Building a PC Equal to XBox for the Same Price or Less?

Lonnold asks: "Every time the topic of Linux on the XBox and/or XBox modding comes up, some one always responds, 'I can build a better PC from scratch, why waste time modding a game console?' So that's my challenge, can anyone demonstrate that it is cheaper to build a PC comparable to the XBox specs?"

Comments

Lets see here

[Glonoinha]

CPU : PIII 733MHz w/ 128k cache
RAM : 64M
Video card : GeForce 3ti or maybe even a low end GF4.
Sound card : Regular ol' sound card.
Media : CD/DVD reader.
Hard drive : 8G

$220 without a floppy drive, keyboard, or OS? I think we can probably do that pretty easy, or should I say yes, very easy. Probably do twice as much performance (Celeron 1.4GHz or even higher cpu, twice as much memory, hard drive space) for $250.

Re:Lets see here

[crisco]

pricewatch:

geforce 3ti: $63
celeron 1.3GHz(*): $40
mboard(**): $58
64MB: $9
20GB: $45
Case, power: $11
DVD Drive: $31
controller ??

(*)Much lower than Pentium III in the 733 to 900 range
(**)Probably cheaper motherboads, searched for one that listed the Celeron at 1.3GHz

Total $257

Cheaper buying used stuff, or if you can get everything from one place, but you're going to be hard pressed to get below the xbox price unless you come across some sweet deals. You're right, higher CPU performance is cheaper. The vid chip in the xbox is somewhat geforce3 era but does some stuff that is only now showing up in pc graphics cards.