As more and more vendors embrace nettops, we're starting to see a flurry of activity on the market and more and more innovative concepts. Like all consumers, we appreciate cutthroat competition and lots of choice, but some vendors seem to be missing the point. Basically, many of them are focusing on feature packed products and pushing prices up, rather than down. The netbook market went through a similar phase last year, as companies started offering expensive netbooks that made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

At the moment, the cheapest netbooks sell for just under €200 and we are talking about the most basic models, based on Intel's Atom 230 and godawful i945GC chipset. This sounds like a rather reasonable price, but we're pretty sure a couple of hours of browsing and a Phillips screwdriver can yield much better results, so let's take a look at what €200 will buy you in the DIY market.

Since Intel launched its first Atom-based Essential Series boards, companies rushed to fill the market with cheap ITX chassis. A year or so ago, you were likely to pay €50 to €80 for a chassis, but they got quite a bit cheaper in recent months. Codegen's box-like MX-31 sells for just €25 in Germany, while the A+case Cupid 1 costs €29 and it looks rather nice, too. Mano other vendors offer chassis in the €30 to €40 range. Some of them can be mounted on the back of an LCD panel and Gigabyte's €49 MIB T5140 doubles as a monitor stand, allowing punters to make a cheap all-in-one from scavenged parts.

ITX motherboard prices start at as low as €40 for an Atom 230/945 combo, or a Celeron 220/945. Atom 330 boards start at around €55 and seem like a worthwhile investment. Pineview D410 / D510 boards start at €52 and €62 respectively, but the choice is rather limited and they are still not available in many smaller markets. It all sounds nice and cheap, unless you want proper graphics. ION boards cost anywhere from €90 to €130, and although we like Nvidia's ION, this is just too much. You'll probably be better off with a G41 board and a cheap Socket 775 Celeron, although it won't fit in some cases. Some boards even feature PCIe x16 slots, but they are way too pricey and you'll struggle to fit a graphics card in most ITX chassis, unless you go for the biggest ones, in which case you're better of with a mATX system anyway.

Unlike most ready built nettops, the vast majority of ITX chassis feature 3.5-inch drive bays and some of the bigger ones have room for slim optical drives. This means you'll spend less and get more, faster storage, albeit in a somewhat bigger chassis. Hard drive prices vary greatly from market to market, but €30 will buy you a 160GB or 250GB drive in most markets. If you're lucky, you can even score 320GB or 500GB drives for €30 or slightly more. However, the biggest upshot of using a chassis with a 3.5-inch bay is the fact that you can use one of your old drives in it, at no cost whatsoever.

When it comes to RAM, things are a bit more straightforward. Although DDR2 prices are on the rebound, they are still around €10 per gigabyte. Obviously, we recommend getting 2GB, as most ITX boards feature just one memory slot. In case you have some old memory modules lying about, there are several boards with two memory slots, so using old 512MB or 1GB modules is still an option.

Bottom line, it is possible to build a DIY nettop for as little as €120 to €130, provided you are able to source all the components in bigger markets, such as Germany or the UK. The cost will be slightly higher in smaller markets. Low price is what nettops were supposed to be all about. As we said in the introduction, this fact was lost on many vendors along the way. Apart from customization, the best thing about building your own nettop, however, is the fact that you can recycle some old components, such as memory and hard drives. However, in case you can't live without HDMI or ION, you will still manage to keep costs under €200, possibly even in the €170 to €180 range. This is still quite a bit cheaper than an off the shelf nettop and we think it's worth the bother.