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Their site doesn't work anymore, but you can still go to their physical store and buy electronics that vaporizes after a few uses !

Exactly, you can slap an ULV Phenom or Athlon X4 together with some ECC RAM and a RAID and tada! Instant SMB server, does all the jobs we used to get the mini boxes for and its a hell of a lot cheaper and less power hungry.

What amazes me is there is soooo much money lying on the table for the PC OEMs to just pick up, but they aren't picking it up. What am I talking about? what's making me damned good money right now,HTPCs and home media applications. Folks are getting sick of the ARM based one trick ponies that they find some of their sites won't play on,the browser becomes out of date or the thing stops getting supported and it quickly becomes a hunk of useless plastic to them. Thanks to the blessing that is HDMI its beyond butt simple to plug a PC into a TV, they can have a full size wireless keyboard mouse or one of those Lenovo excellent one hand PC remotes and tada! A one stop shop that can stream, be a media tank for the whole house, hell slap a $70 card (I recommend the HD7750, nearly the same speed as the HD6850 at less than half the power and heat) and you'll be rocking your games in glorious 1080P in no time, with your choice of controller. Hell with Steam having Big Picture mode and a few tweaks to WMC and its the easiest to use system you've ever seen, I've got customers with little kids that can just grab the remote and be rocking their Plants Vs Zombies or watch their favorite Disney movies at the click of a button.

But most folks don't know how easy it is now,they think its like the bad old days with S-Video and the PITA setups and having to have some insanely huge fan blasting box sitting there just to have an HTPC when nothing can be farther from the truth. If all they want is the casual game and surfing they can get a slick mini that looks great under the set or if they want to game i can take something like this quad core which by itself frankly looks good next to the set (I've had several that looked at the case and decided to just keep it instead of having me go for the HTPC box) and just have me slap it into one of the mini cases or for some reason this one seems to be REAL popular, probably because it looks great on its side and gives them plenty of USB ports.

So if they want to sell more PCs and laptops frankly they need to be putting out some ads showing folks just how easy it is to integrate a PC or laptop into an entertainment center. Once folks see how easy it is to add a living room PC they tell their friends, who tell their friends, next thing you know your moving 10 HTPCs for every office or gamer box. Folks just love having everything at their fingertips and an HTPC with a couple of TB of space lets them have that, VERY cool and an easy sell IMHO.

If you have the Internet Hoss you are a good 90% of the way there. As I said there are plenty of old tech guys like me that are happy to steer folks in the right direction, hell advice is free. And you don't have to DIY, just grab a pre-built Systemmax and there ya go. And frankly the only reason i know the chip names is I like reading about chip tech, its just easier to say Bobcat than E300-E1300 or Thuban instead of 10xx T 6 core series.

But let us say for the sake of argument you were my customer and wanted an HTPC that would look snazzy and game. For a case I'd have you pick one from a couple of choices so you can choose something you thought looked purty. Now if you just wanted the casual stuff, more HT than game? Then here ya go, a dual core Bobcat (FYI Bobcat is similar to Atom but with slightly more powerful CPU and a MUCH more powerful GPU, perfect for media boxes and casual gaming) and it even comes with the cute case and the RAM. Of course if you were an actual customer I'd know the price instead of having to make rough guesses, but either one of these would game nicely and I would tell you if you ONLY wanted to game the Athlon would probably make you VERY happy,my youngest is gaming on that chip as we speak, or if you want to be able to game AND transcode video or burn DVDs? Then the X6 naturally has more punch. With prices that low you can sell the case you don't need on Craigslist and save yourself even more money, I would usually give $20-$25 off the build if it came with a case they didn't want as I can always use nice cases.

And then it'd simply be a matter of picking a graphics card and slapping on the OS, neither one is hard. If you want cheap with good performance the HD4850 is dirt cheap and will do most games at med-high to high, if you don't mind spending a little more up front to save on your electric bill the HD7770 cards use 40% less power under load and the 77xx cards has the new "deep idle" where it will shut down the majority of the card when you are saying chatting or surfing which lowers the power to something like 16w, which for a gaming card is just crazy low.

But honestly any teenager that can read can build one of these, like I said they comes with pictures and a step by step how-to with the board and the case. Total build time if you aren't in a rush? About an hour and a half, two and a half if you've never done one and triple check everything. I've whipped off four in a day and i'm not speedy. Once you slap the parts in you just fire her up and stick in the OS disc, after that its all "clicky clicky" simple. Then install steam and get to gaming Hoss, if you got the parts at 4PM there is no reason why you couldn't be firing up a game before 8PM and again that is with you taking your time, you use something like Ninite to install the third party software and you can be gaming by 6:30 PM. And notice they not only have browser, AVs, and runtimes like Flash but the have Steam as well so you can just check the boxes to everything you want and it'll do all the work, couldn't be simpler.

If you have the Internet Hoss you are a good 90% of the way there. As I said there are plenty of old tech guys like me that are happy to steer folks in the right direction, hell advice is free. And you don't have to DIY, just grab a pre-built Systemmax and there ya go. And frankly the only reason i know the chip names is I like reading about chip tech, its just easier to say Bobcat than E300-E1300 or Thuban instead of 10xx T 6 core series.

But let us say for the sake of argument you were my customer and wanted an HTPC that would look snazzy and game. For a case I'd have you pick one from a couple of choices so you can choose something you thought looked purty. Now if you just wanted the casual stuff, more HT than game? Then here ya go, a dual core Bobcat (FYI Bobcat is similar to Atom but with slightly more powerful CPU and a MUCH more powerful GPU, perfect for media boxes and casual gaming) and it even comes with the cute case and the RAM. Of course if you were an actual customer I'd know the price instead of having to make rough guesses, but either one of these would game nicely and I would tell you if you ONLY wanted to game the Athlon would probably make you VERY happy,my youngest is gaming on that chip as we speak, or if you want to be able to game AND transcode video or burn DVDs? Then the X6 naturally has more punch. With prices that low you can sell the case you don't need on Craigslist and save yourself even more money, I would usually give $20-$25 off the build if it came with a case they didn't want as I can always use nice cases.

And then it'd simply be a matter of picking a graphics card and slapping on the OS, neither one is hard. If you want cheap with good performance the HD4850 is dirt cheap and will do most games at med-high to high, if you don't mind spending a little more up front to save on your electric bill the HD7770 cards use 40% less power under load and the 77xx cards has the new "deep idle" where it will shut down the majority of the card when you are saying chatting or surfing which lowers the power to something like 16w, which for a gaming card is just crazy low.

But honestly any teenager that can read can build one of these, like I said they comes with pictures and a step by step how-to with the board and the case. Total build time if you aren't in a rush? About an hour and a half, two and a half if you've never done one and triple check everything. I've whipped off four in a day and i'm not speedy. Once you slap the parts in you just fire her up and stick in the OS disc, after that its all "clicky clicky" simple. Then install steam and get to gaming Hoss, if you got the parts at 4PM there is no reason why you couldn't be firing up a game before 8PM and again that is with you taking your time, you use something like Ninite to install the third party software and you can be gaming by 6:30 PM. And notice they not only have browser, AVs, and runtimes like Flash but the have Steam as well so you can just check the boxes to everything you want and it'll do all the work, couldn't be simpler.

First of all YOU get to choose what case you want, if you want an ultra slim case? get a shuttle, its YOUR choice, not one size fits all. I chose that system because as someone who actually BUILDS HTPCs I've found that most folks? Honestly like the new black cases, they usually come with silver or red accents and look quite spiffy. You can of course turn it on your side if that is what melts your butter, or there are several companies that make HTPC cases that look like everything from a VCR to a Mac Mini, again YOUR choice so if you don't like my taste in cases? Cases start at around $22 at geeks, personally I like this one as it looks really nice sitting straight or on its side, kinda like an Xbox.

Second...driver updates? Seriously? does ANYBODY do that anymore? this is like Linux users saying "Windows has daily BSODs!" because they haven't actually used a Windows machine since Win98. I'll tell you the same thing I tell my customers, if it ain't broke? DON'T FIX IT. Unless you are using some weird exotic hardware its really pointless, i haven't seen a non GPU update that gave so much as a single FPS in performance and Steam will now tell you "Hi, you have a graphics card update, would you like me to apply it?" and that is that, hell it doesn't even need a reboot anymore so you can just surf for a minute or two while it installs, so that is a non argument.

as for those "other reasons" it all basically boils down to used games which guess what? MSFT and Sony are killing with the new consoles! Aren't they just doubleplus smart? I know I've built 3 HTPCs in the past 2 months for folks that heard about the killing of used games and said "Well screw that". As for price? Actually...yes they ARE that cheap, in fact I know of which I speak because both of my boys game so I usually buy games 3 at a time. In fact the only problem we've had, if you want to call it a problem, is that during the sales they have 4 packs discounted so heavily (probably for exactly the reason you bring up) that its cheaper for me to buy the 4 pack when we only need 3, but I just give the fourth to one of the boys and let them gift it to one of their online friends, no biggie. During the Xmas sale I spent MAYBE $150 and we ended up with so many AAA titles that I honestly haven't even played a third of what we bought yet, oh the curse of having so many cheap AAA titles...its soooo hard LOL. And the MP is beyond simple, its just "Hey you wanna play?" and there ya go. I'm taking the weekend off thanks to getting a dose of strep and I just got done handing out a pile of loot in Borderlands to the boys, took less than 3 minutes for all 3 of us to be in game. I seem to have a knack for finding rare loot and they suck at it so I've maxxed my bank out and just pass out the good stuff i don't need to the boys. If you haven't tried it? Its really fun. I'm hoping BL2 will be on a Steam sale soon so I can pick up 3 copies so we can jump into together like we did with BL1.

Finally as for BPM and needing devs...why? You want the easiest way to drive around without a controller? BAM! You're welcome. If you have a wife or GF they will love the hell out of you for getting it, the keyboard is instantly familiar to those that do a lot of cell texting so they can just fly on it. After getting one one of my customers is getting ready to have me build him ANOTHER HTPC for his den because his wife put her little hands on that controller and that was it, she is tweeting and FB updating and just flies on the thing, she loves the hell out of it. Notice the trackball under your thumb, that plus the left and right triggers under your first and second finger mans that this and a wireless controller and its just the same as a console only better. After al

First of all YOU get to choose what case you want, if you want an ultra slim case? get a shuttle, its YOUR choice, not one size fits all. I chose that system because as someone who actually BUILDS HTPCs I've found that most folks? Honestly like the new black cases, they usually come with silver or red accents and look quite spiffy. You can of course turn it on your side if that is what melts your butter, or there are several companies that make HTPC cases that look like everything from a VCR to a Mac Mini, again YOUR choice so if you don't like my taste in cases? Cases start at around $22 at geeks, personally I like this one as it looks really nice sitting straight or on its side, kinda like an Xbox.

Second...driver updates? Seriously? does ANYBODY do that anymore? this is like Linux users saying "Windows has daily BSODs!" because they haven't actually used a Windows machine since Win98. I'll tell you the same thing I tell my customers, if it ain't broke? DON'T FIX IT. Unless you are using some weird exotic hardware its really pointless, i haven't seen a non GPU update that gave so much as a single FPS in performance and Steam will now tell you "Hi, you have a graphics card update, would you like me to apply it?" and that is that, hell it doesn't even need a reboot anymore so you can just surf for a minute or two while it installs, so that is a non argument.

as for those "other reasons" it all basically boils down to used games which guess what? MSFT and Sony are killing with the new consoles! Aren't they just doubleplus smart? I know I've built 3 HTPCs in the past 2 months for folks that heard about the killing of used games and said "Well screw that". As for price? Actually...yes they ARE that cheap, in fact I know of which I speak because both of my boys game so I usually buy games 3 at a time. In fact the only problem we've had, if you want to call it a problem, is that during the sales they have 4 packs discounted so heavily (probably for exactly the reason you bring up) that its cheaper for me to buy the 4 pack when we only need 3, but I just give the fourth to one of the boys and let them gift it to one of their online friends, no biggie. During the Xmas sale I spent MAYBE $150 and we ended up with so many AAA titles that I honestly haven't even played a third of what we bought yet, oh the curse of having so many cheap AAA titles...its soooo hard LOL. And the MP is beyond simple, its just "Hey you wanna play?" and there ya go. I'm taking the weekend off thanks to getting a dose of strep and I just got done handing out a pile of loot in Borderlands to the boys, took less than 3 minutes for all 3 of us to be in game. I seem to have a knack for finding rare loot and they suck at it so I've maxxed my bank out and just pass out the good stuff i don't need to the boys. If you haven't tried it? Its really fun. I'm hoping BL2 will be on a Steam sale soon so I can pick up 3 copies so we can jump into together like we did with BL1.

Finally as for BPM and needing devs...why? You want the easiest way to drive around without a controller? BAM! You're welcome. If you have a wife or GF they will love the hell out of you for getting it, the keyboard is instantly familiar to those that do a lot of cell texting so they can just fly on it. After getting one one of my customers is getting ready to have me build him ANOTHER HTPC for his den because his wife put her little hands on that controller and that was it, she is tweeting and FB updating and just flies on the thing, she loves the hell out of it. Notice the trackball under your thumb, that plus the left and right triggers under your first and second finger mans that this and a wireless controller and its just the same as a console only better. After al

Well if you go to StarMicro you can get the 5600+ X2 for $58, that is a 2.9GHz and is probably the cheapest you are gonna get with enough speed to do basic gaming.

That said if it were me I'd get this Biostar board for $35 as it supports 16GB of DDR 3 and up to an 1100T X6 CPU, add a cheap CPU like Phenom II 3GHz dual core until you can afford to grab an X4 or even better an X6 (the 1035T and 1045T are both great values and can be found in the $100 range) and finally add a cheap 2GB or 4GB stick of DDR 3.

If you used the rest of the guts of your old system for around $100 you would have a new system with PLENTY of upgrade potential down the line. I personally game on an X6 and see no reason in the near future to even think about getting anything else as turbocore gives me a fast triple for single threaded games and of course I have 6 cores when I need to do heavy lifting, its a great chip. And this way you'd have a core system that has plenty of headroom for adding RAM or a faster chip without breaking your wallet.

for about the same amount of money you can get a AM3 chip. It will work in a AM2 / 2+ system (but check with your montherboard maker first!)

80 bucks gets you a 3.2Ghz Phenom II quad core
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=HDZ955FBK4DGM-BP&cat=CPU

currently I am using a Phenom II tri core at 2.8Ghz with a GTS250 on a motherboard that is AM2+, but is "AM3 ready" whatever that means and it did make a noticable improvement, but not "OMFG punch your momma" improvement over the 2.5Ghz X2 I was using... just enough to smooth out many jitters

All I can give you is my own experience at the shop, as I don't think anybody actually tracks the number of PCs in the living room but I can tell you since HDMI became standard on graphics cards I've seen a pretty damned big uptick in sales of PCs for the living room, in fact its my second most popular build after office systems.

But that is why its gonna be hard to come up with concrete figures as frankly ANY PC can be plugged into a TV in seconds now, HDMI is pretty much everywhere. Hell even my netbook does 1080P over HDMI and its honestly been awhile since i found a board that didn't come with HDMI output. As for me since geeks has cards that fit any budget and it doesn't take that much horse to play the games most folks want to play most of my customers are going ahead and adding a discrete to their new build, for the longest time it was the HD4850 as those cards were monsters and dirt cheap but now its starting to lean more the 67xx and 77xx cards.

But I'd say Valve has been pretty good at promoting big picture mode and pointing out how easy it is to just hook the PC to the TV and with the hardware being cheap and plentiful a lot of folks are catching on that it isn't a big deal to just plug straight into the PC. Honestly its an easy sale, all I have to do at the shop is show them how Windows Media Center has all my ripped movies in a nice easy to flip through library with box art and synopsis and follow it up with firing up Just Cause II or Batman AC and letting them see how smooth they look and its "Hey I want MY PC to do that!" Cha ching, easy sale.

Allow me to make your day.

Then you should have asked old Hairy as you just didn't know what to look for. If you were my customer I'd ask "What do you want it to do?" and could easily tailor a quiet or even completely noise free system to your requirements. If all you are wanting is a standard noise free HTPC that does 1080P I'd recommend this E350 kit as it has but a single tiny fan on the CPU and is quiet as a churchmouse, and is quite easy to customize to what you want it to do. I'd put a 2GB or 4GB stick along with a 1TB HDD and then its up to you whether you want BD or DVD.

Having built several of these systems I can tell you that it blows a WD Live away, as long as you use fast memory (I recommend the 1333 over the 1066) you can play quite a few games on it, I've personally run L4D, Portal 1 & 2 and Torchlight 1 & 2 on one, and if you want even more power and the ability to play the latest games frankly it isn't hard to slap a Zalman silent on an Athlon or Phenom X4, you simply can't use the mini VCR case due to the size of the heatsink. I've found most of my customers don't really care about the mini VCR case when they see they can have something like this that looks quite stylish sitting next to the TV table, but again if you want to do heavy gaming one will have to put up with a fan or spend more on silent coolers, its all a trade off.

But at the end of the day you really need to look at how long the unit will last, I have a couple of customers that have first gen Athlon X2s I built HTPCs around and they are still happy more than 6 years later, all I did was up the storage when they started running low and as drive prices dropped. and unlike the consoles or smart TVs they can still surf the latest websites, use the latest software, watch flash no problem, its really not hard to build a quiet HTPC with just a little thought beforehand.

the CPU, GPU, and even RAM need the room freed up to get air past them.

Not true at all. The airflow is limited by the size of intakes and exhaust ports... Any volume larger than that is wasted.

Servers that used to be 3-4U are now 2U, or even 1U. Manufacturers have long since switched from ATX to microATX, and even a decade ago were aggressively pursuing smaller form factors: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SAMBA845GV-PB-2R&cat=SYS

Lay out your motherboard on a table, then stick a 3" (for 92mm) or 4" (for 120mm) duct from the CPU to the exhaust, and that's all the space you need. Cases are larger because we can't lay a DVD-Burner sideways and assume the mobo wont have huge capacitors sticking up from there...

Right now there are only three or four architectures that delivers some punch, x86, ARM, Sparc and Itanium. But the last is only alive due to HP and Sparc is kept alive by Oracle so far.

Among those you missed are Power / PowerPC and
MIPS.

MIPS is very-much alive, thanks to China. They're actively developing home-grown MIPS CPUs, and paying license fees to MIPS as well. MIPS CPUs have always had higher DMIPS/MHz than ARM CPUs, and generally compete with PowerPC in the embedded space for anything needing a good bit of performance.

Cheap MIPS chips in China mean lots of inexpensive products are coming out with MIPS CPUs in them, such as the Alpha 400 and the Novo7

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ALPHA-400

http://www.mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/12/06/0359235/sub-100-android-40-tablet-coming-soon

POWER will be around for a good long time... IBM isn't willing to let their own platform and cash-cow go away, and they've sunk enough money into it to keep it highly competitive. PowerPC will likely be around a good long time as well... Freescale has quite a focus on their PowerPC chips, and their performance is damn respectable.

SPARC has a bigger customer base than Oracle. Hitachi will probably keep making them no matter what. They've made supercomputers out of them, and they can scale down to embedded applications quite easily.

Itanium is an interesting case... Everybody but HP who jumped onto Intel's 64-bit CPU has died a painful death (see: SGI). Their proprietary systems all require Itanium CPUs, with no sign of HP-UX, Tru64, OpenVMS, etc., being ported to any other architecture. This even though Intel deperately wants to kill off the architecture. HP has killed off all their proprietary CPU lines, and ported their software to Itantium with immense effort, so I don't see where they can go from here. ARM sure doesn't have the horsepower for high-end servers, and switching to x64 would eat their proprietary hardware margins, and probably make them a joke... SPARC and POWER seem like the only possible options, sort of resurrecting DEC's Alpha CPUs. It would be incredibly ironic.

Ya know, I really can't blame ya there. I have a perfectly working B&W G3 sitting in the closet in the shop...runs Panther or something, haven't checked in awhile, that I am keeping just for that beautiful case. I figure I'll rewire the PSU (I hear you have to swap a couple of lines) and put an AMD E350 miniboard in it and make it into an artsy fartsy office box. Say what you will about Apple but you just gotta love their cases, so pretty.

If you don't mind a little advice geeks has a Liano quad for $96 which you could pair with a cheap FM1 board and it would probably fit that case great. Too big for my B&W but those Power macs had more room and that would give you a nice quad with GPU for dirt cheap, and of course that sweet case to put it in.

Well,
if I was living anywhere geeks.com delivers to, I'd consider the HD 4770 for $38. http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=7120674000G-CO&cat=VCD
Almost as fast but a bit easier on the power consumption. According to Wikipedia the HD 4770 is already in 40nm and it shows in the TDP, only 80W vs. 110W.

BTW I find it amazing that the 4xxx series is still sold new. I'd have guessed that production stopped years ago.

Plus you can get the HD4850 Lonewolf, which STILL just chews through games like Just Cause II, Cryisis 1&2 and Saints Row 3 for just $40 new and that's for 800 stream processors, a 256bit pipe, and easy OCing in Catalyst if you want to bump it up even higher. I have one exactly like the pic and it came from the shop with a "turbo boost" setting of 625Mhz GPU/993MHz memory over the stock 500/750 and since this only kicks in when i'm slamming the card it runs quite nicely without getting insanely hot.

So if you'd like a pretty damned powerful GPU for just dirt cheap i'd highly recommend. As I said I put me and both my boys on these, they tear through the latest games at our monitors 1600x900 with plenty of bling and just $40? Hell you can't even buy a halfass midrange card for that, its a no brainer.

I gotta second that, I picked up HD4850s for me and my boys when they dropped below $70, they can now be had for just $40 and at the 1600x900 our 22 inch monitors run natively they play all the new games at high to medium high settings and never drop below 30FPS. Just Cause II, Deus Ex HR, Crysis 1&2, all look great and play great which considering you can pick these babies up for just $40 makes gaming just dirt cheap.

As for TFA the problem isn't the GPU, its the memory bandwidth that is crippling the units. I have an E350 netbook and just switching my netbook's memory from the 1066 it came with to 1333MHz gave it a kick in the pants and going to the forums they all talk about how slapping in the absolute fastest memory it will take and even OCing the memory helps, this is because both AMD and Intel just haven't figured out how to feed the IGPs enough system memory at a fast enough speed to really keep those GPUs fed.

Look at it this way...if you had the fastest GPU in the world but it only had 16Mb of memory, what good would it be? having all those cores really doesn't help when it has to fight with the CPU for memory. Maybe they should do like the old "Turbocache" Nvidia cards and have a small, say 128Mb-512Mb, of dedicated memory bolted on right next to the CPU using HyperTransport and then have the system memory feed into that. because as it is its not the GPUs that are holding these back, its the memory bandwidth that is starving the chips.

Where are schools able to buy identically configured old used computer hardware that is still healthy enough for prolonged student use [...] for everyone to have one at $25 a pop,

There are a number of suppliers of off-lease computer equipment. I've deployed hundreds of them for large companies... A classroom worth is a small order. You'd have to tell me where you are located for me to come up with a list of specific distributors near you.

Just to prove the validity of the point (for an international audience) a reasonably close qualifier would be the P4 Samba from geeks.com: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=SAMBA845V-24-4-R

and small enough that it doesn't take up half the classroom [...] while consuming a fraction of the power usage from traditional machines?

That's a nice little logical-fallacy you've got there... Setting the goal-posts so nothing but a Pi equivalent will match. Sorry, but no. The monitors attached to a Pi aren't going to be any smaller than the monitors attached to a PC, nor will those same monitors use any more or less electricity... And while PCs will consume more power than a Pi, it's probably overshadowed by the power usage of those monitors, and if not, electricity is cheap enough in the first-world to make it a non-issue for running PCs a few hours a day.

Why would students need expandability for such a learning device? [...] What performance critical code are students going to be running

For EVERYTHING THEY DO. Computers are boring if they just light-up the screen and browse the internet. During my school years, we had PCs with EXPENSIVE analog-digital capture cards, allowing the PCs to be used for all kinds of lab work. Software-defined radio is also a great subject to learn about.

I'm also fond of wiring things like solenoids off serial ports to turn power outlets on and off, or interfacing with Arduinos and other embedded systems.

I think your statement is also irrelevant to be honest.

That there's something cheaper that can do everything the Pi can, and many things it can't, is irrelevant HOW? If a Pi isn't about the hardware being open, then it needs to be better than other computing devices in some objective ways. Lower power is all you've got, and that's not worth much.

Meh if you just want to throw a few more cores to some project throw you together a cheapie with an AMD low power from Starmicro. I've been buying from them for years, great guys and if you keep an eye on their site you can get some crazy deals. I was buying AMD Phenom I low power quads for $40 a pop and now they have the X3 unlockables for $48, cheap prices. That way you can just throw the box in the corner and let it do its thing 24/7/365 and not slow down your main machine.

As far as GPUs? The place you want to keep an eye out on is Geeks as their refurb GPUs are often crazy cheap. Again been buying from them for years, no hassles. If you ever have a problem with either site just give them a call and they fix it quick, great guys. With 2 teen boys that also game I have to try to keep us close to parity which triple everything adds up pretty quick. The HD4850s they are selling are dirt cheap, just blow through all the games we throw at 'em and the drivers are solid and mature. We'll run 'em for another year and then I'll get the 6770s or 6850s and make my money back on the 4850s off of CL.

Simple friend, a combo of Tiger kits and Steam selling multiple copies dirt cheap. Hell during the last sale I got me AND both boys Saints row 3, all three copies were less than $50 together, and that's probably the most expensive MP game we've ever bought. Frankly it would have been cheaper but the boys wanted all the silly DLC, I only got the Genki Bowl and a couple of the weapon packs.

As you can see you can get a monster PC for $340, they also got a quad with 8Gb for $315 but since my oldest has been doing good in college my dad decided to treat him to a 6 core while I gave my quad to the youngest and built a 6 core for myself about 6 months ago. Just go to Geeks to get a cheap refurb gaming card for each unit (We went with the HD4850s and love 'em, but you can decide what works best for you and yours) and finally a family pack of Windows 7 for around $100 online and voila! Multiple gaming PCs on the cheap. If you don't mind dealing with rebates you can get black edition quad kits for $250 which will shave another $90 or so off the price, more than enough to cover 2 of the HD4850s or to get something a little faster.

In any case between the Steam midweek madness sales and the weekend sales and the big twice a year sales frankly you and your kids will be ass deep in killer games for frankly less than the cost of a single copy of most AAA titles. As a bonus with a nice cheap 20 inch monitor a piece the PC is also their school PC, their entertainment center, their jukebox, and with having fast multicore chips frankly they should be able to game on them for years and years with nothing more than swapping those $50 HD4850s for another $50 card a year and a half or so from now. As it is the boys blast through SR 3, L4D I & II, TF2, all our games run with plenty of bling and zero skipping or lag. And with Steam playing a game with them is as easy as popping up a chat window and saying "Hey are one of you up for some gaming?" and away we go.

You really should try it, its so much nicer. No more fighting over the TV, no more arguments over what anyone is gonna play, many of their friends are now on Steam too (after the boys bragged how cheap I could build computers it wasn't long before their friend's dads gave me a call) and its as hassle free as can be. Plus you just can't beat the selection, tons of free MMOs, plenty of cheap shooters and sandbox games, platformers, there are so many great cheap games on the PC that there is no way we can play 'em all and its really cheaper than the consoles in the long run. And don't worry if you've never built a PC before, these new designs are so simple they literally come with pictures.

Well I recently plugged in a desktop that had been sitting abandoned in a warehouse since 1993 and while the CMOS battery was of course toast it certainly didn't damage the unit and it booted right up...Windows 2 was on the machine and I have to say THAT was a trip back in time. You don't realize how much things have changed until you fire one of those old monsters back up, remember how LOUD the hard drives were then? i had gotten so used to silent drives it took me a minute to realize it was that big old clunky HDD making all that noise.

As for something to throw in there I figure space will probably be at a premium so I'd throw in a pad like this along with the power supply and a ton of pics on a microSD card. this way you'll be able to laugh at how primitive the tablets were plus have an easy way to show everyone all the pics you've taken on the MicroSD. You can include a message from everyone to their "future selves' on the MicroSD which will be fun to look back on then as a nice bonus.

Actually if you had simply gone to Phoronix or any other Linux news site they would have told you that they are currently up to the HD5xxx and the work has slowed since they are now also working to support the new APUs since they are putting out a lot of those in laptops, which are naturally more in demand right now than discretes.

Rome wasn't built in a day friend, and frankly if you are wanting to run hardware THAT new WTF are you doing in Linux anyway? Its not like any of the games currently on Linux is gonna benefit from a SI chip, at least not until Valve get Steam out for Linux. Instead I would go over to Geeks and pick up either the HD5450 or if you want more power the HD3870 X2. Both cards are well supported now and from what I've read the FOSS drivers up to the 6xxx series have been running nicely.

Sign up for the Tiger emails friend if you are looking for a laptop, they have been having some pretty crazy sales on AMD Fusion powered systems, such as An Aspire Quad for $400 without MIRs which if I wasn't already happy with my E350 EEE netbook I would be sorely tempted, thanks to turbocore those units can ramp up pretty decently when you are using only one or two thread and that unit has dual graphics, with both a discrete and the fusion APU, nice.

And I can tell you that on the Windows front i was right there with you, ATI made great hardware but their software and drivers were just fucking TERRIBLE, they had the damned driver GUI tied to .NET of all things so if there was a problem you had to wonder, was it an ATI problem, was it a .NET problem, just a fucking mess but when AMD bought ATI and Nvidia burned me with bumpgate I can say the drivers became solid as a rock and the bang for the buck is just nuts. So I can't tell you on the Linux side other than when firing up the latest live CDs it all seems to "just work" on both my HD3xxx IGP and my HD4850 discrete, videos play smooth and the picture sharp.

Look if it were me, you got a desktop, right? Go over to Geeks or Tiger and pick up a really cheap AMD graphics card and see how she goes. I've seen low end HD5xxx going for about $20 on Tiger and Geeks has an HD4770 for $43 and an HD3870 X2 for $63. Any of those cards should give you a good taste of what you'd be looking at if you went AMD and if it doesn't work as you'd like you're not really out nothing, just throw it back in the box and send it back or sell it on Craigslist. Here is a 5450 for $22 which at that price its not gonna be any big risk to your wallet. All I can tell you is what Phoronix has been saying which is the FOSS drivers are coming up by leaps and bounds and most of the distros are supporting both the discrete and the Fusions pretty well now.

Question: Why would you run the HD5550 at home when the HD4850 is only $53? I mean you look at the numbers and the HD4850 just curb stomps the HD5550 and geeks has them brand new for $53 and has had them at that price for ages. Until the 58xx and 68xx drop down to sub $70 I'll be recommending the HD4850s as they really do crank out the graphics. BTW this is the same model both myself and both of my boys have and i can tell you they are GREAT cards, they accelerate just about any major format of video, play games with plenty of detail, the amount of raw power you get with those cards is just nuts.

So if you are running crazy resolutions like that you'd probably be happier with the HD4850 as having 800 stream processors and a 256bit pipe you can keep that baby pretty well pumping when it comes to graphics.

What about those of us who bought an iMac because of its form factor?

I wanted Unix under there, but I also wanted to be able to unplug it from the wall and box it up in under 2 minutes (its box has a carrying handle) so I can move it easily between places.

So your criteria was portable unix box, and it was the handle of an iMac that sold you? making any computer case mobile is a $5 investment. Plenty of systems are just as mobile as an iMac and way cheaper. You sound like a hipster desperately looking for something to justify himself by.

Sorry friend but you missed it, as I'm sure he was talking about "pre-flood" pricing. About a month before the flood i bought up some Samsung EcoGreens (Really great drives BTW, the big cache makes up for the lower RPM and they run really cool) and I paid $60 each for the 2Tb and $35 each for the 1Tb and now good luck on even finding the 2Tb and the 1Tb is $95 for a refurb or $147 new which is frankly just nuts. I'm just glad i kept 6Tb for myself before selling the rest to my customers as I'd hate like hell to have to buy drives now. I got a few sub 400Gb SATA and IDE drives i'm saving for customers that have one die and I'm gonna try to ride it out as best I can.

That said if you HAVE to buy a drive right now I'd look into snatching an EcoGreen before they are all gone. in my own tests I've found nothing but the perpendicular drives with 32Mb of cache or better beats 'em and the temp difference is well worth it. I even changed out my OS drive for an EcoGreen and I went from 94 benchmark with a Seagate Barracuda 500Gb to 131 with a burst rate of 129ms and a temp drop of nearly 40 degrees F with the Samsung.

As for TFA? If you still work corp my heart goes out to you friends, personally I got tired of the ulcers and headaches. it always seemed like they would give you impossible problems and expect you to 'just fix it" given nothing but $3 and some duct tape. And if you did a REALLY good job they might even cut your funding! I swear the janitors are treated as more important in some places than the IT guys. The PHBs act like its all magic and the IT staff are just sitting around drinking coffee and playing an MMO. I saw too many of my friends bust their asses only to have their job cut out from under them or even worse be forced to train some H1-B hack to take their place, fuck that mess.

Maybe IT guys should have a union? Or maybe do like the cops and have a case of "blue flu" and let management see how important they really are by all calling in sick for a few days? I know that stupid shit like TFA is just a symptom of a bigger problem, and that's lack of respect for the role IT plays. And if that doesn't change frankly I'd be amazed if there is even any new IT guys in 10 years, as according to my oldest IT courses at the local college are a ghost town, nobody wants to be in IT anymore and frankly I can't blame 'em.

Yeah but how much business are they losing? because i'm betting the amount of folks that have to have it NOW and are willing to be gouged is a hell of a lot lower than the normal consumer base. if you sell 20 thousand drives at 10% markup but only sell 1500 drives at 40% markup you're still losing business.

BTW if anybody needs an external geeks has a nice 2Tb with eSata and Firewire for $120 which ain't bad for all three connections. They also have a 2Tb refurb for $78 which I've found if you give 'em a 48 hour stress test (I recommend spinrite on level 4) you'll know if they are good or not.

Until the HDD manufacturers get their shit together Geeks and a few of the "off the beaten path" retailers look to be your best bet. I'm just glad I bought all the HDDs I needed when i found out Samsung was selling off their HDD division. I really love the hell out of their EcoDrives and if you run across one I highly recommend them. even in cramped machines they stay under 80f and I've found with their fat cache they often bench better than all but the new perpendicular 7200RPM drives. I even replaced my 7200RPM Seagate for an EcoDrive and my benches went from 93 to 131. Great drives and its a damned shame this mess will make the last drives disappear all that much quicker.

Yeah but how much business are they losing? because i'm betting the amount of folks that have to have it NOW and are willing to be gouged is a hell of a lot lower than the normal consumer base. if you sell 20 thousand drives at 10% markup but only sell 1500 drives at 40% markup you're still losing business.

BTW if anybody needs an external geeks has a nice 2Tb with eSata and Firewire for $120 which ain't bad for all three connections. They also have a 2Tb refurb for $78 which I've found if you give 'em a 48 hour stress test (I recommend spinrite on level 4) you'll know if they are good or not.

Until the HDD manufacturers get their shit together Geeks and a few of the "off the beaten path" retailers look to be your best bet. I'm just glad I bought all the HDDs I needed when i found out Samsung was selling off their HDD division. I really love the hell out of their EcoDrives and if you run across one I highly recommend them. even in cramped machines they stay under 80f and I've found with their fat cache they often bench better than all but the new perpendicular 7200RPM drives. I even replaced my 7200RPM Seagate for an EcoDrive and my benches went from 93 to 131. Great drives and its a damned shame this mess will make the last drives disappear all that much quicker.

The Cortex-A15 will be available in up to octo-core configurations at 2.5Ghz, using a fraction of the power of a P4 (vs the 1.0Ghz benchmark you provide).

MHz myth in full force... Don't we still kick people off of /. for stupid mistakes like this? In short, that 2.5GHz could well be slower than the 1GHz CPU. Things like pipeline length, bus and memory speeds, and MIPS per MHz are important.

Additionally, he mentioned the SLOWEST P4 he could find... They're basically giving away much faster P4s these days. Hell, you can buy a complete 2.4GHz P4 system for under $40: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SAMBA845V-24-4-R&cat=SYS

Even cheap and useless gimmicky junk like the Qi don't compare (where's the video? where's the optical drive? Where's the expansion?)

You can make up arbitrary hardware requirements for "most people" but that doesn't exactly explain why Apple is selling tens of millions of iPads to ecstatic customers with a fraction of the "power" of a P4.

Come on, this is PAINFULLY obvious...

The iPad doesn't run Mac OS, RHEL, or Windows. It runs code that was optimized to hell and back to be small and fast. I've got my old Psion 5MX with a 26MHz ARM CPU that is more responsive than an iPad, but that doesn't mean that ancient 26MHz ARM CPU is on-par, performance wise.

Also notable is the affect of solid state. I tried an Archos 70 with a 256GB laptop hard drive in it... It was immediately PAINFUL to use. The fact that tablets / smart phones come with solid-state storage helps to mask a lot of the poor performance, so the lack of IO lag makes it FEEL like a lot faster.

People have accepted crippled (fast) software on tablets. Turn it into a desktop, however, and they'll be feeling the limitations very quickly, and get very upset. And if you take away the limitations (eg. install Linux on it) you'll find yourself feeling the painful performance limitations very quickly.

Anyone want to buy a P4 desktop with an ATI Rage Pro in it? It runs Ubuntu just fine :)

I do. Or rather, I did...

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SAMBA845V-24-4-R&cat=SYS

At that price, it's a great deal. Start a kickstart install of CentOS5.x, and deliver it to customers who need a bunch of office desktops, terminals, etc. These days, you can spend a lot of money to get super-efficient components, and still end up drawing more power, and making much more noise (above PC idles at under 40watts, and is impressively damn-near silent).

What dream? If you keep checking the bargain-bin, you can get decent old computer parts very cheap. I remember picking-up a new but obsolete mobo and duron CPU combo for $60, about 6 years ago.

A couple years ago, I was ordering used P4 computer en-mass to upgrade the obsolete workstations for a large company, at $70 each. That's double the price, but those were full computers, case, hard drive, PSU, etc.

Today, an old P4 system minus HDD goes for $40 (order in pairs for cheaper shipping):
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SAMBA845V-24-4-R&cat=SYS

The above is just a bit light on memory, but a $4 upgrade and it will run RHEL6 just fine (KDE4 is slow), making it vastly more capable and useful than the Pi, if you don't need super low power.

There have been plenty of super-cheap systems out there, but they're always lacking in some major area that keeps them from being suitable for general-purpose work, and ruins the economics when you consider all the OTHER supporting equipment you need to make it a real, working system. Refurb x86 will continue to be the most economical options for some time to come.

- HD content off ATSC, and H264 content from DVB, cannot be decoded by this device at all

Doesn't matter what it can decode. MPlayer will be happy to transcode that H.264 content into MPEG-2 for you, in real-time, for playback on the PVR-350.

- Newegg still offers plenty of GF8400s new, although the prices are going back up now that they're no longer being produced.

The point was TV-out on an NV PCIe card, there's nothing special about a GF8400 specifically. That said, I did check it out, and indeed found ONE specific model with TV-Out available... unbelievably expensive for what it is, but I will withdraw my statement that it's borderline impossible to find. I did check newegg in my previous searches, so maybe just their search / categorization is / was hosed-up.

- With Cool&Quiet enabled, that CPU should be idling somewhere around 20W.

Probably much lower... I can run it fanless with the stock heatsink when idle. The motherboard software claims it's running in the single-digits, but true or not, it's clearly idling properly, and generating miniscule heat.

- Tack on another 10W for motherboard

You just refuse to listen to anyone, don't you? The chipset will reach 70C degrees in a matter of minutes without directed airflow to keep it cool. It's eating a hell of a lot of power, even when idle. Last time I upgraded motherboards I returned a couple due to the overheating northbridges, only to give up and accept that these levels of chipset power consumption are just a fact in our modern high-speed DDR world.

For the record, I'm specifically talking about an Asus M4A88T-M ... Take a look, and note the big damn heatsink on the motherboard. Take a look at some other modern motherboards and note how many put a FAN on the northbridge in lieu of a giant heatsink. I don't know what fantasy world you live in where a modern motherboard (+RAM even!) draws under 10 watts.

- That power supply is rated for '80Plus', but you're running well under 20% load, so that rating is rather meaningless.

The rating doesn't specifically apply, but I'm confident it's still nearly as efficient, and I can vouch for it being drastically more efficient than a standard PSU under these conditions.

- If you are peaking over 50W, you either have gobs of high speed memory, or a discrete graphics card.

Nope and nope. A pair of 2GB sticks that run nice and cool without airflow, so there's minimal power draw there. I see minimal increase in power consumption switching from onboard video to a discrete card, and the numbers I've quoted are with onboard video.

- The only power saving features on the desktop P4s were as a life saving measure, to prevent the chip from burning up.

I don't know WTF you're talking about. HALT / C1 power state is basic s%=&*! that's been around since the 486es. Sure, CnQ and the like can do better, but CPUs certainly never idled at their TDP (old S2K disconnect issues not withstanding), and Intel's drive to keep the P4 from burning up led them to do a pretty good job of aggressively shutting down parts of P4 cores, making the lower-end varients idle very low.

- The DDR-based systems bottomed out around 60W TDP, and only went way up from there. The chips never strayed very far from that value even when idle. The only way I could see a P4 system running at 40W is if it were a mobile system, or were manually undervolted and underclocked.

Well I guess it's a good thing you opened your mouth, and we've established just what kind of expert I'm dealing with, here...

Introducing the impossible PC, breaking the laws of physics, out of the box. For a mere $40 you too can have this magic box brought to your door: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SAMBA845V-24-4-R&cat=SYS

So, we can either continue to support all of those modes, or we can drop the "old cruft" and maybe the people who aren't so cheap as to be unwilling to spend $20 on a video card can have something that looks a bit nicer.

Hang on... The PVR-350 isn't a $20 video card, it's a very specialized card, which I don't believe there's a direct replacement for, anywhere. On the same token, XvMC is also the only hardware acceleration supported by many video cards which support component & SVideo output, which can be pretty important on slower hardware to support playback of HDTV broadcasts... I was using it for years, until just recently, though I admit I wouldn't have had a problem using older versions of the software.

And I had a hell of a time recently, finding an NVidia PCI-Express video card for sale that supports SVideo-output, because I don't feel like entirely throwing away the big old TV. Even if I opt to spend a $1,000+ to replace my old TV, I'll probably still keep the old one, delegated to the game-room, or some such, and want to be able to pump out a picture to it.

I was lucky to find an old, refurbished NVidia 8500 PCIe card for sale (sold-out now, good-luck everyone else...), so I'm not stuck on AGP or XvMC to drive my trusty old TV, but ironically, the bracket it came with was BLOCKING the SVideo plug entirely, requiring me to drill it out to use it, and showing just how much love there is for those of us not on the bleeding-edge of the throw-away culture. I'd think with the recession our ranks would be growing, but I sure don't see it in the Linux community, where it used to be a very strong segment.

You can find some amazing deals out there, if you look for them:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SAMBA845V-24-4-R&cat=SYS

Linux has always made it possible to squeeze all the life out of old, cheap hardware like the above, but it seems that thread in the community is getting thinner by the day. In the case of the above, RHEL5 drivers for the intel video work vastly better than the KMS-requiring drivers in RHEL6.x / Fedora, and no, it doesn't seem to want to work with any add-in PCI 2.2 cards, but who would?

Maybe CompGeeks should take issue with Best Buy - they've been doing the geek thing for 15 years.

Ah, yes. The old "it cost more, therefore it must be better/newer/faster" generalization.

So, go have a look at what's actually available. You'll see that while the prices do vary wildly, there is very little variation in terms of the actual products (aside from packaging) other than a handful of products that appear to actually be independently engineered (which is not necessarily a good thing).

Just to pick one particular product: B&H sells it for $11.95. Computer Geeks has the same one for $7.99. Our hack-friendly friends at Sparkfun sell their copy for $10.99.

Meanwhile, buy.com has the same thing for $3.37 plus shipping. Deal Extreme is even cheaper at $1.85 including shipping, but you have to wait for it to cross the Pacific.

So...uh. Should I buy the expensive one from B&H, or the cheap one from Deal Extreme? B&H will certainly handle returns better in case the thing breaks or whatever, but for the price I can buy a small handful of these widgets from DX and spread out the MTBF myself.

(The rest of your post is spot-on.)

I've had that for a while now. Most new laptops have an eSATA/USB combo port. What's all the excitement for again?

I was thinking the same thing. Shoot, http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=DC7100SFF-P430-RCD-3R&cat=SYS complete system here, minus keyboard, mouse and monitor, for $134.99, with Windows XP preinstalled! This one, http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=EL1300G-01W-R&cat=SYS is $179.99, comes with Vista, keyboard, mouse, and speakers! (Granted, these are refurbished units).

I mean, where are you getting that you cannot buy an operating system and malware for microsoft for that price?
Here is XP for $69 http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Professional-System-Builders/dp/B000JTDV6M/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1271101580&sr=1-4 Several people have mentioned that you can get Vista and Windows 7 full versions for $99 http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Premium-64-bit-English/dp/B000MFIPDC/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1271101580&sr=1-7. Avast and AVG are free, and I know Avast at least now includes free malware protection. Spybot is free. Need I go on?

I was thinking the same thing. Shoot, http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=DC7100SFF-P430-RCD-3R&cat=SYS complete system here, minus keyboard, mouse and monitor, for $134.99, with Windows XP preinstalled! This one, http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=EL1300G-01W-R&cat=SYS is $179.99, comes with Vista, keyboard, mouse, and speakers! (Granted, these are refurbished units).

I mean, where are you getting that you cannot buy an operating system and malware for microsoft for that price?
Here is XP for $69 http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Professional-System-Builders/dp/B000JTDV6M/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1271101580&sr=1-4 Several people have mentioned that you can get Vista and Windows 7 full versions for $99 http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Premium-64-bit-English/dp/B000MFIPDC/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1271101580&sr=1-7. Avast and AVG are free, and I know Avast at least now includes free malware protection. Spybot is free. Need I go on?

Here's one.

$20 but that's USD. Shipping and import fees might bump that up to 35-40 CA.

I've never used that model, so no clue about the reliability.

This is a 5 disk eSATA for $180. Appears to be similar (Silicon Image bits, single cable w/port multiplier, etc)

And both of them run off of 12 volts, so you could wire it to a freakin car battery if you wanted. I believe the plug version is 12 volts internally, as well, so it'd make a nice carputer.

Alas, the $150 version has a single GigE port. I'd have loved it if it swapped the Esata for the second GigE.

Although, with a Esata raid rack, that version could make a nice SAN base. If it works with this cheap 5-bay one, I'd buy it just to get the damn fan noise away from me.

Well, I suppose it isn't $5000, but...

18 GHz? Nifty! Aside from that minor gaffe, you're also completely wrong. Computer Geeks currently has two different options, one from Linksys and one from Airlink. (The latter has significantly better specs; superior video and better wireless security.) The only way to get smarter is to play a smarter opponent. Or in other words, you're welcome.

18 GHz? Nifty! Aside from that minor gaffe, you're also completely wrong. Computer Geeks currently has two different options, one from Linksys and one from Airlink. (The latter has significantly better specs; superior video and better wireless security.) The only way to get smarter is to play a smarter opponent. Or in other words, you're welcome.

18 GHz? Nifty! Aside from that minor gaffe, you're also completely wrong. Computer Geeks currently has two different options, one from Linksys and one from Airlink. (The latter has significantly better specs; superior video and better wireless security.) The only way to get smarter is to play a smarter opponent. Or in other words, you're welcome.

Get your $169US netbook at Geeks.com. It is a 400Mhz MIPS machine and Linux-based (quite limited at this point). Basically, the $200 barrier has been broken. I predict you will see machines like this in plastic bubble packaging hanging in Walmart by Christmas (if not 2009, at least Christmas 2010). I look forward to the ARM and Android netbook revolution!

Go to TigerDirect, 2 out of 55 are Linux. Cheapest is $229US Acer Aspire 1 16G - Windows XP. Cheapest Linux netbook is $299 HP mini.

Got to Geeks.COM, $169 for a MIPS-based Linux system, but their only x86 netbook is $329 Intel Atom-based system with XP.

If the price is so much lower, I would be tempted to get one with a hard disk and XP, repartion, and load Linux. However, this would COUNT as an XP sale.

Speaking of the architecture, it looks like MIPS already beat ARM to the netbook scene:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ALPHA-400&cat=NBB/
$169.99

        * Alpha 400 MIPS 400 MHz Ultralite 7-inch Mini Notebook

        * General Features:
        * Ultralite notebook
        * Netbook form factor
        * Linux 2.4 Operating System
        * MIPS XBurst 400 MHz 32-bit CPU
        * 128 MB RAM
        * 1 GB NAND Flash Storage
        * 10/100 MB Ethernet interface
        * 802.11b wireless
        * Supports External Hard Drive up to 160 GB
        * Supports SD Card up to 32 GB
        * Xiptech application software packages (Xip office, Flash player)
        * 7-inch digital panel 800 x 480 true-color
        * Keyboard with TouchPad
        * Supports File Sizes up to 8 MB
        * Built-in SD Card slot
        * Battery Charging Time: 4.5 - 5 hours

        * Uses:
        * Internet surfing
        * Instant online communication, chatting
        * Music downloading and enjoying
        * Flash movies and games
        * Picture and image sharing
        * Languages learning
        * Personal diary

        * Office Assistant:
        * AbiWord, XipTable and PDF Viewer
        * E-mail management
        * Daily work plan and management
        * E-book reader

        * I/O ports:
        * Three (3) USB ports
        * RJ-45 Ethernet port
        * Headphone in
        * Microphone in

        * Dimensions (closed):
        * 1.1 x 8.25 x 5.6-inches

        * Regulatory Approvals:
        * C-Tick

Package Includes:

        * Alpha 400 MIPS 400 MHz Ultralite 7-inch Mini Notebook
        * Linux 2.4 Operating System
        * Power Adapter (100 - 240V 50/60 Hz)

Additional Information:

        * Notes:
        * Model: Alpha 400

        * Requirements:
        * Available power outlet

I just got a Storbox5 bay eSATA box(bring your own drives) for $200, so-so 2 port esata RAID card included.

I don't particularly trust the hardware raid card, but I wasn't planning on using the computer for anything else, so I've got it softraided. The fans are damn noisy, though.

At that price point the real question is a basic one, do you want to build a cluster? If yes, I wouldn't build that exact setup but probably go with Athlon X2 5050e CPUs. You can also get used 1U dual cpu servers on ebay and sites like geeks.com almost all day long for $100-150 each. They did have a bunch on this page: http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?Cat=821 but are currently sold out of the dirt cheap stuff. The downside of the pre-built older stuff is they'll cost more in electricity to run. Now, if you answered "No, I don't really just want to build a cluster for fun." then your best bet will be to just build an i7 based machine. With the cluster you'd be able to afford max 6 nodes with 2 cores each that will be individually slower than the i7's cores. With the i7 you'd only have 8 (logical) cores but they'd be faster and overall draw less power (cheaper to operate) than the 12 core cluster. If the application you're working with can truly be threaded easily enough to take advantage of an 8-12 cpu cluster you should look into porting it to run on a GPGPU. And that's if there's not already code to do it. A lot of scientific functions are already available written in CUDA. You can get a ton of performance out of a $200 video card if the application can be parallelized.