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External USB 48x CD-ROM $100
http://www.coolmaxusa.com/del52xexcdro.html

Note, I am not affiliated with these guys at all, I just did a search on pricewatch and they came up with first, fast name-brand CD-ROM, there were others for $50 but only 24x.

http://brook.pricewatch.com/search/search.asp?crit eria=crusoe

I understand that, but a 22" or 29" computer monitor (for a decent one) costs twice as much as my 25", multiple input TV cost 3 yrs ago. Doesn't make sense to me to eliminate my TV as a general consumer unless I'm made of money. Therefore, I have to resort to sending the output to my TV, which doesn't have digital rights management equipment on it, and therefore I have to 'circumvent' that.

I just want to reiterate that, yes, for the technical geek crowd, putting together a home theatre out of nothing but computer parts is doable, but not very practical. Besides, how do you account for the fact that I need to use the computer to write a program, or essay, or log in at work, while my girlfriend wants to watch regular old Cable TV? We can't BOTH be using that 22" (or worse, 29"!) monstrosity of a monitor to do that at the same time...

No, this is just wrong. Unless you are after
a SCSI drive, 120G can be had for $225 (IDE).

Try pricewatch and click on Hard Drives.

Maxtor may not be the best quality, and IDE might not be the best bus for I/O, but for overnight backups onto a removable disk, this should suffice.

This way it is only $2.25 per gig for the disk backup - and you don't have to actually store 156 CDs! Not to mention that by the time you actually burn 156 CDs the data you wer backing up is weeks old...

Also people considering CDs as backup solutions for 20+ gig should remember that you actually have to be there to swap CDs - you can't run the backup overnight without an expensive disk swapping device that will cost as much as tape in the long run.

You'll be lucky if the BIOS on that 486 can see beyond 4GB on an IDE drive.

The trick is obviously not to live in CA. I live in the Northern Virginia area (in the "rich" suburbs of Reston) and the brick and mortar stores are almost always more expensive than ordering online (especially with Pricewatch scouring the net for low prices for me. The shipping costs are generally similar to what I would have to pay in sales tax. The worst part is that the shipping costs have gradually decreased over the years (adjusted for inflation) while the sales tax has increased. Still, if you are buy cheap items ($25-50 or so) you need to make sure the shipping isn't going to kill you, but how many people buy really cheap items online, or even comparison shop at the local brick and mortars? Most people I know just go down to wherever is convienent and pick it up. I'll probably never buy a standard NIC online because the local Best Buy sells nice Tulip based cards for $5-10. There's no point in really comparison shopping at that point.

it's not like these things haven't been around for a while. check pricewatch. i got someone a refurb toshiba dvd-ram in february 2001 for $200.

chris

You can get find the Thunder K7 for $205, it has integrated SCSI controller, 2 3com 10/100 NIC's and other onboard stuff (sound and crappy video). The ONLY thing that sucks about this board is that it needs a special power supply. That is the only thing that prevents me from buying it right now.

These 760MPX boards will have to cost less than or equal to $150 to be worth it losing the extras the Thunder K7 has.

Brick and mortar stores have cheaper prices than online, eh?

• I guess that
• these sites have
• a lot to learn
• about that then ;-)

online shoppers believe prices are lower in brick-and-mortar stores

Working in a brick-and-mortar store, let me just tell you:

HAHAHAHAHA!

We routinely sell items for at least twice the PriceWatch price. And people continue to buy from us.

Have you looked here?

This is yet another attempt by a greedy corporation to cash-in on pseudo-Geeks. The real Geeks, though, know that for $250 you can get a 100 GB of storage and have 10x the tunes. I can't believe Slashdot is running a story like this when I've been able to order a bigger hard drive than that for cheaper than that for years. I have all the portable music storage I need (all my They Might Be Giants and Ben Folds five albums, plus lots of leftover space), without getting price-gouged by greedy corporations.

If a cheap mousepad costs, say $1.50, then supplying them for 38600 desktops would cost nearly $60k. Saving that cost would definitely be an incentive to use laptops.

[At] the bottom it has some VERY useful information, including a little utility called cdrid [www.gum.de], which identifies WHO REALLY makes the cdr disk.

The CD-R FAQ disagrees with youspecifically "[2-33] Who really made this CD-R blank?" which says you learn significantly less than you think you do from these CD-R ID routines which report information read from the "ATIP" region.

Typically, I buy Sony CDRS from staples... they're pretty cheap and work good.

Unless Sony makes their own CD-Rs (which I doubt) you can't tell what you are buying. Again I refer you to the CD-R FAQ.

[A] Plextor 24x burner is only about $150 now...

But the comparable Lite-On 24/10/40 IDE CD-RW burner is half that price. It has the same features as the Plextor 24/10/40 and is only slightly slower at some tasks than the Plextor 24/10/40 (a few seconds slower in tests where the Lite-On trailed the Plextor, not anything significant). If you find this difference to be an issue I'd say (1) you're overstating the difference and (2) in some tests the Plextor wasn't as fast as the Ricoh MP7200A.

The Plextor is probably a fine drive if you are willing to ignore its cost. The Lite-On is giving you better than 90% of the speed of the Plextor at half the cost, hence the Lite-On is a better deal for the money. Plextor's day in the sun has ended. They should make their firmware free software to compete. As far as I know nobody makes firmware that is free software (even though they all should).

[Make] sure your drive supports BuRN proof or something similar.

Actually if your system is configured correctly you don't need it, even with IDE burners. You might find it hard to avoid paying for the technology since so many drives currently on the market have burn resumption technology. But for sub-US$100 drives, the price isn't a big deal.

When you get to work, offload the CompactFlash card with a PCMCIA adaptor ($12) to your laptop or a USB adaptor ($25) to your desktop.

Oh, I should mention, the NexII sounds good too, but you want to dump the headphones they ship.

Last I checked (Sunday night), the lowest-priced GeForce3 Ti200 was only $137 plus shipping. Pretty spiffy for a video card that's almost as powerful as a card that retailed for $500 a few months ago.

You've looked on Pricewatch right?
The price ranges for SCSI and ATAPI seem to overlap.

When I was building my computer, I ordered all the parts off of Price Watch. Finally, everything had arrived except my case and hard drive. I looked up the tracking number on UPS's web site, and they were due to arrive the next day at 11 AM.

I waited and waited, but no UPS truck showed up. A few hours later, I checked the web site again - and it said the package had been delivered! I called UPS and they said "yes, the driver's log said it was delivered to 3610 South [My Street] at 11 AM this morning." "No, I was here all day and it never came."

Finally I walked down the street, looking at my neighbors' houses. I found the package inside the front door of 3800 South [My Street]. The driver didn't come anywhere near my house, but he was more than happy to deliver it to a house with a different address where nobody was home.

Now I'm sticking with FedEx.

AMD is doing fine. Their market share is rising, and Intel's is falling, albeit slowly (based on numerous reports released in October 2001).

My Thunderbird 1200MHz is reliable, you just have to be careful about the operating temperature.

AMD's are less expensive than the comparable Intel chips.

pricewatch.org seems to be some commercial dental products site. pricewatch.com is, I hope, what he meant.

Suppose you copy at full PCI bus speed

You can cut a few years off that figure with AGP storage. Because most servers don't need excessive video performance, such systems can use an el-cheapo video card sitting on the PCI bus, leaving the AGP port open. Storage makers have developed high-speed storage solutions that take advantage of the insane throughput of AGP (1 GB/s and beyond).

4GB SDRAM DIMMs exist. A quick trip over to Pricewatch shows that Mushkin, for one, makes these things. Prices start at about $1,300. (I'm not saying that Pricewatch components are necessarily approriate for this application, but they do exist.)

If you're looking for great deals, go to pricewatch.com.

Who, being a real gamer uses a retail outlet that is hurting bigtime for customers to procure their "Dream Gaming PC" parts?

He also never mentioned PriceWatch which is a fantastic resource for being able to determine who is offering the cheapest prices for the best hardware in the US.

I think he way overspent on his case and fans totally, and a grand total close to $2000? Who can afford that? I got the same system that this guy did minus the expensive case and fans (I've got the same temps on CPU), purchased a flat-screen 19" monitor, and instead got Crucial 512MB RAM for a grand total of $600 less.

Sounds like more advertising for OSDN and less thoughtfulness of $$$$ on his part.

I'd suggest to also go to Google Groups and search in alt.comp.hardware.amd.thunderbird for opinions on setups, if going with an Athlon system. There are a lot of people writing their experiences there.

-- I'm out

the prices are still significantly higher than a CD-ROM drive.

In fact, I just bought a fast DVD-ROM drive from a local brick-and-mortar store for $70. I believe their CD-ROM drives were priced around $50.

My guess for the lack of penetration for DVD-ROM drives is that critical mass hasn't been reached yet. People don't see the point in spending a few extra dollars when there aren't very many applications available yet on DVD-ROM. Publishers don't want to press a DVD version in addition to a CD version when most people don't yet have one. As it is, there's a huge installed base of CD-ROM drives out there, so it's pretty universal. I would guess that big PC OEMs get CD-ROM drives in quantity for $5-10 wholesale and, since a DVD-ROM drive is still considered a big value-add, figure it's good enough for the general case.

shrugI don't know. The price points are there, or very nearly so. I don't see why there isn't a big switchover in the very near future. Of course, this is the same industry that clings to the 1.44MB floppy...

the prices are still significantly higher than a CD-ROM drive.

In fact, I just bought a fast DVD-ROM drive from a local brick-and-mortar store for $70. I believe their CD-ROM drives were priced around $50.

My guess for the lack of penetration for DVD-ROM drives is that critical mass hasn't been reached yet. People don't see the point in spending a few extra dollars when there aren't very many applications available yet on DVD-ROM. Publishers don't want to press a DVD version in addition to a CD version when most people don't yet have one. As it is, there's a huge installed base of CD-ROM drives out there, so it's pretty universal. I would guess that big PC OEMs get CD-ROM drives in quantity for $5-10 wholesale and, since a DVD-ROM drive is still considered a big value-add, figure it's good enough for the general case.

shrugI don't know. The price points are there, or very nearly so. I don't see why there isn't a big switchover in the very near future. Of course, this is the same industry that clings to the 1.44MB floppy...

I took a quick look at B&H's website and found a 512 MB CF for $800.

What a ripoff! =)

CompactFlash 512MB : $293
CompactFlash 256MB : $93

So for $186 I can have 2x256MB CF cards. Still not 500MB for $10, but a much wider used and accepted and established standard, and with the way that memory prices are falling these will definitely come down soon too.

I took a quick look at B&H's website and found a 512 MB CF for $800.

What a ripoff! =)

CompactFlash 512MB : $293
CompactFlash 256MB : $93

So for $186 I can have 2x256MB CF cards. Still not 500MB for $10, but a much wider used and accepted and established standard, and with the way that memory prices are falling these will definitely come down soon too.

Build one. Start poking around on Pricewatch, buy the parts, and build it. It may sound daunting if you've never done it before, but it is amazingly easy. I recently built myself another machine for $329 + shipping. Helps if you have things like an extra monitor (or KVM switch). Things are getting cheap nowadays. Celerons are less than $50, RAM is practically free.

I was told to "aquire" 10 new lisences for NT at my place of work. So, I loaded up my favorite place to find prices online. I found some really cheap lisences for about 26 bucks. They said w/o CD, so I assumed that was the reason for the price being so good.
When they arrived, all I got was the books that have the authenticity cert on them. Each one had the "For distribution with a new PC only. NOT FOR RESALE" stickers partially remmoved. There went 260 down the drain.

While we're at it, I'm going to post the specs on a more down-to-earth machine that I'll be building shortly. My ultimate goal is to create the ultimate workstation / gaming box that won't sound like a small aircraft when you turn it on.

$189 Seagate Barracuda IV SoftSonic 80 Gig
The 'Cuda IV is probably the quietest and one of the fastest Ultra-100 Drives in existence. A pair of 40-gig platters with Softsonic fluid-bearing motors keep the noise down below 30dB

$757 2x1.2Ghz AthlonMP
2x256 ECC DDR RAM
Tyan Tiger MP
2xThermalTake VolcanoII Cooler
The Tiger is the baby-brother of the Thunder. You get the same performance as the Thunder, without the extras, such as on-board SCSI, & integrated ethernet. You can look up specs at tyan.com.All of these components may be purchased, pretested, from Monarch Computers as an "AMD Pretested Combo;" Monarch produces very high quality boxes (my last three, actually).

$070 SD-M1502 Toshiba 16X DVD Drive
This drive's a fairly good performer, (try a google search for the model number and "review"), but what I am interested in is the noise and vibration factors. Toshiba's introduced a type of balance mechanism designed to handle unbalanced / cheap discs.

$335 Asus GeForce3 Pure 64Meg AGP
At this point, the choice of video card is purely up to the builder; I chose this one simply because it was one of the better performing, and the higher quality cards (google will tell all about this card...)

$85 SB Audigy X-Gamer!
Hey, why not? At $85, it's not a bad deal at all for a new whiz-bang sound card.
??? Speakers?
Up to you.

$014 floppy
Duh. Pick one.

$170? Lian-Li PC-60 Case
Reasons for this part: 1. It's cool. Literally.
2. It's light-weight.
3. Lian-Li cases are extremely high quality, which explains the high price.

$089 Enermax Whisper 431W EG465P-VE(FC) Power Supply
The Whisper is an ultra-quiet PS with variable speed fans. If you look at the Product Page, you can see the various nice specs on this PS.

$214 24X10X40 Plextor CD-RW
Based on various net reviews (again, google), this is the current burner of choice. That'll probably change by the time I finish typing this setence, but that's the nature of the technology.

$80 Wireless Keyboard / Optical Wireless Mouse from Logitech
As a long-time logitech fan, the Logitech Cordless Freedom Optical takes all of the good stuff from their keyboards, mice, and wireless devices and wraps it into one package. Note that RF mice are not very good for games. I've owned one of these for about a month, and can say that I have no problems with either device until I try to play DoD or Q3A, in which case my trusty Mouseman Optical comes in handy.

$1918 Subtotal sans Shipping (If the numbers don't add up, I'm gonna look really, really stupid. Oh well.) (updated price 10-13-01)

Most of my price info came from either Pricewatch or MySimon, fyi.

Er, I'm hoping the majority of Slashdot's following would seriously balk at buying this thing... try this:

1) Cheap x86 hardware (PC junkstore)

2) Soundblaster card from Pricewatch

3) Linux

Add ingredients and stir vigorously... voila.

Then, you can "officially support" *YOURSELF*, and not have to deal with silly SMB shares (like any of us use those?!?)

you can save a couple bucks over thinkgeek at pricewatch. But then again it's only a couple bucks, and thinkgeek seems like a decent place to support.

What's more, the service is emminently hackable so if they really did go down it wouldn't be hard to build a listings service that kept the unit functionality going in spite of a company closure. Several people have claimed to hack this already, though code is not readily available last I checked (for obvious reasons). Either way, I've got my daily calls going over my ethernet network, so it wouldn't be hard to sniff out the necessary bits or put some work into documenting the MFS partition formats and inserting it directly from a source like XMLTV.

So, for a fun project and damn useful toy, grab yourself a 20 hour Tivo cheap (see AVS TiVo Forums for pointers to cheap deals at Wal-Mart, Target, etc.), a big harddrive (most any 5400 rpm will do), and a hard drive bracket and ethernet adapter (here's a good tutorial). Then have fun with a device that's both well suited to the task (stable, nice tv based user interface, very sharp picture) and gives you a chance to sink your teeth into some fun hacks.

FWIW, I've been spending a lot of time hacking up my own media-box project of late and I really think that it isn't yet a viable option. Dual booting Debian/WinME with a AIW Radeon and SB Live Platinum 5.1 gives you the ability to do everything a TiVo can and more, but the interface, stability, and interoperability leave a lot to be desired. On the up side, its great to be able to play DivX, MP3, Emulators, etc. in the living room A/V system. Wonderful as a system oriented towards archived playback, music, and games, but don't buy one thinking its going to be nearly as useful in place of a TiVo.

... rjs

Latency and Access time, you id10t.

That was uncalled for...

I HAVE a 4 disk IDE raid that gives me 75-90MB/sec sustained performance. At peak it can hit just shy of 100MB/sec. 4x75GB IBM drives on a HPT 380 IDE Raid controller.

SO I don't know where you're getting your "stats" from. I can also get 20MB/sec sustained transfer rate off my 40GB IBM drive that I have right here in my system, single drive, I just did a file transfer yesterday to proove the same point (a copy from one HD to another at 19.8MB/sec for a 450MB file). That wasn't optimal conditions. The files and free space on both drives were fragmented. Under "optimal" conditions I can get 32MB/sec raw read rate off the drive itself. Off each of the 75GB drives I can get 45MB/sec raw read rate.

And the cenatek solution that was posted gave 80-100MB/sec and was also extremely expensive. Setting that up for 4GB would be the 2/3rds of the cost for setting up my 300GB raid 0 array. 4x1GB SDRAM (if it uses SDRAM, the info only said DRAM) modules is $500 according to pricewatch and the controller itself is unknown (I can't find any vendors selling it) but I'd assume to be around $100-$200 range). So say $600 for the 4GB ramdrive solution, $900 for the 4x75GB raid solution. So it's 50x more expensive (per MB) and the only thing that it gives me is less access time.

And the "data sheet" (LOL!) reports that the rates (80-100MB/sec) is "thousands of times faster than standard hard drives" (exact quote)... So apparently they think that 80kb/sec is the usual read rate for a hard drive these days. Even in their actual breakdown they conpare "100,000 sector reads/writes per second compared to 5,000 to 6,000 I/Os per second for a standard disk drive". Oh, they're talking about FLOPPY DRIVES... Well OK then, yeah then it is thousands of times faster...

No offense, but could an editor please fix this? I'm almost embarrased to say I frequent the site at this point.

Yes, RAM is cheap, but unless you regularly swipe sticks of it from factories in Asia, its *not* cheaper in memory-per-unit-of-currency.

Sometimes I wonder if the /. editors even frequent Pricewatch like the rest of us. Here's an example:

$3 for 64 meg is the cheapest memory-per-unit-of-currency on RAM
That's 64 meg/3$ = 21.333 meg for a buck. Remember this is the *best* memory/currency ratio for RAM on Pricewatch. (And thus the world)

$199 for 25.0 gig is the most costly memory-per-unit-of-currency on Hard Drives.
That's 25,0000 meg /$199 = 125 meg for a buck. Remember this is the *worst* memory/currency ratio for HDs on Pricewatch (And quite possible, with *that* high of a cost for a measly 25 gigs, the world. Do *not* take up that deal.)

So yes, at this point I'm embarrased to see that above comment by the editor.

No offense, but could an editor please fix this? I'm almost embarrased to say I frequent the site at this point.

Yes, RAM is cheap, but unless you regularly swipe sticks of it from factories in Asia, its *not* cheaper in memory-per-unit-of-currency.

Sometimes I wonder if the /. editors even frequent Pricewatch like the rest of us. Here's an example:

$3 for 64 meg is the cheapest memory-per-unit-of-currency on RAM
That's 64 meg/3$ = 21.333 meg for a buck. Remember this is the *best* memory/currency ratio for RAM on Pricewatch. (And thus the world)

$199 for 25.0 gig is the most costly memory-per-unit-of-currency on Hard Drives.
That's 25,0000 meg /$199 = 125 meg for a buck. Remember this is the *worst* memory/currency ratio for HDs on Pricewatch (And quite possible, with *that* high of a cost for a measly 25 gigs, the world. Do *not* take up that deal.)

So yes, at this point I'm embarrased to see that above comment by the editor.

RAM is now cheaper when it comes to memory-per-unitofcurrency than hard drives.

According to pricewatch, a 40 gig hard drive is $78. Let's say $120 for a good one. That makes RAM 20 times more expensive, at $60/gig.

It's still really cheap, but let's not get crazy. :)

Try looking on www.streetprices.com or www.pricewatch.com

Don't pay for a store to staff a bunch of dropouts who don't know SCSI from IDE try to twist your arm into buy a Brio or Presario piece of trash that litter the sales floor.

Maxtor drive are for the most part okay, I have had the most drive failures with Western Digital and will never solicit them, and I've seen the old fluid bearing Seagate 7200 RPM die all the time.

IBM for the most part is good, but the GCP drives I heard are flaky, I believe there is a new "family coming out which will restore reliability.

As for your RMAs, call them and a demand a new drive. I have done this several times with Quantum/Maxtor, I have even gotten next generation SCSI drives after a failure - as you are entitles to this. I have said, "If I don't get a new, sealed drive, I'll just RMA right back.

Of course this would take a LOT more effort on hardware, but given todays cheapo steroid-pcs (ie athlon 1.4 at $350) it is possible.

Being there something of 100 million domains registered (please correct this), and using a hash of it ti store a valid domain, it would take 400MB, adding some cpu nice sorting stuff say it takes 1GB.

Main prob would be validation, but with a report based similarly to whatever MAPS uses now, it is most likely already done.

Even though IANAL, I guess they don't have so much background to sue MAPS with this schema.

Comments?

http://www.pricewatch.com/1/37/3094-1.htm

The first two cards on this link are actually gf2 cards, yay pricewatch. Hasn't the price drop really taken effect yet?

$245 for a video card is painful, but once they come under $200, that's my magical upgrade number.

who in the HELL charged you $650 for a GeForce 3??? Even if that's in Canadian dollars, that's way more than you should be paying!!!! They RETAIL for about $350 now, and you can find them for under $300 on Pricewatch.

If you go to Pricewatch and look under videocards/GeForce 3 there are already several place selling the 200 versions. Heck this place on Yahoo Stores is taking preorders for the Hercules GeForce3 Titanium 500 to ship on Oct 13! Talk about fast turnaround. Guess they had to step up or let the Radeon 8500 be king.

Wonder which one will ship a Mac version first?

The price is almost too good to be true: you can find these for about $45 at PriceWatch and Shop.Yahoo by searching on "BA635". But these sure as hell don't sound like $45 speakers.

Start with a Socket 7 or Super 7 MB. This could be AT or ATX. Socket 7 will run CPUs ranging from P75 to AMD-K62-550. Look for a board with plenty of accessory slots, since we seem to share a bias against integrated components. (The whole point of the original ISA spec in 1981 was that individual components could be replaced without obsoleting the rest of the platform.)

Look on Pricewatch or the "Buy it now" items on Ebay for bargains. Classical Ebay auctions are notorious for wasting time and having someone else plant a winning bid in the last 30 seconds of the auction, but "Buy it now" may actually result in servicable merchandise at low cost.

64 Mb of ram will be plenty for what you describe. Pick a suitable chassis (AT or ATX, depending what MB you decide on) add a cheap video card (Trident maybe?) and whatever size IDE drive you feel will be sufficient. CPU can be any Celeron, AMD or Cyrix you opt for. I would suggest 10/100 autosensing NICs, because it doesn't matter what ya connect'em to, and they can be had for around $15 each.

Shipping charges can be lowered by bundling a lot of components from a single supplier. These days, I've noticed also that quite a few hardware guys are offering free shipping. One exception to this though might be the CPU fan, assuming you don't opt for a heatsink. Since silent operation is a high priority you might want to contact CDW or someplace like that with the sales expertise to recommend a speciality fan optimized for quiet.

Good luck with the build. During the runup to Y2K I built a lot of machines along the same general spec for customers that just wanted to go on running their same old stuff on hardware compatible with a 4 byte year. Rough pricing for the stuff described above is around the $200 - $250 range.

List of needed components

Case
Power Supply
CPU
Motherboard
RAM
Floppy or LS-120
DVD/DVD-R/CD-RW, Pick your optical poison
Hard Drives
Sound Card
Modem
Network Card
Zip Drive/Other Removable Rewriteable Media

Don't forget to use wonderful tools like http://pricewatch.com or http://computershopper.com. Watch out for the deals that are too good to be true... though many of the places on either of those sites are obviously operating on razor thin margins, they do make PC building really really cheap.

Now given that list I would purchase a KT266A system or maybe wait for the nForce with a Palmino based Athlon. I would purchase a DVD/CD-RW combo and also another DVD drive, as I always support being able to make disk to disk copies. The Audigy would be a good card if you don't get the nForce based motherboard. DDR RAM is the way to go, it's also probably best to purchase that directly from http://crucial.com. Get yourself the Seagate Barracuda IV's for a quiet and relatively high performing IDE drives with big capacity... For video cards get either the Radeon 8500 or GeForce3 depending on how much you care. Don't forget to get a cool aluminum case like the Lian-Li PC-60 for show value...

That should be everything you need unless you want to go dual processor, which is always a good option.

Whats the fastest Intel motherboard for P4s? Ram?
Whats the fastest Amd motherboard (Via chipset?)

I can find great prices via www.pricewatch.com But where can I find the best motherboard? I like asus, but which one is the fastest for intel and amd?

I read sites like toms hardware, sharkys, via harware, extra, but if I want to build the best, where is a good place for fastest hardware out NOW that I can find on pricewatch?

it'll set you back as much as a PC that has the same features

Uh ... what? Last I checked, the cheapest price on a GeForce 3 was $260 (check Pricewatch). That leaves you a total of roughly $40 to spend on the rest of your PC for it to have the same features as an XBox. For argument's sake, let's just do a bit of a price comparison:

• Motherboard - $45 for a P3, $44 for an Athlon (Pricewatch)
• 1GHz P3 - $164 (see Sharky Extreme's Weekly CPU price list). Alternatively, an athlon 1GHz -- $74. Also, note that I'm using a higher speed CPU here, because with a PC you don't get the benefit of allowing the programmers to write directly to the hardware, so you need a bit more raw speed to compensate.
• Sound Card - $150 Hercules Game Theater XP (or, you could go ~$100 for an SB Live!). Obviously, since nVidia designed the audio chipset for the XBox, you won't be able to get the exact same audio hardware (well, maybe not until nForce-based motherboards are released).
• Video - $260 (the aforementioned GeForce 3). No other video card is worth mentioning, if you're strict about wanting near-XBox-level performance.
• Gamepad - $35 Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad Pro (about as close as you'll get to an XBox game pad)
• Hard Drive - $75 40GB hard drive (because you have to install an OS, install games, keep saved games, and so on) (again, from Pricewatch)
• DVD-ROM - $27 10X drive (Pricewatch)
• Necessary accessories (mouse, keyboard) - $4 (if you're really cheap -- again, Pricewatch)
• Case - $11 generic case (Pricewatch)
• Memory - $30 (price for PC133 512MB, since more memory is always better when developers don't have the ability to micromanage the memory how they please). (Pricewatch)

Yes, I do realize that you can buy a PC for much less than that, but it's not going to be the "equivalent" of an XBox, either.

it'll set you back as much as a PC that has the same features

Uh ... what? Last I checked, the cheapest price on a GeForce 3 was $260 (check Pricewatch). That leaves you a total of roughly $40 to spend on the rest of your PC for it to have the same features as an XBox. For argument's sake, let's just do a bit of a price comparison:

• Motherboard - $45 for a P3, $44 for an Athlon (Pricewatch)
• 1GHz P3 - $164 (see Sharky Extreme's Weekly CPU price list). Alternatively, an athlon 1GHz -- $74. Also, note that I'm using a higher speed CPU here, because with a PC you don't get the benefit of allowing the programmers to write directly to the hardware, so you need a bit more raw speed to compensate.
• Sound Card - $150 Hercules Game Theater XP (or, you could go ~$100 for an SB Live!). Obviously, since nVidia designed the audio chipset for the XBox, you won't be able to get the exact same audio hardware (well, maybe not until nForce-based motherboards are released).
• Video - $260 (the aforementioned GeForce 3). No other video card is worth mentioning, if you're strict about wanting near-XBox-level performance.
• Gamepad - $35 Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad Pro (about as close as you'll get to an XBox game pad)
• Hard Drive - $75 40GB hard drive (because you have to install an OS, install games, keep saved games, and so on) (again, from Pricewatch)
• DVD-ROM - $27 10X drive (Pricewatch)
• Necessary accessories (mouse, keyboard) - $4 (if you're really cheap -- again, Pricewatch)
• Case - $11 generic case (Pricewatch)
• Memory - $30 (price for PC133 512MB, since more memory is always better when developers don't have the ability to micromanage the memory how they please). (Pricewatch)

Yes, I do realize that you can buy a PC for much less than that, but it's not going to be the "equivalent" of an XBox, either.