[Theophylact]

The Athlon 1500+ is getting a bit elderly, so I've ordered new innards. It's got a pretty good box, an Antec Sonata III with a 500W PSU. I have an effectively brand-new 1TB HDD sitting in my workaday machine without any data on it that I'll use for the main drive, and I have the usual miscellaneous bits: a ZIP-250, a floppy, a card reader, and a DVD burner. I use a KVM for my two machines so I don't need a new monitor, keyboard or mouse.

Here's what I'm getting:

GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-US2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail ($74.99 before $10 MIR; $7.59 shipping)

AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 Kuma 2.7GHz Socket AM2+ 95W Dual-Core black edition Processor Model AD775ZWCGHBOX - Retail (includes HSF; $59.99; free shipping)

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-8500CL6D-4GBNQ - Retail ($49.99; free shipping)

I think it looks pretty good for less than $200. Should be a decent test bed for the 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope).