Build a Computer for Less than $200

If you’re cheap like most college students, buying an expensive computer is out of the question. Fortunately, you have college students to guide you with what you should do, and Paul Stamatiou is a blogger who does. In his article, he explains how you can build a fully-functional computer using $200 in spare parts. You’ll need to supply your own case (if you have a spare one, or you can get one of these super small Mini-ITX cases), monitor, keyboard, and mouse, but everything else is included in the package: a cheap motherboard ($65), decent RAM ($20), a power supply unit ($50), and a 250GB hard drive ($65). Your operating system will be the free and increasingly popular Ubuntu Linux.

One of the benefits of such a computer is that it doesn’t have to be your main machine. You can use this to set up a home theater to stream the movies you stole bought on iTunes.

The price of your machine might end up being a little higher, but for a small machine that doesn’t cramp up your style or your dorm room, this is a good choice — and if you’ve never built a computer before, you’ll realize how easy it really is.