PCA Forums

my dad's on a tight $300 budget to upgrade his system. do you guys know of any good deals out there for "barebone systems", whether it be online or through local retailers like Best Buy, Compusa, etc?

Nothing really special as he only uses it for internet browsing and some MS Office (word, excel, etc.)

Basically all he needs is a new "box" with the following (he already has a decent monitor, speakers, KB, mouse, etc.) :

-case
-mb and CPU
-hard drive (at least 20mb)
-ram (at least 128mb)
-sound and video card (onboard sound and video is ok)

these extra's would be good too if it fits in the budget:
-modem (maybe... i just might transfer his old modem into the new system)
-OS (preferably windows xp home)

again it's nothing really special so even a duron based system at 1.0ghz (more or less) would be fine. since he's upgrading from a K6-2 300mhz box i'm sure he'd appreciate the difference that even a 1ghz cpu would give.

I saw a couple of good online deals already but i'm sure you fellas are aware of some better one's too.

thanks in advance.

Im guessing it has to be retail, or you would build it or have one of us,300 buys alot in the forums

Under this assumption, have you checked out deals on refurbed dells?

Originally posted by RaT


-hard drive (at least 20mb)

wouldnt you consider a HD with atleast 1.5gigs instead?
I think most windows systems needs more than 500mb to be installed

check the refurbs at the geeks

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=CA1560-5

"hard drive (at least 20mb) "

oops.. i meant 20 gigs.

i don't think you can get any applications installed on 20mb nowadays

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Link to the case

Soyo Dragon Plus Barebone with AMD Athlon XP 2000+ Processor, 256MB DDR and 40GB Hard Drive



Processor

Supports AMD Socket A type Processor(upto 2100+)
Including Duron & Athlon & XP CPUs
Chipset

VIA KT266A/8233 CE Ver chipsets
Support 200/266 MHz FSB
Memory

Three 184-pin DDR SDRAM 2.5V DIMM sockets support up to 3GB
Expansion Slots

Five 32-bit Bus Mastering PCI slots (V2.2 compliant)
One Universal AGP Pro slot (support 1x/2x/4x mode)
Onboard Audio

Onboard CMI 8738 Audio chip to provide 6 channels audio solution
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I/O

Two RS-232 Serial Ports (16550 UART compatible)
One Parallel Printer Port (SPP/EPP/ECP mode)
One FDD port (supports 3 modes, 1.2/1.44/2.88 MB FDD)
Provides IrDA port with optional cable for transceiver
Provides 6 USB ports (2 rear, 4 front)
Ultra DMA IDE Ports

Four independent channels for eight IDE devices (two for RAID)
Supports up to PIO mode 5 & UDMA 33/66/100
Two PCI bus mastering ATA E-IDE ports
Boot-Block Flash BIOS

Award PCI BIOS with ACPI function
Supports multiple-boot from E-IDE/SCSI/CD-ROM/FDD LS120/ZIP
2M byte Flash ROM
Board Dimensions

Four Layer PCB, 30.5cm x 23cm (12" x 9.05")
ATX form factor
Enhanced PC Health Monitoring

On-board voltage monitors for +3.3, +5V, +12V, Vcore,(TBD)
CPU fan speed monitor (TBD)
CPU temperature monitoring through flexible thermal sensor (TBD)
Double Stack Back-Panel I/O Connectors

PS/2 Mini-DIN mouse & keyboard ports
2 USB ports
One RJ45 connector
Two D-Sub 9-pin male serial port
One D-Sub 25-pin female printer port
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One Game port
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Two USB Ports
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AMD Athlon XP 2000+ Processor with Fan**
256MB 16x64 PC2100 DDR Memory
Seagate 40.8GB ATA/100 IDE 8.9/100/5400 Hard Drive
Windows 2000 107 Key PS/2 Keyboard
PS/2 Wheel Mouse



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linky

thanks guys... the tigerdirect deal looks good....

thanks DoPeY5007 :up

If you want something ready to go with a warranty, check out Dell's refurbs. You might find a 2000Mhz Celery Dimension 2350 for $350 (keep refreshing and sort by cost - they add systems every few minutes). Looks like they have free shipping right now. That's with a 1 year at-home warranty.