Hardware

Socket 370 is 'old' technology.

However, MHz per MHz, P3 CPUs outperform P4s.

Soyo is an ok brand, not one of my favorites but usable.

Tiger Direct has reasonable, but seldom the lowest prices.

for a good price reference, check out www.pricewatch.com
They list the current offers from a large number of web sites.

I use the following web vendors:
www.newegg.com
www.mwave.com
www.compgeeks.com

As far as what to look for, it depends on your needs.

If you plan to do any digital video processing, I recommend a P4 system.
If you decide to go with an Intel CPU, I recommend a genuine Intel motherboard. They are worth the extra money.

I personally like Socket A systems with AMD Athlon or Duron CPUs.
Dollar per dollar, these are your best deal on performance versus cost.

Either way, you get the best performance if your motherboard uses DDR RAM.

You should be able to get a 1.5 GHz CPU, motherboard, and 256MB of DDR RAM for under $150

Motherboard brands that I like, or my friends like include:
A-Bit
Asus
ECS
Intel
Shuttle

Chas

Point value changed by question poster.

For an extra $10, you can have a 1GHz Celeron system in a genuine Intel motherboard.
CPU, 41
Intel D815 MB 40.50

If you wish to use a slower CPU, you can get it for even less.

www.compgeeks.com

For info on motherboards, go to www.motherboards.org

For low prices goto www.compgeeks.com


Ralph

dont forget that you can build a dual AMD system with dual proccesors both running at combined speed of 4ghz for little or bout half the price of a pentium 4 system and AMD 1.1ghz processor will smoke a pentium 4 at 1.8 ghz just so you know cuz i did it

what parts do you have already i.e. video cards, memory as the type of memory directly affects which one you can use, as well if you need onboard video or not that all depends on if you have a video card(preferably AGP) i have found a few for well under $100 without video and they are decent boards with AMD XP processors, with and without DDR