Weekly Buyer's Guide: Mid-Range System - March 2004
by Evan Lieb on March 24, 2004 2:27 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Mid-Range System Summary
| Hardware | Component | Price |
| CPU & Cooling | AMD Athlon XP 2800+ | $120 |
| Motherboard | ABIT AN7 (nForce2 Ultra 400) | $102 |
| Memory | 2 X 256MB Mushkin Basic Green PC3200 (DDR400) | $90 |
| Video Card | 128MB PowerColor Radeon 9600 Pro | $129 |
| Monitor | Samsung 955DF DynaFlat CRT | $200 |
| Computer Case | CaseEdge TS1 (plus $30 360W PSU) | $70 |
| Sound Card | Onboard | $0 |
| Speakers | Creative Labs SBS270 | $20 |
| Networking | Onboard | $0 |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital 800JB (80GB) | $70 |
| CD-RW | Sony 52x32x52 CD-RW | $32 |
| Bottom Line | - | $833 |
$833 is the final price of our mid-range system this week, not including any money that you'll spend on software (Windows XP Home or Professional, Office, etc.) or a keyboard and mouse.
It's great to see how little you can spend on a system these days while still being able to wring great performance from it. For $833, you'd be hard pressed to find a faster system.
Now go build your system and let us know what you think in our comments section.
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Jeff7181 - Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - link
For $40 more, I'd recommend an XP3000 with a 400 Mhz bus... might as well use that PC3200 RAM to it's full potential, right? =)davehries - Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - link
Does the recently released AMD 64 2800+ CPU change your system recommendations.