Hi, I want to help out my friend, he wants to build a pc which he can play games on, doesnt need to be the best just play games on it.

what can he build with $500?
Now I mean from stratch, Ill lend him my windows XP cd but everything else he needs to buy.

so far i got a case for about $40

now a 60-80 GB HDD should be suffiect for his needs
what cpu would be good? how much do AMD XP 3000+/3200+ sell for?
what is a good mobo?
the ram will mostly likely be PC2700 so thats about $100 for 512MB
what is a cheap but decent video card? 9600Xt/ 5700LE (256MB)

help me out here, unlike him I have the money to invest in high end pcs, so I never really look at the low end.

Now keep in mind this is the summer we're talking about, 6 months away so these things could go down in price but what is a rough estimate of what he can get for $500?

BTW he does not need a monitor

tigerdirect.com has great things cheaper!. Also what kind of games, are we talking doom3? If so you'll need more then $500 USD for a complete system, but if its like Baulders Gate, or Warcraft you could build one for 300$ USD, lol. Also halflife 2 doesnt need a great system either. I can run it on my old Gateway, thats 7 years old.

For a new nice computer you are going to spend at least 600 minus software and a monitor.

I just built my friend (less than 3 months ago) a new system

AMD XP 2500+ Barton
ATi Saphire 9800 Pro (onsale at 140)
80GB Harddrive
DVD/CDRW
Case
512MB DDR 333

and that ran us about 600 + some other things he needed.

That was a fairly low end system, this was from newegg.com which is the CHEAPEST place online to buy stuff from outside of sales in Brick and Morter stores and otherwebsites.

AMD XP 2500+ Barton (ok.) (good pick)
ATi Saphire 9800 Pro (onsale at 140)
80GB Harddrive (you dont need this much do you? if its just games you onnly need 40gig.)
DVD/CDRW (i got mine for 20$-40$ and its good.)
Case (you can find cheap, you dont need a super mod case, tigerdirect has some good ones for about 50 bucks if im not mistaken)
512MB DDR 333 (ok)

well the 5700Le (256Mb) is $109 at tigerdirect

he doesnt need that good of a card as a 9800pro

well, speakers, mouse,keyboard, and monitor, peripherals like those are not needed.

and he uses his PS2 more so this will only be for games i let him borrow or that he buys, and he didnt like doom 3 when I played it on my pc.

so just a pc that can play games decently on lowest settings will be fine (1024 x728) tho

i use a radeon 7000 on another PC, its very old, and its very good on resolution. I think i have a max of 1280*1024, so its not bad at all.

How reliable and good is www.pricewatch.com? they got alot of cheap stuff there.

NewEgg 99% of the time is the cheapest overall, as if you order from 50 other places
you are paying 50 times the shipping

I pretty much rely exclusively on Newegg. The only time I go elsewhere is if I'm looking for used/refurb items, or NewEgg doesn't have some obscure part that I need.

Just to throw my $.02 in, I've got a Barton XP2500, and I REALLY like it. I know there are faster processors out there, but it's been rock-solid stable. I've OCed mine up as high as a 2800, and I've had some good results with it, though now I'm just running it stock.