While at the Trenton Computer Festival this year, my festival-mate and I were snagged by a colo selling off a bunch of old and unused equipment – cheap. It was the last hour of the festival, so they were really trying to unload stuff, I admit to being the one who finally got suckered in. We walked away with quite a catch though, and since then I’ve been building up my new desktop around the motherboard and CPUs I purchased that day.
My new desktop, dare I call it that, is now up and running. It only lacks a graphics card, which I’m getting for free tomorrow night. Specs are as follows…
Intel Server Board SE7525GP2 w/ 2 dual core 2.8ghz Xeon CPUs: $150
2 x 1GB 184-PIN REG DIMM 128MX72 DDR PC2700: $150
(server board, requires registered DIMMs)
Chenbro SR10568-AL Chassis and mounting plates: $100
680 Watt Power Supply: $40
Sony PATA DVDRW: $35
WD 500G PATA drive: $100
Soundblaster Live card: Free, from 2001, snagged from old PC
ATi X300: Free, from a friend.
Total: $575
Sure, I probably could have done better cost-wise if I didn’t go with server-class this and server-class that (certainly my case, power supply and RAM expenses could have been lower), but where’s the fun in that? Plus, I plan on this beast lasting me a long time, it’s replacing a desktop I’ve had since 2002.
