Rolling your own PC

If you already own an operating system like Windows 2000 or Windows XP, and don't mind spending the time yeah go for building your own. I recently built a computer with:

Athlon XP 2000+,
Shuttle MN31N motherboard (lots of extras on this board),
40 gig Western Digital harddrive,
256mb pc 2100 ram (no name cheap stuff I found on sale),
Expensive heatsink and fan (Thermalright SLK-947U with Tornado 92mm fan - you can skimp here and save $30)
CD-ROM, floppy, and case with power supply
all for around $400 US dollars. I assume that you already have a P/S2 keyboard, P/S2 mouse and VGA monitor that you could use.

You won't need all of the Athlon XP 2000+ power for just email and wordprocessing, a P3 at 1ghz is more than enough for that. But with Photoshop you should really notice a difference.

Of course this doesn't factor in the cost in time spent building a computer like this. If your time is valuable, and you don't want to hassle with making, and maintaining your own computer then just buy one like you mentioned. If something breaks, then you can always go back to the manufacturer and get them to fix it.

You might want to ask this question in the CPU forum - higher traffic there so you should get some better opinions on what to do.

<font color=blue><b>Purchase object A, install object A, curse object A, repeat...</b></font color=blue>

For $400 you can pick up a lot more used computer than you could build new!

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

I have to agree with Crashman. I was just doing that research myself last night for a friend. Windows just costs too much.  

The opposite side of that coin though is quality and expandability, which most dinky OEM systems like that don't have much of either. :\ At least with a home-built PC you can ensure as much quality and expandability as you like.

So really it comes down to what you need.

<pre><b><font color=red>I've always wondered why people liken the taste of blood to copper.
It tastes much more like iron to me.
<-   -   -   -   -   -></font color=red></b></pre><p>

Are you juin??

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