One thing the son and I did over the summer was to build a computer to replace our (4) year old Dell. We had talked about it for a while, had made a spreadsheet listing all the parts we would need, and then gave our self a budget. The next step was the hardest, waiting for parts to go on sale. We were going to use this PC to hold all of our movies, tv shows and music so we needed a big hard drive and a decent video card. We did not need a fast processor or a lot of RAM but we did need it to be small in size and quiet as well. We thought it would be nice to have a media card reader too. With that in mind we kept our eyes peeled.
The first piece that was a bargain actually knocked off quite a bit of the parts on our list. We found a case, (quiet) power supply, processor, video (on board), sound (on board) and network card (on board) that was being bundled with 4 GB of RAM (more than we needed) for only $130 after a $20 mail in rebate. This deal was also advertising free shipping. We jumped at this before it went out of stock.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856119024 – Case / Motherboard combo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220396 – RAM
This represented $90 off of list price not to mention the free shipping. We were well under way and well under budget. We got these items in a few days later and quickly put the RAM in and booted up (just to bios) to see if it was working (and it was). However, there was one small problem. The case was so small that the RAM (which has heat shields on it) actually was too tall to allow an internal DVD player. We had (2) choices really. We could sell this RAM and then buy some normal height ram or we could buy an external DVD drive. Removing the heat shields was not really an option though we did research it (even found a youtube video of someone removing the shields with a screwdriver and a blow drier). We found an external DVD drive on sale for $40 after $10 mail in rebate.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135194 – External DVD drive
This had the added bonus of running on (2) USB plugs for power (no extra power cord) and looked pretty cool too (the wife did not want anything ugly setting on the bookshelf near our tv or any extra power cords). Next we needed a big hard drive. We had figured a 1 TB hard drive would be a good compromise between price and size but when a 2 TB model went on special for $99 we changed our plan. We were only figuring on spending $75 on the hard drive but this was too good of a deal. Plus we were way under budget at this point.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136514 – Hard Drive
We then picked up a generic card reader for $20 (the only part not on sale in this whole system).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820162024 – Internal Card reader
Even with these last (3) items, shipping only came to $4. Our overall total (after $30 in rebates) was $294! We had a wireless keyboard and mouse we were going to re-use along with our speakers (though we still have our hopes set on a nice 5.1 set someday). As with our Dell, we used our 32” (BestBuy el-cheap $299) tv that we got at Christmas time for our monitor. It has decent resolution and takes a VGA input just fine.
Although I had a Windows XP license I could have used, we decided to to with Ubuntu (linux) since the hard drive we bought had some issues with any Windows older than Vista. I had played with Ubuntu over the years but not really seriously. So far so good as we really like it. The video is good and the sound is fine (even with our 2.1 speakers). I let the son install the operating system (while over his shoulder to answer any questions) and for the most part he got it done without my input.
This was a fun project to do with my son and now the problem is that we want to build another computer. So if anyone out there wants some cheap labor (we work for M&M’s) just give us a yell.
Jon
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