Need a barebones PC for $500 or less to edit Rise of Nobility

Hey guys..here's what I want new/refurbished:

Pentium4 1.6Ghz-2.? GHz desktop motherboard w/CPU, fan, etc.

512Megs of new RAM (I already have almost 400 megs of DIMM SDRAM that I would love to use with it)



That's it. I believe my case from my Pentium III 450MHz should work with it...and I have a ATI Radion 7500 64meg video card I want to use...and tons of hard drives and don't need a monitor, ethernet card, modem, etc.

If you guys have any recommendations and where to pick them up for under $500 I'd appreciate getting your input. I primarily use my machine for graphic work (photoshop) and now for our audio drama, Rise of Nobility. The need for a lot of RAM will be important, and the audio editing in Vegas Audio will be very demanding on the PC. So any help would be great.

Keith

 

For that money you should look at getting an Athlon. More speed for less money. Even better, a dual Athlon on a Tyan motherboard. Not sure how much they sell for in the US though.

 

www.pricewatch.com

 

Can you say - EBAY ???

 

^ EBAY

Either check www.pricewatch.com or as JediTAC said check E-Bay me and my father built a computer out of parts we bought over EBAY. Saved us $1000.

 

I ended up going to a computer show. Paid $407 for an Athalon 1900 chip, ECS Motherboard with 512 megs of RAM, and a new case. This thing is very fast. I'm very pleased with it so far. I had a lot of problems with WIN98 though with it continually crashing, but ever since putting XP on it, it's been working great.

Thanks for all the help guys.
Keith

 

For memory, try Best Buy, Circuit City, Costco, Sam's Club or CompUsa for low prices. Athlong chips are inexpensive; a 1+ GHz chip can run around $100 or so. Ebay has cheap motherboards, but buyer beware.

Go to some used computer parts store. They have motherboards that aren't that old or are made by other companies and are just as good.

I can get a fast used (and tested) motherboard for $65.00, 512 MBs of memory for $100, and a 1.4GHz processor for about $100.00, $15.00 for a CPU fan...about $280.00 for the whole kit and kaboodle. With a brand new motherboard, add another $65.00 on top of that, it's well under the $500.00 you're talking about.