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I have always built my own computers, except for the very first one which I purchased at the Wiz and the one I am using now, which was much cheaper to buy, with the installed components, than to build. Click Here For Computer Specs The truth of the matter is that I had read up on the computer before I bought it and knew that everyone was complaining about it because the media center didn't work properly. The tv would flicker and sometimes programs would freeze and people were going insane. Most of the machines must have been returned. I had a leg, up as they say, because I knew how to fix it. I bought the computer and installed the latest edition of the media center with new drivers and then went to the AMD site and downloaded and installed drivers for the CPU. Yes this CPU had drivers. The problem was completely fixed and I had a great new computer at a really cheap price. The machine should have cost around $1200 but it was on sale for $700 and I snapped it up. I told a friend in Florida about it and I went with him to buy one, but there was not one to be had at any price and this was only a couple of weeks later. Even without the sale you couldn't find the machine, only lesser versions that had slower cpus. I guess it was withdrawn from the market by then, due to the problems it had.

Here is an important thing to note, we don't always need powerful machines. Sometimes we need a PC for a specific purpose and the pc we need can be much more ordinary or even a bit slow and it won't need things like real big hard drives, or more than one or two usb ports, or even a cd or dvd burner. For example if you are a person that does mostly web browsing, word processing or other office tasks, you could use almost any machine. If you were buying a machine, one of those $400 machines would probably serve you just fine. In your case it wouldn't even make sense to build a machine. Most of the time, it is the high end users who save the most by building a machine, after all, when it costs $3500 or more to buy a machine then it pays to build one and save a few hundred dollars or more.

I thought that it might be interesting to see how cheap I could build a useful machine for. My main thought was to create a machine that would allow me to hook up 4 usb cams to it. This was more of an exercise than anything else. I soon learned one very important fact. Guess what was the most expensive part of the machine? It was the operating system if I wanted to run Windows XP. This os sold in the stores for a whopping $199.00. This price was for the Home Edition of Windows XP. Beware of prices like $99.00 in the stores, these are usually upgrades which mean you need to own a version of Windows already. This one product has made it impossible to create a really cheap computer. Of course I could build one using Linux, which is free, but it is easier to buy the complete package rather than creeping all around the internet trying to assemble all the pieces of the program. I thought it was more practical for most of us to use Windows since we probably have a lot of software for it already. There is another alternative to the Windows problem, I noticed that you can buy an OEM version for as low as $77 from a reputable dealer. Still a lot and you don't get any documentation since it is really meant for Original Equipment Manufacturers, but it will do nicely.

Armed with this new price for Windows, I began to look for a suitable cpu, which is the central processing unit for the computer. I could have saved more money, but I decided on an Athlon 1.2 gig chip for $40.00. This is what is know as a socket A type chip. That means that you will need a AMD motherboard that accepts socket A chips. When you buy a motherboard you must make sure that it accepts the cpu that you are buying. Check the specs before buying it. I found an inexpensive motherboard that fits my bill and it was on sale for only $39.99. It was the AS Rock America K7VM3. It had everything I needed at a cheap price, it was socket A and accepted the cpu I wanted and it had built in sound and video. This saved me from having to buy a sound card and a video card. It wouldn't be much good for advanced gaming, but it would be perfect for my use. It had 4 usb ports for plugging in devices and this could be expanded. There was also a built in modem and a Lan, which is a local area network for hooking up to other computers. The board even had a Midi connection for musical instruments. Quite a buy at the price. I would need memory for the board. I needed DDR memory 184 pins. I found a 256 meg stick of 184 pin memory for $29.00 but this is borderline for running WindowsXP. You would be much better off with at least a 512 meg stick of memory and that will cost $49.00 from the same company. You are going to need a hard drive. You can get a generic 40 gig for about $35.00 nowadays. It is not large but adequate. You will also need a cd player but you might as well get a cd/dvd player writer for only 29.00. Samsung has a nice model for this price.

OK we need something to put all these parts in and something to power them. I looked for an inexpensive case with a power supply and saw that the cases that were usually under $40.00 had no power supply built in. So figure $40.00 for a case with a 300 watt power supply. Now we need a mouse and keyboard. You can get these on sale for about $3 or $4 each. Giving you a total of between $7-8 for both. There is only one thing left now for our hardware to be complete, yes a monitor. For about $60.00 on sale you can get a 17 inch crt monitor. Its not a fancy flat screen lcd but it will do nicely.

So let me add up the parts and see what the total cost is:

The parts listed above, though basic, are still better than some of the PCs out there. Here we go, we are going to compare this machine to one that is about the same price already built, are you ready?

Micro Center, a famous computer store, is selling a machine for $349.99. Here are the specs on it:

B = Better W = Worse

So how does this comparison work out? My machine has a cpu with more cache but the PowerSpec 5500, which is the machine being sold, has a much faster cpu a Sempron 3100 which goes for about $60.00, but on the other hand it doesn't have a dvd/cd burner just a cd burner. My machine has twice the memory but only half the hard drive space. I actually found a couple of 80 gig hard drives for only $37.00 but they weren't being sold by anyplace that I knew anything about. A reliable brand would cost you about $20.00 more in a 80 gig size. My machine comes with a monitor for the price, theirs doesn't. If you add the $40.00 in updates to my machine for the cpu and hard drive, and add the $60.00 for the monitor and $29.00 for the dvd/cd burner to their machine, here is what you get. Ours becomes $417.99 and theirs becomes 438.99 and we still have double the memory. Adding shipping will probably tip the scales in their favor. Everything else is about equal. So you will have to be the judge if you feel that building the machine yourself is indeed worth it for a cheap machine. Here is the best part, sometimes they sell theirs on sale for $100 off.