I have been looking at the elitedesk and optiplex options and could not see anything less than $300. Remember I already have a system running, I have a socket 1150 board sitting in a closet and I may even have ram that will work, so the only thing I am definitely missing is a cpu. The case I am using could fit a lot of hard drives also. So the most flexibility comes from upgrading what I have. Sure if I could find a full i5 Haswell or higher system for $250 I could still use it for parts but I am not seeing any of those deals at present.