I built the following system for around $1200 8 months ago:
2x Opteron 240
1G PC3200 RAM
NVidia FX5600
Tyan K8 S2875 motherboard, with onboard audio and gigabit ethernet
120G ATA133/UDMA6 Samsung HD w/8MB cache
Single layer DVD+-RW/CDRW combo drive
But I already had case, monitor, keyboard, mouse. This computer has
never seen an OS other than Linux, btw.
You spoke of being able to reuse some things - I configured the
following at newegg.com for $633:
MSI K8T NEO-FSR motherboard - onboard ethernet and sound
Athlon64 3000+ w/512MB L2 cache (retail with heatsink/fan)
1.5G (3x 512MB) PC3200 RAM
NVidia FX5600 w/256MB memory ("refurbished" - people often return video
cards when they can't install the drivers)
NEC ND2510-A dual-layer DVD+-RW/CDRW
Depending on what you can reuse, the surplus (from $1000) can go to
case, big disk, more ram, flatpanel monitor, faster/more cachey cpu, etc.
If you're planning to go 64-bit, stay away from ATI - AFAIK there is yet
to be a working 3d-accelerated 64bit driver for a modern ati card. I'm
using nvidia's drivers without a hitch on debian-amd64.
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