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[DarienA]

I've bought bits and pieces from vendors at these shows before, but never a full system. I'm expecting the prices to be comparable to pricewatch prices... did some looking at pricewatch and we concluded that we could build a nicely powered PC for about $500 looking at the costs of the different parts via Pricewatch.... in addition I just looked at some of whole systems being sold via pricewatch vendors and they seemed to be in that same ballpark... will I find similar prices on systems AT the computer show?

As a side note, I'd don't necessarily need HD's as I have two huge ones I just bought recently, nor do I need drives, as again I bought 2 new ones recently so those components I'd simply be transferring, unless I saw such a great deal that I decided to keep this old machine active.

 

[Willco]

I don't recommend it. The full machines they sell are usually all low quality. It's best to just buy parts, not a machine. Their warranties are weird too and most of the vendors aren't local if you have problems.

Besides, why are you going to Upper Malboro when they'll probably have one on the Montgomery Fairgrounds in a few weeks. So much closer to where you live.

 

[DarienA]

I don't recommend it. The full machines they sell are usually all low quality. It's best to just buy parts, not a machine. Their warranties are weird too and most of the vendors aren't local if you have problems.

Besides, why are you going to Upper Malboro when they'll probably have one on the Montgomery Fairgrounds in a few weeks. So much closer to where you live.

Hmmm ok.... didn't mind the drive and wasn't sure when the next one would be... well instead I'll spend the day getting caught up on some gaming!

 

[Gantz]

Just build your own.

 

[DarienA]

I know, I know my co-worker keeps telling me I should just build one.. <sigh> I just can't get up the interest high enough.... I guess I'm gonna have to though... not being a hardware person though means I'm going to have to research to find out what the hell I need to look for in each piece.. motherboard, tower, cpu, etc... then play with pricewatch to find good deals on each part.... man I just don't feel like it... but I guess I'm gonna have to knuckle up and get it done.

 

[B'z-chan]

This is what gaf is here for DA. We'll help ya out building a system. Its really not hard at all man. Whats your budget? Are you a Intel or AMD guy? ATI or Nvidia? Thats all we need to know.

As to keep this thread on track. MP shows are ok for older parts. Your still gonna find better deals online for the hottest parts and goods. I got burned by a MP show here in fresno a few years back.

 

[DarienA]

This is what gaf is here for DA. We'll help ya out building a system. Its really not hard at all man. Whats your budget? Are you a Intel or AMD guy? ATI or Nvidia? Thats all we need to know.

Thanks I have no preference CPU-wise... my co-worker thinks that I can save some money going with an Athlon and it'll give me decent performance, cardwise any of the Geforce cards.... don't need any HD's or media Drives, just gonna pull those out of the old dinosaur, so I need:

Tower, one with any of the usb, audio, firewire ports on the front would be nice
A good amount of PCI slots for additional cards would be nice
Decent amount of free bays full size and other would be nice as well
Motherboard with built in ethernet would save me a PCI slot.
Initially I'll install two hard drives, two optical drives and a floppy/card reader drive.
As for the CPU I'd like something mid to high end.
Memory I can skimp on initially and pick up more in the near future unless you find a great deal upfront for a nice chunk of memory

What can I get for around $500? Slap me if that's too low, but according to him I should be able to score some nice parts for $450-$500.

I think he mentioned an Athlon 3200 as having good speed and good prices? He took me on a real quick tour of pricewatch.com.

 

[B'z-chan]

now i know this isnt really in your price range but just some of my suggestions for a smoking rig.

This is what i got for around $250 if you look for this combo i'm sure people are selling them still. Its a good combo with a great processor and a awsome mobo.

As for ram
This isnt bad for the price, nice latency. If you already have some DDR ram then just stay with it till the price of DDR 400 goes down, which should happen around january if i'm not mistaken.

if your a ATI man get a 9800 pro you can sometimes find them for 150 which is a very nice price. If your a Nvidia guy go with a 6600gt for around 200 bucks. The 6600gt is a little better than the 9800pro. But it doesnt really matter if your not really a gamer.

cases just about anything works just gotta find one that fits your fancy. I would go for a Xdreamer2 its cheap its great and its worth the money.

EDIT: Yes the AMD 64 3200 is a great CPU, i love it. Got it overclocked to 3.2ghz currently with a Thermaltake Fan on it. which is insane if you ask me. I'm still using pc 2100 memory though. Which sucks, hence why i'm waiting for DDR 400 to go down in price.

if you dont need a blazing fast GFX card then go with the 9800 and wait till some of the AGP ATI cards that came out in August go down in price. PCI-X is gonna be coming full circle next year. But if you dont care for it then you'll get a nice card for pretty cheap come next year.

 

[DarienA]

Thanks, I'll check around and see what prices I can find on these components.

 

[Willco]

Thanks, I'll check around and see what prices I can find on these components.

If you're still around, MarketPro usually can't compete with New Egg in CPU and RAM pricing, but you can get steals on keyboards/mice/speakers, video cards and hard drives.

I got my Radeon 9600 XT brand new in the box with free HL2 last January for $120.

 

[teepo]

just goto newegg.com

the marketpro pc show's started to become crap once the internet was invited.