Cheap Powerful PC for $350 (upgrade)

[Emp3r0r]

MSI nForce MOBO $150
Video, Sound (DD5.1), Network included
AMD AthlonXP 1700 or 1800+ CPU $150
256 or 512 DDR Ram $50

You could complete this computer for another $150 bucks and have a very fast divx encoding machine and a good HTPC with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.

Hope this helps anybody looking to upgrade or get a new fast computer. I continue to wait for prices to stabilize... damnit I'll never upgrade! :D

[chemmajik]

Just make sure you do some research & buy the proper ram, and place them in the proper slots. If you use both ram slots with the wrong ram on all these Nforce boards you will be running at 200 instead of 266 for the ram. I'd rather go the NForce 415D route with a radeon for the best dvd tv & gaming, when its available. The 415D doesnt have the onboard gf2mx... SIS740 is selling now, it might be a Nforce killer, just waiting on some reviews, also the P4 will be getting the onboard radeon7500 chipset within a month. So it might be best to wait a month or two or you may find you made a bad investment, especially with a already revised Nforce chipset announced. There are also cheaper route to accomplish this same setup. SIS735($45) + Sblive 5.1 value($25) + Radeon or GF2, or a Faster setup Kt266a ECS($67) or Shuttle($74)+Sblive 5.1($25-38) + $70 dollar video. isnt it nice to have competition! hehe You can even go cheaper in video with TNT2 or RageFury both have tv out too.

[Emp3r0r]

Wow, great post, thanks for all that information. I'm definatly going to wait for the 415D cause I'm interested in the Dolby Digital hookup to my sound system... and I got a radeon ve so that would be great. Hope it doesn't take as long to come out as the original nForce.