$15 AIW 9600, £313 3GHz superPC, Sapphire ATI motherboard

IF YOU know of any good value IT sales (auctions, rebates, one-off, clearance, surplus, classified ads) going around in the United Kingdom, France, USA or Singapore, don't hesitate to contact me, at least 24 hours before the sales end.

USA
Newegg is selling what seems to be the perfect entry mid-range multimedia card. The retail version of the ATI AIW Radeon 9600 is selling there for $157.50, substantially less than most of its competitors which price it nearer to £200.

You also get a Zodiac Paper weight when you buy it. The card is manufactured by ATI and includes 128MB DDR memory. Overclocking is quite good going all the way to 350MHz for the core and 500MHz for the memory instead of 325MHz/400MHz. Of course, using specialist drivers like Omegadrivers or tools like ATI Tray tools will help considerably. Interestingly, and perhaps why overclocking does not go so high, the card has a passive heat sink only, no HSF.

This makes it particularly suited for those small form factor casing and would be ideally coupled to a Pentium M processor and a noiseless hard disk for maximum near silent experience. A block and s-Video connections are provided as well as a shedload of accessories includingt the essential remote control, drives, Pinnacle studio 8 editing software as well as the purple breakout box, a scart adaptor and a special adaptor which allows two D-Sub monitors to connect to the card. There is no game and no DVI connections though. Memory used seems to come from Samsung while the Philips TV Tuner and the Rage Theatre Chip are regular components of the AIW series.

UK
At £313.44+VAT, The HP Compaq Business Desktop dc5000 is approximately two-thirds the size of a conventional desktop, yet delivers the performance you need for a wide range of business needs. And you won't break the bank outfitting your office with the dc5000. This microtower model is configured with a 3.0GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor, a 1MB L2 cache, an 80GB Ultra ATA/100 hard drive and 512MB DDR SDRAM PC3200 memory. In addition to the 800MHz front bus speed, this dc5000 contains a 48x32x48 CD-RW drive or a DVDROM drive, four open bays and three open full-height PCI slots. For your communications needs, it features an integrated Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet controller.

The Intel Extreme Graphics 2 share main system memory for superb visuals, while the SoundMax Digital AC97 audio and internal speaker provide crisp sound. Windows XP Professional is pre-installed. Bear in mind though that this system has been opened and used and that the packaging has been damaged in some wasy. Modsynergy gave its two thumbs up and said "The ATI ALL-IN-WONDER 9600 provides the user with an awesome home entertainment experience while delivering them good gaming power that is needed in today's level of gaming. As this card is targeted towards the mainstream audience, this is without a doubt a complete package (excluding the fact that there is no game bundle) and comes at a steal of a price.

If you are in the market for a video card that dissipates little heat, takes up only one expansion slot, has many functions and plays games at a great rate, then the ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 is an excellent choice for you."

Singapore
Hardwareplace is selling the Sapphire Axion Pentium 4 motherboard for only $99, around £30, while it is not the cheapest board around, it does pack some intersting features at this price. It appears that the board is a RS300-MA26 variant. It comes with a Radeon 9200 core onboard which should provide with a definite advantage as compared to other integrated models like the i845G or the PM series. Even though the R9200 is loosely based on the R8500, it would still be enough to compete with a Geforce 3 Ti 200 while others would struggle to best of Geforce 2MX.

Unfortunately, the motherboards depends on SMA to get their memory. The microATX motherboard should fit most casings. This also means that it has only three PCI slots, one AGP one and two DIMM sockets, these restrictions being due to the very size of the board. Other detaisl include TVOut, six USB 2.0 ports, and AC97 sound support. You also have two IDE sockets as standard as well as four USB 2.0 ports and one RJ45. µ