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Yeah, there's a 25ft patch cord on Newegg for $3.49.  I'd say that's about right.

That being said, it's still way cheaper to buy, run and crimp your own cable (obviously). :)

I'm not sure about the running part, but buy a complete cable vs. buying bulk+crimping saves you <$0.20 a cable. I'm reasonably sure that 20 cents is worth me not having to spend the effort to do all that work :p

Ehh, I took to it naturally. So I enjoy crimping my own network cables. 300 ft spool + crimpers + caps = $100. 30 10 ft strands of CAT5 = much more than $100. ;)

I'm not entirely sure where you buy your cable from, but from my estimates and experience 30 10ft cables is about $42.

Dude Newby you left out the best part, the pictures! Jeez man.

Deadly: I would check to see if this college/university has a first year "honours" calculus course.  If they do, you will probably get the most out of that.  You'll learn delta-epsilon proofs and other things that won't be taught in standard courses.

I just saw this post and I feel so cheated. We had to do delta-epsilon proofs in my calc I class and it was just the standard course. Darn the school for trying to give me a better education and making the courses harder!

I'm sorry, but you fail.  mIRC is the worst.  XChat and irssi are far better.

I'm not quite sure how you can say that. Have you actually used mIRC? Its got the best chat interface of any program I have used to date. Not to mention a powerful and easy to use script language.


That said I do use SILC and its kinda nice, I mean it makes it easy for me to harrass Skywing. I actually tried to get some friends to move over to it but the lack of a decent program for it kind of scared them away. So I'm on 1 SILC server and half a dozen or so IRC servers.

What I want to know is why you're wasting money getting a dual core if all that you intend to do with the computer is browse websites, check e-mail, and use chatting programs or whatever.

It will also be used for scientific computation.  "General purpose" is intended to mean most modern applications/developments over the next 10 years or so.  With this in mind, I think it would be short-sighted to get a single processor, when the dual-cores are currently minimal in price.

Also, you will be throwing out even more money if you buy a quad-core (especially the Intel quad core.. it's not even a real quad core. :P).  Few programs utilize multiple cores--and you don't need multiple cores to run day-to-day programs like Firefox. Hell, I run Firefox with few hiccups on a 400MHz processor back from the 90s.

Sure, right now there wouldn't be much of a difference, but I could see most software being written for multiple processors in the near future.  But I don't know for sure, so that's part of why I made this thread.

Also, right now at Dell, the difference between the quad-core and dual-core is about $50, so I would go with the quad core if I don't get the AMD.

Regarding AMD vs. Intel, the stories I've heard lately suggest that AMD is behind in performance and that Intel basically left them in the dust with the Core 2 Duo series.

As far as single vs. dual core goes, without a doubt go dual core. Sure you can surf the web on a single processor 400mhz machine but when you reach that webpage that sucks your whole machine comes to a screeching halt. I also like the fact that I can still have a responsive computer when stupid things like Adobe Acrobat decide they want to hang and hog a whole cpu. This one is a no brainer, anyone who suggests otherwise doesn't know what they're talking about.

Dual vs. Quad is interesting, but I think ultimately this comes up to personal choice and what they want right now. If $50 isn't going to break the bank on this build then you might as well go ahead and do it. Afterall having extra cpu cycles is better than spending $1000+ and not having enough. I think the market is also trending towards multiple cores so you'll be ahead of the curve here.

If you step back and look at what is likely to change in the next 3-4 years that will make you want a new computer, cpu really isn't one of them. It'll probably be up and coming things like bluray/hd-dvd.

He wouldn't be having all of this support run-around if he had a Mac. Apple's support is, in most cases, awesome.

Yeah, until you lose/break the AC adapter for your laptop and have to drop $80 for a new one. It all comes with a price, and in Apple's case its insanely high.

lol.  I live in Pasadena part time, so newegg is an option.   (:P at iago).

How much faster is the "Intel® Core™ 2 Q6600 Quad-Core (8MB L2 cache,2.4GHz,1066FSB)" than the "Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E6600 (4MB L2 Cache,2.4GHz,1066 FSB)"?

From what I remember reading, its not any faster and the Q6600 is basically two E6600s slapped together.

Just a note if you're planning to buy parts in the near future, the price on the Q6600 has been very unstable on Newegg as of late. Intel cut prices and as such Newegg seemed to drop their price, but then it went back up. I think they're playing the capitalist game, so I'd wait for the price to settle down and hopefully it will be below $300. I don't know about the other processors but be watchful.

Newegg refuses to sell to us Canadians, so Rule isn't entitled to the same deals as you :(

Ah, I forgot all about that. Sucks for you Canadians, maybe you should upgrade to a real country?

Something rather amusing, I placed an order with Newegg on Thursday and they're shipping me 3 boxes. 1 from CA, 1 from NJ and 1 from TX.

Just to give you an idea, I've been pondering buying a new computer and putting it together from parts on NewEgg.

I figured I could do Intel's Q6600 quad-core processor, 4 gigs of memory, 400gb hd, etc. for about $1300. The only thing I don't include is a monitor or sound card(aside from the stuff built into the motherboard and it'll work fine for me). So you really shouldn't be settling for less if it ends up being in the same price range.

He's not trying to undercut the price of the summed values of each component.  He's selling it as a whole.  If you want to buy those components and build the PC yourself, then do it and stop whining that he should adhere to your expectations.

Unless I'm missing something, you're also discounting all of the peripherals that he mentioned (including a LCD monitor) and the preinstalled OS (which is a legal copy of XP, I assume).

Who said anything about him getting rich?  I just don't think he should sell it for such a low price.

Simple really, because I know him and the ability to get something premade has an added value to me(note that I'm not willing to pay for it) and if I'm going to go elsewhere then I'll definitely be getting different hardware.

I wasn't including any peripherals, I assumed he was going to get rid of some of them seperately. I just wanted the tower.

Alas, its all capitalism, I want things for cheap and you're interfering with my attempts to drive the price down!

I understand the subjectivity associated with something's worth... I think you're being pedantic.

You're offering $90 for a computer when he could almost certainly get at least double that.

You're being silly again. :S

Why should he be able to get double that? I just quoted prices for pretty much everything it has. The cost of the motherboard and cd drive is probably neglible, which leaves the case. so perhaps I can see $110 for the whole system but not much more than that. I think I even over valued the RAM.

Besides, the goal isn't for him to get rich, the goal is for me to get a good deal :p Although he doesn't really seem to care and hasn't even offered a counter-offer so I guess he doesn't want to get rid of it that badly.

Seriously, that's just being silly.

The term "worth" in this case obviously means the most reasonable amount (on both ends) he could sell it for.

Not necessarily. Say I've got a 486 that I paid $1,000 for way back when, its worth to me might be a lot higher than its actual worth. Thats realistically the case with a lot of computer hardware these days.

Given that I can buy an equivilent processor on ebay for $1-10, the ram can be had for $14/512 stick, the video card is about $15, the HD for about $15, then he gets $8 for the effort of having put it together. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

I'd still say its easily worth more than $90, though. :P

Depends, its worth to me is $90. I guess its worth to Trust is more than that..

I spent more than that just on RAM/case/cooling upgrades 2 months ago.

I think I might try eBay or the newspaper.

Uh huh, and now its used so those parts are worth significantly less.