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The X2 3600+ could be had for $65 shipped free with a copy of Rainbox 6 : Vegas since last week. Sell the game for $15 - $20 and get the CPU for ~$45.
Pair it with a Biostar TA690G (the best overclocking 690G motherboard aside from the Sapphire PI-AM2RS690MHD) as well as some SuperTalent DDR2-667 (which seems to overclock pretty well) and you have a pretty nice setup.

Biostar TA690G at ZipZoomFly (the best deal atm w/free shipping)
2GB SuperTalent DDR2-667 at either newEgg or eWiz
If you need a cheap AM2 heatsink and some thermal paste, hit up SVC for the Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 and some Arctic Silver Ceramique

The X2 3600+ could be had for $65 shipped free with a copy of Rainbox 6 : Vegas since last week. Sell the game for $15 - $20 and get the CPU for ~$45.
Pair it with a Biostar TA690G (the best overclocking 690G motherboard aside from the Sapphire PI-AM2RS690MHD) as well as some SuperTalent DDR2-667 (which seems to overclock pretty well) and you have a pretty nice setup.

Biostar TA690G at ZipZoomFly (the best deal atm w/free shipping)
2GB SuperTalent DDR2-667 at either newEgg or eWiz
If you need a cheap AM2 heatsink and some thermal paste, hit up SVC for the Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 and some Arctic Silver Ceramique

Not that I condone this site at all (it was the first that caught my eye on a google search for 'power supply floppy adapter'), but have you considered something like this at all? Not exactly as screwy or temporary a fix as an external power source, granted it will cost you $6.50 for UPS ground, considering you can't find a site with less rediculous shipping prices.

Well, three really.

I wanted a very quiet PC. I bought a huge, solid, steel case, customized with a 120mm fan on the back (theory: big and slow == quiet). I got a Zalman "flower" heatsink/fan (HSF), and mounted the big Zalman fan to blow over it. I got an Enermax power supply with a speed adjustment. It's pretty quiet; I hear a fan, but I think that's the GeForce 4 card's fan.

I wanted to make a quiet PC for my wife. I bought a Lian Li aluminum case, an Arctic Cooling HSF, and a similar Enermax power supply. No fancy 120mm fan on the back, just a standard 80mm fan, but I used a very quiet one with thermostatic control so it is very slow and quiet when the system is cool. This computer, as it turns out, is almost completely silent! Much quieter than my computer. I did use a GeForce4 MX board in her system, because it has just a passive heat sink (no cooling fan), so perhaps that explains it.

I loved working with the Lian Li case. It's a PC-60 model with USB. I also much preferred the Arctic Cooling HSF. I got my Arctic Cooling HSF form SVC.com:

http://svc.com/arcoolsupsil.html

P.S. About the quiet power supply: I got a 365 Watt power supply with two cooling fans, one with a speed control and one with a thermal control (automatically runs faster when hot). This power supply has "Active PFC", which I don't completely understand, but I gather it is a more efficient way to convert AC to DC and thus makes less waste heat. It has a 3-pin jumper to attach to the motherboard, so the motherboard can monitor the speed of the power supply's main fan, and also so that the motherboard can signal to the power supply that it wants all fans powered down for sleep mode. (I don't think either computer is ever really sleeping at the moment. I ought to play around with ACPI and get that working, but they are quiet enough that it hasn't been a priority.) I ordered the power supplies from Directron. This one isn't the exact same model but it has the same features:

http://www.directron.com/eg465axve.html

P.S. Why is it really a tale of three Athlon XPs? Because I crunched one trying to put on the HSF. With an Athlon XP, be very, very careful when putting on the HSF. You can make a very expensive mistake! I'm looking forward to Athlon64 and Opteron with a heat spreader protecting the chip.

steveha

Actually, I just ordered a Type-R emblem to put on the new case for a celeron 600 rig with i810 onboard video and a 6GB drive. Yes it is going to be full of LED fans and CCFL "neon" tubes.

My Lian-Li PC-68 has a filter covering the front intake fans, it does a nice job with dust and cat hair. But, you can avoid needing a whole new case, SVC has fan filters for very little money at all, they can be made to work with almost any setup. Much cheaper than buying a new case.

My Lian-Li PC-68 has a filter covering the front intake fans, it does a nice job with dust and cat hair. But, you can avoid needing a whole new case, SVC has fan filters for very little money at all, they can be made to work with almost any setup. Much cheaper than buying a new case.