

Build a $200 Linux PC - edw519
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2366841,00.asp

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pcarmichael
At $38.99 for a 160GB drive, they're paying $0.244/GB, which is pretty bad. Of
course, at the low end of the price ranges, the price/capacity ratio goes up a
lot.

Their part selection still leaves another $7.05 available, which means you
could afford a drive up to $46.04. For that price, you could get a Hitachi
Deskstar 500GB 7200RPM drive for $42.99 ($0.086/GB). If you don't like
Hitachi, there is a Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB for $44.95 ($0.09/GB).

During the evenings I've been working on a site that tracks hard drive prices
and price/capacity ratios ([http://pcpartpicker.com/partscharts/internal-hard-
drive/over...](http://pcpartpicker.com/partscharts/internal-hard-
drive/overall-list/)). If you're willing to spend over $80, you can get drives
at $0.053/GB.

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kiba
Whoa. That's an awesome web application/site you got there.

Is implementing dual-core, quad-core price ratio CPU on your list of TODO, and
how soon will you implement it?

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pcarmichael
Thanks! I'm glad you like it. It's still very much a work in progress - I was
debating whether I should post the link or not given how much I left to do
before it's really "ready".

For CPUs, were you looking for a price/core ratio?

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kiba
Yep.

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pcarmichael
Ok, I've added it to the overall CPU list:
<http://pcpartpicker.com/partscharts/cpu/overall-list/>

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samratjp
It's really not that impressive of a form factor or specs for this price range
today. What's interesting is that Pstammy had a similar budget but had
similarly priced components two years ago -
<http://paulstamatiou.com/diy-200-dollar-pc> (sans the dual core but great
form factor and larger HDD).

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PStamatiou
thanks :) Yeah that was a fun mini-ITX project. Since then there are lots of
mini-ITX dual-core options.. would be interesting to re-do the same series but
with 2010 hardware.

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w1ntermute
Print version, so you don't have to click through each page:
[http://www.extremetech.com/print_article2/0,1217,a%253D25299...](http://www.extremetech.com/print_article2/0,1217,a%253D252995,00.asp)

~~~
w1ntermute
Huh, that link is now (or has been all along and I didn't notice because my
browser was pulling up the cached version?) redirecting to the regular,
paginated, version of the article. Does anyone know how this is done (HTTP
referrers?) and/or how it can be circumvented?

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hippich
All my desktop PCs were assembled by me from random parts when I was in
school. As long as you can read about compatibility between parts online, you
can assemble desktop pc without any problems. The only time i bought assembled
PC was when I switched to use laptops =)

And yeah - assembling PC yourself gives you opportunity to drop microsoft tax
completely!

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thebigshane
But also note that sometimes the "microsoft tax" manifests as a discount.
Getting a cheapo Dell with windows, at least used to be, just a tad cheaper
than assembling a similar spec'd one yourself. But I still assembled my own
because it was a fun learning experience and you can focus more on getting a
(more) future-proof motherboard and a solid PSU.

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harshpotatoes
7 years or so I built my computer for around this price. It was fairly nice
and could play most of the modern games at a mid range resolution. A year or
two ago i got a new graphics card, and some more ram, and it still seems able
to play the Sc2 demo, and run everything else fine. So, I've had no
complaints. Someday there'll be a lot more programs to take advantage of
multicore systems, and when that day comes I'll wait a bit longer before
buying a new computer. :D

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ehnus
I put together a Linux computer this week based on an Atom D510 (dual core,
hyperthreaded). It came to $250 with a 500gb HD, 2gb RAM, case and DVD drive,
though I could have saved $30 by omitting the opitical drive and installing
from a memory stick. It has the added benefit of being passively cooled -- it
is almost silent, the only noise being what is emitted by the harddrive. It's
even quieter than my Macbook Pro.

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jim_h
They're missing a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Also speakers.. This is a good
setups assuming you have all those parts laying around and not being used by
anything else. Otherwise you might also need to get a KVM to share those
peripherals.

The missing peripherals will probably add at least $100 to the total.

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joshu
So for my home dev machine, I got an MSI wind ($120) and a 32gb SSD ($70) and
a 4gb stick ($20) IIRC. It's pretty nice, but I don't run X on it, I SSH in
from a mac.

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dotcoma
I bought one - a used Thinkpad T43 - on eBay a couple of months ago for that
sum...

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martey
While the T43 is a laptop, and therefore more portable than the desktop built
in the article, it is also 5 years old. Unless it was upgraded, it will have a
smaller hard drive and slower CPU, giving you less performance.

The T43 is a great computer (I used to own one), but being that the author
specifically wanted a machine that was upgradeable, it would not be useful in
this situation.

