Spyder

Seeing alot of questions about building budget gaming PC's that'll run BF2 at med/high settings, so here is my official recomendation on that score. Note that most of the key components can be upgraded where you have money available.

Ninja's Crazy AMD Budget Gaming System!

Mobo - Asus A8N-E (socket 939 amd64 PCI-e) $119
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131530
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice - $146
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103537
GPU - Gigabyte PCI-e 6600GT - $146.50
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125156
RAM - 2 Patriot PC3200 1GB modules, 2-3-2-5 - $261.56
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220045
Power Supply - Fortron 500W for AMD64 systems - $97.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817104934
Sound Card - Audigy 2 ZS 7.1 - $77 after rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829102171
Case - Any ATX case will do you, price ranges from $45-$200 depending on what style and case material desired.
HDD - Seagate 160GB SATA - $91.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148034
Rom Drive - Lite-On DVD-burner - $42.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106988

That's essentially your core PC. Total price (shipped to lower 48 via fedex or UPS ground 3-day) from newegg at current listing prices:
$983.03, + whatever you spend on the case, monitor, speakers, mouse, keyboard, and OS.

And you could upgrade everything on that PC significantly. And of course all parts (except the HDD I think) are retail, and come with mnfg warranties. You could also save money by buying cheaper brands for some of that, I went with the PC I'd build for that price range.

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perry

Seems like your links got messed up from copying & pasting...

I wouldn't exactly call a $100 powersupply a budget component.. I don't much see the need for a 500W PSU on a budget computer. What I'd do is buy a nice case that comes with a powersupply, like the Antec Sonata II which comes with a 450W powersupply. I run my amd64 system in a Sonata with the included 380W powersupply. It has the 20pin ATX connector, but my board runs just fine with it.

But that's just my opinion, and opinions are like as... well, you get the picture

RandomGuy

Sounds about right on the money to me, although I'd recommend only 1 gig of RAM if the motherboard has the slots for you to upgrade later without lowering the speed (and you aren't going to overclock). You could put the extra cash in another hard drive and make a RAID 0 array but it all depends on what kind of performance is most important to you.

Spyder

Eh, The forum Snips links to length, and it's linking as .... into newegg as opposed to the full link extention. I'll see if I can fix it, otherwise just copy and paste the product number into newegg's search and the item will come up.

As for the PSU, yeah, if you can find a good case with a good PSU (like Antec) you can certainly save yourself some money there. I put that PSU in there because you can upgrade your PC as far as it can possibly go and you won't have power issues, and it overclocks really rather well, if they're looking at doing that also. But I will point out that a good 400-450W PSU is still going to cost you about $75 by itself, so I certainly wouldn't go with a cheapy on the PSU though, because that's computer suicide.

__________________
a.k.a. NinjaPirateAssassin
Celibacy is not Hereditary.
Everybody should believe in something - I believe I'll have another drink.
Happiness is like wetting your pants, everyone can see it but only you can feel the warmth.
Flying is easy, Just throw yourself at the ground and miss!

Spyder

Alrighty, fixed the links. Also, the only reason I put 2GB in there is because bf2 is such a ram eating game. If you're not planning on attempting to run BF2 at high, certainly drop the extra GB of ram, and if you care less about good timings, go with crucial or corsair value ram 2x512 chips, which'll save you another $40 on top of that. This system is certainly not the cheapest possible, it's just what I'd build for a PC in the $1000 price range. I'm willing to bet that if I really wanted to, I could shave probably $200 off that, by switching from a 160gb sata to a 120 or 80GB IDE, going with a lower-end mobo, case combo on the PSU (But only from OCZ, Antec, or Fortron, from my personal experience) and of course the $160 you'd save by going from 2GB of patriot ram to 1GB of corsair value. Which would drop you into the $600 price range for the core PC. Not something I'd personally do, but if you're really strapped for cash, there you go.

__________________
a.k.a. NinjaPirateAssassin
Celibacy is not Hereditary.
Everybody should believe in something - I believe I'll have another drink.
Happiness is like wetting your pants, everyone can see it but only you can feel the warmth.
Flying is easy, Just throw yourself at the ground and miss!

Steel_Penguin

Get you're 6600GT from a different manufacturer. Leadtek and BFG are good. Gigabyte is not. Andandtech has a good comparo that i'm too lazy too find right now. Also, i second the idea of getting a Sonata of any other Antec case with an included power supply, but only Antec because they make good PSes, and you don't need 500w.Other than that, nice setup .

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Spyder

You can get a bfg for 200, but if you're going to spend that much, you mightaswell get a 6800gt for $280 =P I just grabbed one as an example. With the geforce cards, you can get about 5 diff MNFG's in the same price range, so pick whichever one you prefer.

__________________
a.k.a. NinjaPirateAssassin
Celibacy is not Hereditary.
Everybody should believe in something - I believe I'll have another drink.
Happiness is like wetting your pants, everyone can see it but only you can feel the warmth.
Flying is easy, Just throw yourself at the ground and miss!

Crono1000

And if your spending 280 you might as well spend 350ish for a 7800gt =)

Vulcan

1000 is not budget IMO. between 500-700 is more budget.

Here's a nice article i was gonna post on budget CPU's
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=61&type=overview

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Spyder

Top end is 2000-3000. budget is considered half-price of top of the line. Now, we're talking gaming PC's, and not just PC's in general. I could build a PC for probablyt $400 if somebody needed one at that level.

__________________
a.k.a. NinjaPirateAssassin
Celibacy is not Hereditary.
Everybody should believe in something - I believe I'll have another drink.
Happiness is like wetting your pants, everyone can see it but only you can feel the warmth.
Flying is easy, Just throw yourself at the ground and miss!

Trooper

check this out

http://firingsquad.com/hardware/buil...aming_pc_2005/

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that sounds like a good idea trooper.
-Vulcan

Mateo

That's a decent rig...althought in some of the tests, it drops below 12fps on some games....that's unplayable.

=Sarc=

That's running at 2048x1536. Pretty insane resolution to play at. If it's a budget PC, look at the budget resolutions.

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Mateo

I'm so pwned. I didn't look at the resolutions.

Mateo

I know the build v. buy argument is strong on both sides, but at about $1000, it's hard to overlook Shuttles.