Need help building a computer for as cheap as possible

[pip_75]

I need help with making a computer for college I want to spend around $300 for the whole thing, I already have a monitor.

It would be mainly used for schoolwork(Internet, word proccessing, etc.) but it would be nice to be able to listen to music and mabye play older games like Age of Empires 2

I don't know if it would be better to go with AMD or Intel for a proccessor

I am thinking about using an amd sempron CPU right now

Need help choosing a CPU, motherboard, RAM, Video Card, Optical drive

Going to get xp through school with a big discount

Any help or suggestions would be great

 

[The_Prophecy]

CPU: AMD Sempron 64 2800+

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-M51GM-S2G

RAM: Corsair ValueSelect 512MB (2 x 256MB) DDR2-533

Video: eVGA Geforce 7300LE

Optical Drive: NEC DVD Burner

Total before taxes and shipping: $275.95

 

[dougie_boy]

AMD Sempron 64 2800+ $57.99
Hitachi deskstar T7K250 (250gig) $57.99
ASRock K8NF4G-SATA2 $58.99
1gig DDR 400 $70.49
RAIDMAX Elite ATX-208BP Case (380W) $29.99
NEC 16x DVDRW $27.99

$303.44

ta-da.

the Asrock motherboard has on board graphics in the shape of a geforce 6100 which will deal with AoE2 and the web fine. gig of ram will keep it sharp and the 250 gig HD will give you all the space you will ever need. cracking drive aswell.

all from newegg.com

 

[The_Prophecy]

Hmm.... didn't think onboard video would be good enough to handle AoE2...

 

[pip_75]

What brand of ram?

How reliable is the hard drive?

would it be better to get a seagate or western digital drive instead?

 

[Akifuddin]

What brand of ram?

How reliable is the hard drive?

would it be better to get a seagate or western digital drive instead?

Doesn't matter, cheaper one

 

[dougie_boy]

Hmm.... didn't think onboard video would be good enough to handle AoE2...

hte 6100 is roughly about the same as a 7300. maybe a differnt series but they are very similar. it will be fine.

 

[sadsephiroth]

Actually a 6100 is like a 5550 or a 9800pro. Not at all close to a 7300. The 6100 uses onboard ram. Stay away from that. It's a slow and outdated way to save a few bucks when low end cards are miles ahead of built in graphics.

 

[pip_75]

since it will be used for schoolwork and IM and not much else I found an old P3 with 512MB of ram and a network card and put XP on it and it works fine for the basic stuff I also had an extra usb pci expansion card around so I put that in there too.

So far it has been working good