I appreciate for whoever takes the time to answer my questions:

I wanna purchase a dell xps 420 desktop/tower but my concern is that will i be able to put in a aftermarket motherboard in the tower? i know ill need to switch out the power supply to match the new motherboard because i read dell has funny type prongs to their psu units, but mainly cant figure if aftermarket motherboards will be compatible with dells xps 420 towers? I wanna buy this pc just to play certain games for now until i order parts over time. i wanna use the xps tower to build on. I just cant find if i can put in different motherboards and have it fit right. if any expert can give me some knowledge i would highly appreciate your time.

This post was edited by two_shoes on Apr 28 2017 08:26am

How much would it all cost?

The dell xps is for 100$. I just cant figure out if i can swap out motherboards in the tower for example. I buy a asus motherboard to put in the tower will it fit?

I can pretty much guarantee it won't line up with the case

What are my options? I wanna buy a cheap working desktop until i can order upgrades in the future

Craigslist

This
I would Craigslist as you can't build a full PC for $100 that's reasonable, if u post a budget, we can come up with something

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/C3MNFd
Bare minimum I would go, get as much of this as you can used - ideally the ram can be found for like $20-25
And u should be able to get a random case too

If u go this route,.know that you're throwing money away
You would be better off getting something like an Intel nuc so u can at least repurpose it into an htpc once you save enough to buy a real computer. The nuc will be fine for webpages and YouTube. Idk about games.

This post was edited by Penguins0690 on Apr 28 2017 11:56am