What do you want to do with the system, i.e. what games and therefore what OS should it run?

P4 can be had cheap, but the i850 requires Rdram and will be a rather expensive option.
Cheapest options are socket 775 now, but those are probably better suited for WinXP.

I would like to attempt some retro LAN parties with Windows 98 games (Age of Empires, Starcraft, Half-Life) and Windows XP games (C&C generals).
The Rdram will be within the budget of 100 bucks. So it's 100 bucks for the base system plus graphics card and some bucks for cables, thermal paste and so on.

I am not sure what such systems are worth as of today. On eBay there are old Voodoo cards for 200 bucks. I mean it could be anything 😀

What do you think?

Prices of hardware can vary dramatically depending on location. Where I live, for example, early 2000s computers (including Pentium 4 systems) are still readily available from thrift stores and local ads. Usually they range from between $20 to $100.

RDRAM based systems are more rare and can be more expensive as a result. A complete system for $100 doesn't sound that unreasonable, if that's something you're after.

Depends on where you are, but $100 is mildly expensive by US standards, I got a nearly complete Willamette RDRAM system for $15 at VCF last year and highly recommend checking out similar events/swap meets around you, it's usually the cheapest way to get your hands on retro hardware if you don't have an understanding with local recyclers. If you're ebaying all your stuff, $100 sounds more accurate and isn't *terrible* if it has a nice case as the case is often what will set you back the most purchasing online.

I am from Austria. I forgot to say that it's an old IBM IntelliStation. Is this something that makes the deal better or worse?

It's already in its case, with its power supply and at 1 GB you're halfway to maxing out the mainboard. With some luck, you have 2*512 Rimms installed.

You might want to ditch the spinning hard disk drive and install a Ide to sata in between the ata-cable and a small sata drive.

Whether it's finally a good deal or not depends on your own situation and appreciation. Depending on what GPU you want, you might have to add another € 50 or so.

All in all, any system that gives you that fun nostalgic feeling, is priceless.

Thank you. I'm still unsure, I will sleep over it. Thanks guys!

Watch out for the capacitors on these P4 boards ... all of the P4 boards I bought had faulty ones.
Are you in Vienna?

I'd say it's not bad, that' basically 5 hours work if you are not on minimum wage. This hobby can get really expensive and €100 isn't that much for a desirable hobby item. You want it, they have it. You can either buy now or wait for better deals that may or may not come. I'd say get it, play with it and sell it when you get bored of it. Invest the money in the next thing you desire, rinse and repeat.

It used to be you could be given this stuff for a pittance, the local recycle center would all but pay you to take it. Now people tend to know the market and want to charge you $200 for an HP Vectra.

Thanks for the tip with the capacitors...I mean which old PC or console doesn't have this issue after all those years.
Or did you mean that especially this board has faulty ones? No, I am not from Vienna.

Thanks again, guys!
Thanks Mandrew!

I reckon 100 w/o a graphics card of some kind is a bit much.

PaddyWi wrote on 2025-04-02, 18:59:

Or did you mean that especially this board has faulty ones?

Pentium 4 era hardware would have been manufactured during the infamous capacitor plague era (about 1999 to 2005 or so). Unfortunately hardware of that era is more likely to have failed capacitors.

EUR 100 in AT? On willhaben.at I'm seeing complete P4 systems going for EUR 20-50. In fact getting a bit jealous, what I'm seeing there looks like situation in NL 5 years ago.

How popular was DELL in Europe during the P4 era? We still have a massive supply of those plastic DELLs here cheap. If you want to build one with a gamer board of the era, then costs go up quite a bit.

I'd say don't lock yourself to RDRAM and instead consider the i845 chipset with DDR RAM if you're dead-set on having a P4 board... or even better - an i865 chipset board.

If you live relatively close to Eastern Europe, looks for some of the local classifieds sites there (e.g. OLX) and see if you can get shipped something from there.
Where I am, I can often get working P4 systems for $20 with all kinds of interesting hardware.
And locally (flea market), it's even better - last weekend, for example, I got a whole PC for just under $4, containing a Gigabyte GA-8iPE1000-G motherboard (P4 i865 chipset) with a 2.6 GHz P4 HT, 512 MB of RAM, Gigabyte FX5200 64-bit video, and even included a 40 or 80 GB HDD... all in a pretty cheapo garbage case with cheapo garbage PSU. But for $4, I can't complain at all. This is my 3rd GA-8iPE1000--- board so far. The 1st one was out of a pretty gutted and beaten case for $5, but the bonus part was that it came with a GeForce 4 TI4200... which I still need to clean up and test (not high hopes it will work though, due to someone fudging with the cooler on top quite a bit.)

Anyways, lots of P4 systems to be had around this part of Europe, so definitely check it out. Ebay will probably have similar, but it's going to be more expensive likely. I haven't been on Ebay ever since I moved to EU - just more expensive compared to local stuff.

Unknown_K wrote on 2025-04-02, 21:04:

How popular was DELL in Europe during the P4 era? We still have a massive supply of those plastic DELLs here cheap. If you want to build one with a gamer board of the era, then costs go up quite a bit.

Not that much at all.

When I used to live in the USA, indeed the P4 era Dells where just about everywhere, especially back in their hay-day. Even today, you can still find these for $20-40 locally and mostly complete. Just beware that many of the Dell PCs from that era were notorious for not having an AGP slot. And worse, models like the Optiplex GX260 and GX270 were almost always affected by bad caps (and probably the equivalent Dimension models too.)

By the looks of it on eBay though, the prices there are almost 2x what I noted above. I was even going to post links to a few I found (in the US), but after seeing O/P is from Europe, I suppose there's no point now.

That being said, I will post only one that I found kind of interesting, in case anyone else in the US might be looking for one. It appears to be a complete Gateway E3600 system. 1.6 GHz P4 Willamate (likely) and 512 MB of (likely) SDRAM... so not exactly a great P4 system by any means... but at least it comes with an HDD. And the beige case is probably the nicest thing about this system.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/236029016643

(and no, I'm not the seller of this or affiliated in any way... but figured it was a beige system interesting enough to post here.)

momaka wrote on 2025-04-02, 22:49:

I'd say don't lock yourself to RDRAM and instead consider the i845 chipset with DDR RAM if you're dead-set on having a P4 board. […]
Show full quote

I'd say don't lock yourself to RDRAM and instead consider the i845 chipset with DDR RAM if you're dead-set on having a P4 board... or even better - an i865 chipset board.

And locally (flea market), it's even better - last weekend, for example, I got a whole PC for just under $4, containing a Gigabyte GA-8iPE1000-G motherboard (P4 i865 chipset) with a 2.6 GHz P4 HT, 512 MB of RAM, Gigabyte FX5200 64-bit video, and even included a 40 or 80 GB HDD... all in a pretty cheapo garbage case with cheapo garbage PSU. But for $4, I can't complain at all. This is my 3rd GA-8iPE1000--- board so far. The 1st one was out of a pretty gutted and beaten case for $5, but the bonus part was that it came with a GeForce 4 TI4200... which I still need to clean up and test (not high hopes it will work though, due to someone fudging with the cooler on top quite a bit.)

That being said, I will post only one that I found kind of interesting, in case anyone else in the US might be looking for one. It appears to be a complete Gateway E3600 system. 1.6 GHz P4 Willamate (likely) and 512 MB of (likely) SDRAM... so not exactly a great P4 system by any means... but at least it comes with an HDD. And the beige case is probably the nicest thing about this system.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/236029016643

(and no, I'm not the seller of this or affiliated in any way... but figured it was a beige system interesting enough to post here.)

Yes the i845, i848 and i865 are all very good chipsets !

I would like to suggest something a little different. See if you can find one of those little Shuttle PCs. You said you want to potentially do LAN stuff. The shuttle would be great for that and you should be able to pick some cool hardware into that case. They look cool too.

P4 era IBM isn't anything special IMHO, not bad just the same as the other big OEM's like HP.
but still better then Dells who seem to have suffered the most from the capacitor plague.

RD Ram is interesting and maybe the convenance of a complete system makes it worth the money.
You can probably build a PC from scratch with the mentioned i865 chipset cheaper.

All the games you mentioned will run on XP just fine though. So if you drop Win98 support You can pick up newer and cheaper XP compatible hardware much cheaper