I use pricescan.com for price searching. Their prices listed seem to be consistently better than pricewatch.com. I recommend the Abit KT7A or the KT7A-Raid for a Mobo. Abit's makes sweet boards, and for Athlon overclocking, this is the one to go with. DDR will give you a slight performance increase when doing some things, but the price difference isn't worth it. A friend of mine runs viahardware.com, and he gets tons and tons of motherboards for free to review, and he says the Abit KT7A is still the only way to go. The best price I found on PC133 ram is Tran Micro by the U of MN. They had Micron (Brand name!) PC133 CAS2 (2 not 3!) for less than $70 for a 256MB stick, probably way less now as that was over a month ago. I brought some generic ram back to them that I purchased nearly a year earlier from them, and they replaced it for free when it went bad. About the only good prices there is for memory though, everything else can be found cheaper online. For a sweet case, egghead.com has the Antec SX1030B in black. It's $96, but shipping is is a flat $6.95. Everyplace else wants more than $30 to ship it. Do a search on Egghead's site for "sx1030b". You can get a GeForce 2 MX for under $80. I've had no problems at all with mine and it works great with linux. If I remember correctly, all of Nvidia's drivers are now opensource, no more binary only crap. Jay > -----Original Message----- > From: Florin Iucha [mailto:florin at iucha.net] > Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 9:02 PM > To: Twin Cities Lug > Subject: Re: [TCLUG] Buying stuff... > > > On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, Peter Clark wrote: > > > I am in the process of slowly putting together my owm box. Right > > now, I am waiting for my tax returns :) so that I have some spending > > $$$ to build the box I've always wanted. But in the > meantime, I would > > like to ask a few questions. > > 1. What would you recommend for a motherboard? I want to get an > > Athlon 1000, so that narrows down things fast. Furthermore, I recall > > hearing something last week about a bug with Abit? > motherboards. OR was > > it just the VIA chipset? I don't know, but I would like to > avoid this > > if possible. > > For motherboard get an ASUS. Right now I would not go with VIA. AMD is > more stable chipset. > > > 2. Same question regarding video cards. I don't need top of the > > line...32 MB mem is fine. I'm not looking for 300 FPS in Quake 3, > > either. I just want a card that is easily detectable under Linux, > > commonly available, and won't cause grief because of buggy drivers. > > NVIDIA has problems with binary-only closed drivers. Ati has > problems with > crappy boards. Matrox boards are good but weak at 3D. Your pick. > > > 3. Any spots for buying keyboards and mice? Other than > Best Buy and > > CompUSA? I've gone over their inventory and haven't found > much that I > > like. A keyboard/mouse warehouse would be nice. :) > > I am very happy with Microsoft Hardware products. Get a M$ Natural > Keyboard and a Intellimouse and you'll be happy. > > > 4. Where can I get some cool computer badges? (Those are > the little > > 1x1 plastic-covered stickers that go on the front of a computer.) I > > googled and found a couple of companies, but most are > either overseas > > or only sell in bulk. A badge with Tux would be a step in the right > > direction, I think. > > ... > > > 5. Oh, yes, my price range for the system is going to be > $800-$900, > > excluding monitor. (I'll deal with that later--for now, I've got an > > older one that will do.) > > Try to get CPU + Mobo + RAM from the same place. They will > usually test > that they work and that they work together saving you a > roundtrip... and > also save on shipping. > > florin > > _______________________________________________ > tclug-list mailing list > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >