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Technology and the Internet

The Home-Built PC

By Michael Hiltzik

This chart was inadvertantly dropped from a Feb. 8 Tech Times story on building a personal computer from scratch.

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Major components of a do-it-yourself personal computer and their retail prices:

* Case, motherboard, CPU (AMD Duron 750 MHz): $240

* Memory (128 MB of RAM): $70

* CD-ROM drive (Creative 52x): $50

* Hard drive (Maxtor 30 GB): $130

* Floppy disk drive: $18

* Graphics card: $120

* Sound card (Sound Blaster PCI 512): $70

* Keyboard (Comp USA): $15

* Mouse (Microsoft Optical): $50

* Operating system (Windows 98): $170

* Monitor (Magview 17-inch): $109

* Total: $1,042

Tips from the Web

Many hobbyist Web sites feature step-by-step instructions on assembling a PC, including parts lists, photographs and even component reviews. These are particularly helpful:

* Rick Russell’s computer peripherals page on About.com: https://peripherals.about.com/compute/peripherals /library/ref/blbuildathlon.htm. Russell has a companion page about building a Pentium system.

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* PC Mechanic: https://www.pcmech.com/byopc/index.htm

Technology and the Internet
Michael Hiltzik

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik has written for the Los Angeles Times for more than 40 years. His business column appears in print every Sunday and Wednesday, and occasionally on other days. Hiltzik and colleague Chuck Philips shared the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for articles exposing corruption in the entertainment industry. His seventh book, “Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America,” was published in 2020. His forthcoming book, “The Golden State,” is a history of California. Follow him on X at twitter.com/hiltzikm and on Facebook at facebook.com/hiltzik.

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