Power supply and case:
The case is just plastic and steel, the main thing is for it to be ATX compatible, with mounting holes and standoffs for the various ATX footprints. Well made cases also grind the sharp edges from cut metal plates so you don't cut yourself in assembly, but that's part of the ritual I suppose for a true cheapskate...
The POWER SUPPLY is important. It needs to be 350W "P4" rated, which actually means it has an extra 4-pin 12V cable to supply energy to the voltage regulator used to power the CPU core, which runs at a different voltage than the 3.3V and 5V pins supplied by a normal power supply harness. If that cable isn't plugged in, your system won't power up. Technically, you're looking for a ATX 2.0 350W P4-capable power supply;
the very best on a budget would be a Fortran PSP-60 350W with PFC, which costs about $40-45.
But otherwise you're stuck with the bundle that came with your cheap case, expect it to be most likely a Codegen 350W power supply which wholesales about $19 to $15, plus around $8 to $12 for the case, as a combined bundle in the $35 to $48 range.
Floppy disk -- $9 from Sony, Teac, *********** NEC etc. In fact, if it sounds Japanese, buy it.
DVD/maybe CD writer/possibly DVD writer:
A pure DVD reader can be had on a $26 budget, or thereabouts.
Add CD-writing capability and now the cost is closer to $41.
Add DVD as well as CD-writing and the cost is now $50-65.
I chose a LG brand DVD writer for $62 4 months ago, but the same model now sells for $49. For the cheapskate, consider spending about $40 for a so-called "combo" drive, which is DVD read and CD-RW.
Hard Disk -- absolutely I'd go SATA IDE, in the 80 to 160 GB range. My preferred company is Hitachi, which means they were designed by IBM San Jose (CA, USE) before being spun off to Hitachi. Price -- $63ish 80 GB
$105ish 160 GB
$120ish 200 GB
80 GB is fine.
There's just one thing -- if you have an older (non SP2) Win XP install, it doesnt support installing directly to SATA; it wants a diskette based driver to make the install. (See, there IS something you need the floppy for...) When XP is loading off the bootable CD, it looks for a IDE hard disk on IDE channel 0, and if it doesn't find one, it gives up! But about 10 seconds after it starts booting from CD, it prompts "Press F6 to add driver for SCSI or RAID". That's your cue.
Press F6, and it's waiting for you to insert a "RAID driver" for your SATA RAID chipset (there's one on the above mentioned motherboard). You download this driver from SIS; I'm not sure your motherboard box has it. It might. There's more than one download; the one you're after says "Floppy disk image" in the description, and is 1.44 MB or thereabouts, rather than 3-4 MB.
Audio -- built in to the motherboard, skip this.
Audio CABLE from DVD: yep, the industry will charge you seperately for this cable. Expect to pay $5 for a 80 cent cable.
Keyboard: Logitech OEM are great. $9-15
Mouse: Optical is best, but I am pretty cheap. $3-$5 for button PS-2 style mouse suits me, except they get dirty fairly fast and need replacing every 9 months. In theory, you CAN clean them, but maybe I'm lazy beside cheap.
Beer err I mean mountain dew and R-rated movie tickets for your duly authorized computer expert to assemble the above: PRICELESS. But now I'm joking. You might have to pay $40-$50 for an hour's time. Adding the OS and such a little longer. Call it two hours.
Can it be done on $500 budget??? YES
Is it better than from Dell, etc? ABSOLUTELY
Why??
The Dell, HP, Earthlink, etc solution is to put everything onto the motherboard, make the footprint proprietary, and thus make the PC a commodity item that must be discarded rather than upgraded. Do it yourself, and now you can use better quality parts.
DISADVANTAGES:
Software Bundle. There isn't any. Which means, err um, it's possible to overspend your budget, considering Win XP home version, OEM, costs about $95 in stores.
Add it up:
$60 Motherboard
$80 CPU
$95 RAM, 1 GB in DDR-400
$40 case/PS (technically, you need the Power Supply, the Case could be a slab of wood...)
$10 Floppy
$65 SATA 80 GB IDE HDD
$30 DVD no writing, +$15 add CD-RW option
$90 Video card (DO NOT use ATI 9250, use ATI 9550)
-----
$470
plus tax
Add Win XP Home: $95 ==> $565 for a very sweet EQ2 box
you really must have more than 512 MB to play well.
The above system is $65 away from RAID-1 or RAID-0 capability, and will be around 50 to 85% faster than a P4 running at 2 Ghz with a single 1 GB DDR memory module, due to faster FSB, dual channel memory, embedded SATA (150 MB/sec rather than 66 or 100 ATA in an older generation system).
Its a solid game platform, it's what I run.
I've built at least 400 computers by my own hands, and have 21 years paid engineering experience. But mostly, I only had around $500 for my budget, and I built mine end of April to middle of may, in stages according to my salary, so I know what the market has now.
If you had about $125 more, you could adjust the starting motherboard to PCI-Expressx16 capable, and substitute a $100ish PCI-E video card instead. More or less everything else stays the same. But then again, you could do that next year, when the motherboard is less and the video cards more stable...
Cheers
- GS