I've spent the last couple of months coming up with a few good projects to get some of the kids (a group of 4 or 5) i work with interested and educated about electronics. I think a good way to wrap everything up is to walk the kids through their first desktop build. However my rather puny budget (it's all coming out of my pocket) has me stymied. In order to provide the parts needed for the kids to build the system, without my having to part with organs for funs, I've limited myself to a $150 per kid budget.
I began my scanvenging where it was most familiar for me: the discount parts bin and came up with a fairly cheap ($115) solution from WeirdStuff. While I could live with handing the kids 1.6ghz Durons, the thought of giving them used parts left me feeling a bit sick to my stomach.
As my search continued, I ran across this litte gem. The specs are close to those of the first system i came up with with only a slightly higher cost (btw, I plan on having them run Linux). Giving the kids a system that's already assembled would really put a damper on the whole building experience and I feel that it would be risky for me to tear the machines apart just to have the kids rebuild them again. Furthermore, I believe it should be possible to provide at least 256mb ram and somewhat newer hardware.
With the assistance of Newegg, I came up with a socket 754 Sempron 64 system for about $177. Despite having a motherboard that was adequate at best and a questionable power supply, I was pleased with what I had come up with. Unfortunately, shipping and handling left me with a staggering $205 per machine.
As much as I would like to spend a grand on this little project, it's simply not in my budget; with the money going into S&H I should be able to aquire parts for a sixth machine. I think it'd be best to aquire the case, hard drive, ram, power supply, and optical/floppy drives from local stores and get the motherboards and CPUs online. I've found 256mb of pc 2700 for about $25 and a 100gb pata 133 hard drive for $49.99 in local stores. I can scrounge for optical/flopply drives as well as cases. Though I am at a loss when it comes to finding a reliable power supply.
Most of the people i've asked to assist me on my little quest simply stare at me blankly and ask why I would waste my money in such a manner. I would greatly appreciate constructive feedback on building a computer on such a restricted budget. There are still quite a few things to work out... is the previously metioned Sempron the best choice to work with? Could an intel based system work better? Should I settle for AGP motherboards or attempt to find one with PCIx16? what should i do for the power supplies?
Sorry for the somewhat long, unorthodox post, but I think it's important to get feeback from those who actually know about this stuff before I commit to anything.
I began my scanvenging where it was most familiar for me: the discount parts bin and came up with a fairly cheap ($115) solution from WeirdStuff. While I could live with handing the kids 1.6ghz Durons, the thought of giving them used parts left me feeling a bit sick to my stomach.
As my search continued, I ran across this litte gem. The specs are close to those of the first system i came up with with only a slightly higher cost (btw, I plan on having them run Linux). Giving the kids a system that's already assembled would really put a damper on the whole building experience and I feel that it would be risky for me to tear the machines apart just to have the kids rebuild them again. Furthermore, I believe it should be possible to provide at least 256mb ram and somewhat newer hardware.
With the assistance of Newegg, I came up with a socket 754 Sempron 64 system for about $177. Despite having a motherboard that was adequate at best and a questionable power supply, I was pleased with what I had come up with. Unfortunately, shipping and handling left me with a staggering $205 per machine.
As much as I would like to spend a grand on this little project, it's simply not in my budget; with the money going into S&H I should be able to aquire parts for a sixth machine. I think it'd be best to aquire the case, hard drive, ram, power supply, and optical/floppy drives from local stores and get the motherboards and CPUs online. I've found 256mb of pc 2700 for about $25 and a 100gb pata 133 hard drive for $49.99 in local stores. I can scrounge for optical/flopply drives as well as cases. Though I am at a loss when it comes to finding a reliable power supply.
Most of the people i've asked to assist me on my little quest simply stare at me blankly and ask why I would waste my money in such a manner. I would greatly appreciate constructive feedback on building a computer on such a restricted budget. There are still quite a few things to work out... is the previously metioned Sempron the best choice to work with? Could an intel based system work better? Should I settle for AGP motherboards or attempt to find one with PCIx16? what should i do for the power supplies?
Sorry for the somewhat long, unorthodox post, but I think it's important to get feeback from those who actually know about this stuff before I commit to anything.
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