What can I build for $1300US

What is the best possible computer (without monitor) I can build for $1300US shipped and with tax included?
Well the logical questions would be
1. Whats the tax rate
2. Whats the purpose of the computer?

Is there anything you would change? or a totally different setup?
Again, would depend on the purpose of the machine ... but as a generalized start
- AMD Athlon64 X2 4200 [S939, Manchester, ADA4200DAA5BV]($400)
- DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D($132)
- Arctic Cooling Freezer64 Pro($34.99)
- NEC 3550A($38.99)
- EVGA 7800GT 256MB($284 after $20MIR)
- Maxtor DiamondMax10 250GB [16MB]($111)
- Antec NeoPower NeoHE 550 [12V@48A]($118)
- PQI Turbo 2x512 [[email protected]]($79.47 after $20MIR)
SUBTOTAL = $1198.45
 
The total came to $1450 Canadian +$150 for help with order = 1600Canadian or $1376US shipped and taxed. By the way, some of your setups you guys suggested don't include cases and whatnot. This includes everything I stated before.
 
The total came to $1450 Canadian +$150 for help with order = 1600Canadian or $1376US shipped and taxed. By the way, some of your setups you guys suggested don't include cases and whatnot. This includes everything I stated before.
Neato.
1. I dont do cases. They dont affect performance significantly enough to warrant my attention
2. My box is cheaper and outperforms your box hands down so you got room to buy a case and all that fancy crap afterwards
3. You didnt answer my questions :)
 
Well in that case, my box will suit your requirements well and is cheaper and significantly more powerful than what you had spec'd :)
 
All I can say is unlucky Kuli 24. Should have waited till preator was back. But you wernt to know he been missing for weeks :P. Should have waited for my build. That would have sucked hehe.
 
Why not? you could hey a sli mobo and get a good card now, then later one get
that same card and it'll be cheaper then buying a good card in the future
Hmmm since neither of us have time machines (i had one but lost it when i put it into the infinite acceleration cylinder) Lets have a look at some price trends shall we?

Last Generation
First lets look at the 6800Ultra, flag card of the last generation
1476_182.png
We have a launch price of roughly $480 and after a six month periof we have a price of $510, an decrease of -$30. This would mean that the cost of two 6800Ultras over six months would be 480+510 = 990USD

Lets have a look at a different card, say the more popular 6800GT
2448_182.png
Looks like we've got a launch price of $350 and after six months, a price of roughly $380. This gives us a SLI price of $350+$380 =$730

And lastly, lets have a look at the popular midrange card, the 6600GT
1293_182.png
Here we've got a launch price of roughly $180 and a stabilized price of roughly $145 which gives us a SLI price of $325

Current Generation
Now lets look at current generation hardware, first the 7800GT
3210_182.png
Looks like a price range of about $300

Now the 7800GTX, we have a NOW price of $468 and looking at the trend (using the same pricing engine to rule out bias)
2406_182.png
We've got a current price of about $460

Now just for kicks, lets have a look at the 7800GTX/512,
4002_182.png
Looks like a rough price number of $700

Now let's tabulate
66GT-SLI = $325
68GT-SLI = $730
68U-SLI = $990

66GT followed by 78GT = $180 + $300 = $480
68GT followed by 78GTX = $350 + $460 = $810
68U followed by 78GTX/512 = $480+$700 = $1180

Savings from SLI for 66GT = $155
Savings from SLI for 68GT = $80
Savings from SLI for 68U = $190

Digging Deeper - Quantitative
So it seems that it would be cheaper to get the SLI route but lets dig a bit deeper. First let's look at a very popular NF4Ultra board, the DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D
1349_182.png
Looks like an overall ballpark cost of $120

Looking to the bigger brother, the DFI LanParty UT NF4 SLI-DR (since the Expert wasnt available 6 months ago),
1509_182.png
So we've got a ballpark price of $165

So updating the savings,
Savings from SLI for 66GT = $110
Savings from SLI for 68GT = $35
Savings from SLI for 68U = $145

And A Bit Deeper - Qualitative
- For the first scenario, 66GT vs 78GT, we can qualitatively rule out any advantage to the 6600GT-SLI solutioin: the 7800GT is, from a technical perspective, superior. We can also probably do the same for the 6800U-SLI vs 7800GTX/512.
- Not considered was also the resale price for the cards in a non-SLI scenario -- which is more than enough to quantitatively account for any advantage SLI might have
- The only odd case is the 6800GT-SLI vs 7800GTX but in this case, even a disadvantage of $35 (or $80) is hardly significant over 6-months as well as (in the case of the $80 disadvantage) the potential to have 2x78GTX
 
I think your setup is a little unaffordable for what I was looking for. I want 2gigs of ram, and Windows XP, and a 13-in-1 flash reader, and a DVD-rom drive, a floppy drive and a case. All these add up to quite a bit more than I would pay. Oh, and shipping to Canada doesn't work through most US sites. Thanks for your configuration advice tho.
 
??

1. My box is cheaper than yours
2. You only said 1GB
3. You didnt say anything about an OS
4. I dont do card readers (and it only costs $9.99) as they are stupid side-accessories

See your own post #1
 
Just wondering if I got ripped off.
Ah i just noted your post #16

For that price,
- i wouldnt have gotten the Modstream (decent but much better psus exist)
- the hdd, with 11ms access is pretty dismal you should be able to get 4-8ms access HDDs for the price
- my cpu is far superior

As for getting ripped off ... IMO, yeah but to avoid that you would have had to to do extensive Canadian-side price hunting (then again, if you do, you may find Canadian prices are better than Neweggs sometimes even if we take at-par). For a casual build, no i dont think you got ripped off. Would I pay that much? Nope.



:)
 
I'm actually trading my 1.8ghz in for a 2.0ghz opteron with 1mb cache dollar for dollar. My youth paster has overclocked his to 3.0ghz, so we'll see what I can do.
 
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