I found everything I wanted at newegg for $300:

Foxconn motherboard with:
NVIDIA GeForce 6150B(PV) GPU + nForce 430 MCP; 2000MT/s
Integrated NVIDIA high-performance graphics controller, VGA/DVI
1 x PCI Express x16, 1 x PCI Express x1, 2 x PCI
2 x ATA/133
4 x SATA II/300 with RAID
Integrated, 5.1 channel audio, High Definition (Realtek)
Integrated NVIDIA Gigabit Ethernet
8 x USB 2.0

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Toledo 2.0GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor – OEM

(2) Crucial 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (now I will have 4GB!)

Well, Long thanks for the inspiration!

But I have a gripe. All of this reminded me of wanting to upgrade my computer.

I’m on a limited (fixed) income, but I do manage to save up for things. Two months ago I got a new Sceptre X9 LCD monitor. (I will never look at a CRT again!) An last week I bought a cheapo LCD for $99 at WalMart to use as a second monitor. It doesn’t compare to the Sceptre, but works great for reading documentation while programming. But I still have $300 in my savings burining my pocket.

I’ve never bought a complete computer, except for a TRS-80 and an Apple II long, long ago. My current computer has components of varing ages.

The case is an Antec I bought in 2000. Still has the original 350W power supply too.

It’ had three motherboards in it. The first was a Tyan that supported dual Pentium III processors @ 1 GHz. I had 1.5 GB of SDRAM. I had two Western Digital 120 GB hard drives in it. I paid premium prices for those components back then. I used that for over 5 years.

Then for a short time, I had an ASUS motherboard (surplus) with the Pentium 4 2 GHz processor from my Dad’s HP computer that died. I used the same RAM ad hard drives. But the processor sucked. It was an early Pentium 4 and had almost no cache.

Then I bit the bullet and bought a surplus Gigabyte MB, a surplus Pentium 4 HT with 1 MB cache, and 2GB of new DDR400 memory. The processor was rated at 2.4 GHz, but easily overclocked to 2.8 GHz.

Everyting was cool until those, now 7-year old WD hard drives started making weird noises. So I got two new WD 320 GB SATA II drives. But the Gigabyte MB only supported SATA I. Even so, the drives were faster. So I was happy.

Then I got involved in the Vista beta test and just had to see AERO for myself. It turns out I didn’t care for it, but not after I bought a new ATI X1300 AGP video card (the Gigabyte MB has not PCI Express slots).

I guess I should be happy with this, but when I’m working on large projects in Visual Studio, even 2 GB of RAM is not enough (doesn’t matter if I’m running XP or Vista).

So, after reading your piece, Long, I spent hours searching the web to find a new MB and processor. The only way I could afford to upgrade was to reuse my as many existing components as possible. Here were my requirements:

1. AGP video slot for my ATI card or at least decent on-board video until I can afford to replace it.

2. Support for my DDR400 memory with room for at least 2 GB more.

3. AMD dual core processor with 64-bit support.

4. At least 2 SATA II connections.

I can find motherboards that meet all my requirements except for the SATA II connections! I can find a decent AMD processor for $180 (but they use socket 939 and not the newer AM2 and also use more power).

So, I am asking your readers for advice. If I wait another few weeks, I’ll have $400…