
You're absolutely right; well, in the sense that that's what I've heard, too. This is why I'm wary of buying stuff from them, but they do sell name-brand and newer mobo's than say a CompUSA or a Micro Center.
