08-06-2003, 04:25 PM
Incidentally I'm also going to start building a computer... I am also going to ditch my AGP-less Dell... I want a case like that, and my budget is much less than yours. Through my searching, I was able to find a couple of good cases with the side window, although when I looked at ebay, they had awesome cases for around $50. Anyway, since I have a moniter and stuff, all I need are the essentials. After plenty of research, I was able to get it all down to about $550-600, maybe more if you include shipping costs. Best bet is to go with Fry's for the motherboard/CPU, they have the combos for $200. I found a good one, $199.99 that is an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (that's good enough for me), has 6 possible USB 2.0 connections, 3 firewire, 6 PCI slots and 1 8x AGP. I can also get a GeForce FX 5200 128mb 8x AGP video card for around $70. Windows XP Pro for about $100. Hard drives and burner/dvd combo drives are all relatively consistent in price. I have a good wireless optical mouse, keyboard, moniter, speakers, printer, and scanner. Anyway, three good places to check out the best prices would be www.newegg.com, www.nextag.com, and of course good ol' ebay.com.