new system being put together. AMD Sempron

[coius]

I priced up a new system for light-gaming to leave at my friend's house.

This is the system:

ECS Socket 754 Motherboard w/ Sempron 3000+ CPU

Galaxy GeForce 8400GS 256MB PCI-E x16 Video card

Rosewill RCX-Z80-AL 80mm Sleeve CPU Cooler

Black IDE HP 20x DVD-RW/CD-RW

It will be stuck in this case:

HEC Black/Silver MicroATX Tower (I shot for a small tower will little drive bays to make it compact)

I also order this (OKGEAR Single-Device 18" Round IDE Cable [For the DVD-+RW])

This will be a light gaming system, so no one make fun about the low-end technology. What I will be playing has very little CPU usage and more low-end GPU usage.

I wanted to price up a system that was low cost, small as possible while being low cost, as well as being suited for one purpose: Low-end simple gaming. The main game I will be playing is WoW, but I don't set all the settings on high, and I have a 512MB GeForce 8400GS and it plays the game perfectly.

I will be leaving it at my friend's house just for the gaming purpose.

I also ordered an LCD off of eBay to replace the broken one in my ProView display. So I will be leaving the Proview at my house, and replacing my (1280x1024) 21" 4:3 LCD with the 19" Widescreen (1440x900) and taking the 21" 4:3 Display and replace the 15" LCD (1280x1024) and putting the 15" at my friend's just for gaming.

I have 1GB RAM and a 200GB SATA HDD ready for the tower that I got a while ago, and I will throw that in the case and make a simple system.

I can't wait, but I got most of the parts tomorrow, but I *think* i gotta wait for the case to come in on the 16th. It sucks, but it's coming from another place (California, instead of Tennessee) I think it's the DVD burner and CPU fan that will be coming late. Which is a bummer :S

But oh well...

EDIT: The case will be on time, as well as the board, CPU, cable and others. It's the CPU Fan and DVD burner that will be late. I might have a CPU Fan I can throw on it. I will have to check and see. It may be really simple if I have an adapter. They seem to use similar mounts across the platforms

 

[Richard]

NICE ONE!

 

[coius]

Yeah. With shipping it came out to about $173.something.

The shipped was like $30 freaking bucks. What ticks me off, is that they charged full shipping on some parts, but threw them into a box with some other ones. So I am NOT happy that they charged me full shipping, and then combined them and pocketed the money.

The shipping of the case was half the price of shipping, and it's weight is like 4x as much as the weight of the other stuff. But still, if I could price out a system similar to this locally, I figured it would cost me about $400 out at D.I.T. Corp (really cheap computer place run by some dudes from india) or $600 from Best Buy.

Yeah... to get a system that is *slightly* more powerful than this machine, it would cost me 3x more than my system.

Oh, I also priced up a system at best buy that was equivalent to my main system, which I built for $300 total, I got $1300 from best buy. and the best buy parts were inferior too. I <3 Newegg but their shipping costs suck

 

[joshc]

What about RAM and a PSU?

 

[Charlieman]

The shipped was like $30 freaking bucks. What ticks me off, is that they charged full shipping on some parts, but threw them into a box with some other ones. So I am NOT happy that they charged me full shipping, and then combined them and pocketed the money.

I'll only reply on the subject of shipping costs:

1. The "shipping cost" is not solely about how much they pay somebody for transport, but for warehouse costs: take the goods out of the trailer, unpack, stack on shelves -- then "picking" and repacking. [When one of my colleagues buys 100 keyboards, shipping cost is zero; the keyboards are delivered straight to user via the distributor, so no warehouse cost.]

2. The profit margin on the goods that you bought is roughly 5%. Try running any business on a 5% markup -- it is only big supermarkets and big retailers who can live with such low margins.

3. The sellers will always try to lift their margins because they can't stay in business any other way. As a consumer, buy from companies who bundle shipping costs together for multiple items.

 

[quinterro]

I have used that motherboard or a similar one with AGP to replace dead eMachines boards. It was OK. Not the fastest, but definitely not bad.

I'm tempted to see how one compares against my cobbled together Shuttle 2.53ghz P4.

 

[coius]

What about RAM and a PSU?

Got the RAM. I didn't see it didn't have a PSU.

That's ok, I got a spare one I can use.

 

[coius]

This is the tower put together:

My new gaming rig!

Have a looksy and tell me what you think

EDIT: I have now included pics of the inside of the machine. I still need to get some tie-wraps and tie up the cables so it makes a nice, even airflow through it