Bulding a pc

[rcrevolution]

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

[Sphyenx]

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.

[Zachery]

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.

[Sphyenx]

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)

[rcrevolution]

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

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

[rcrevolution]

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

[Sphyenx]

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.

[moderate_rock48]

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

[Zachery]

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

[alc6379]

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.