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I just built two new identical systems for home.. one for my wife and one for me. Each box cost approximately $3800, a bit less than we paid for a 500Mhz G4 Titanium Powerbook w/512mb RAM.

The quick specs:

Lian Li PC60 aluminum case w/window & light kit
300W Sparkle power supply
Tyan Tiger MP S2460 w/dual 1.2Ghz Athlon MP's
Agilent Articoolers for the CPUs
512MB ECC reg. PC2100
Matrox G550 32MB DDR AGP dual
Samsung SyncMaster 170T (x2 per machine)
Seagate Barracuda III ATA100 7200rpm (30gb)
Toshiba 16X IDE DVD-ROM
Netgear FA310-TX
SB Live 5.1

Now, we already had speakers from our previous systems (both sets are Altec Lansing, mine is the ADA880 which supports AC3, surround, etc.).

Reading over some of the comments in this article, I agree completely that SCSI is still the best choice, but for pure desktop systems, it's sheer overkill (unless you are lucky enough to have IBM donating $15k so you can afford at least one drive). And in this case, they left out fibre channel and/or solid state drives. I mean come on! Our previous desktops were all SCSI, but I chose the IDE route again this time, mostly because the type of stuff we do on our desktops is not so I/O intensive as to cause problems. ATA100 is decent as long as you tweak it, but you have to buy the right kind of drive(s). Personally, I've found that Seagate drives are reliable in this regard (others may disagree, just note this is my personal preference and I recommend you pick whatever you feel comfortable with). Also, note that the Tyan Thunder board requires the huge 450W power supply, and it's not a standard ATX connector. The Tyan Tiger MP is the same exact board as the Thunder without all the built-in stuff (for me, built-in stuff is a major no-no for a desktop box as it makes it much harder to upgrade for the future), and it uses standard ATX power connectors. You do still need to be careful about the power supply you pick, though.

So, with our new desktops, I'll tie in what I was getting at above. If you're buying/building the ultimate box to be a standalone, multi-purpose, server and desktop box.. stop reading now. I dunno about everyone else, but I can't settle for that. My desktop is for desktop tasks. I have other systems on my LAN to do the various server related tasks that compliment my desktop system (i.e I try to spread the money around)

I won't go into real specifics here, but I'm not a Linux bigot. I'm a sysadmin, and I think every OS has a niche (well, maybe not all of them.. I'm a UNIX bigot). So with that in mind, I use FreeBSD for our dedicated firewall/router/wireless gateway, Solaris x86 for our NFS, NIS/LDAP, backup server (it's all SCSI with mirrored system and home storage disks), and Debian Linux for our media server, desktops, and home beowulf cluster. Our one Powerbook tri-boots MacOS 9.2.1, MacOS X 10.1, and Linux.

Anyway, the point is that an ultimate desktop box is all well and good, but I think anyone that goes out in search of the end-all, be-all holy grail standalone box is in for a disappointment down the road. And besides.. there is only so much fun you can have with one machine.

Check out our image gallery for pics and stuff.

Second, everyone saying you get what you pay for is on the mark. However, there is no company anywhere on the planet that can guarantee you 24/7/365/life connectivity for any amount of money, no matter what they say. It comes down to what level of service you can live with, and accepting the fact that there will always be problems at some point.

I have worked for several ISPs. I've dealt with ILECs and CLECs. I can tell you that your best bet for DSL service is to find an ILEC or CLEC that offers DSL directly (i.e try to cut out as many of the middlemen as possible). The trick to this is finding one that has a "fair" acceptible use policy in regards to home LANs, VPNs, personal servers, etc.

With my current DSL service in Chicago (PhoenixDSL is the ISP, NorthPoint is the CLEC, Ameritech is the ILEC), I am caught up in the middleman game. Phoenix is a decent (read: semi-responsive) provider, but when there are problems the only people I can bitch at is them. I can't go to NorthPoint or Ameritech directly, but instead have to get Phoenix to complain on my behalf. And let me just say that an ISP in their situation only has so much pull with the CLEC (given that the CLEC is what enables them to do business in the first place.) The ILECs and CLECs generally do not cooperate with one another, since they are the competition. Finding an ILEC or CLEC who offers DSL directly gives you slightly more control -- when you call them, they can't point the finger at the other guy.

Finally, take the suggestion of another poster. Take lots of detailed notes. Be a jerk in the sense that you don't let anyone push you around. At the same time though, remember that your $40-50/mo. plan works out to roughly $1.50 a day. So unless you're down for a month or are explictly paying for better service (i.e business class with an SLA), keep in mind that the initial person you're yelling at on the other end of the phone isn't responsible for your problems.

The system does run pretty hot (makes a very nice hand warmer in the winter). It's about the equivalent speed of a Pentium 90/100. It's currently running Red Hat 5.2 and is being used as an NFS server for mounting home dirs on the LAN, but I'm going to convert it to a dedicated web/database intranet server. Ocassionally I run rc5 and seti on it, although it's a dog of course. :)

Has anyone gotten the PCMCIA slots to work? It would be useful if I could put in a 10/100Mbit PCMCIA ethernet card. If you have, what's your experience with performance/problems?

While not directly related to this person's unfortunate incident, I have been keeping a log of my @Home service and have it published here. If you already have a cable-modem, or are planning on purchasing cable-modem service, chances are good that you want to read this. I have submitted this to /. as a frontpage story... it will be interesting to see if it makes it.