$500 Budget

Depends on what you wanna do with it.

But with $500, you would get a rather low end PC.

Here are some suggestions:

Hard Disk: 80GB Western Digital SATA
RAM: 2x 256MB Generic PC3200 if Intel or 2x 256MB Generic PC2700 if Athlon XP
Video Card: Geforce 4 MMX440 (good bang for the buck card and very overclockable, but still rather weak at stock) or if there's money left over, Geforce 4 Ti4200 (this upgrade becomes manditory if you plan to game with it)
CD Rom: Any old drive will work
Power Supply: Antec TruePower 350W (i would always reccomend getting a good power supply, from a safety point of view as well as a performance point of view as sometimes, Generic 350W PSU's dont give alot of power, you'll be lucky if they give you 250W, depending on what company makes them)
Case: Any generic case will do. Find the cheapest you can get.

There's 2 CPU/Motherboard setups you can get now which fit your budget:

1. Intel system: I would reccomend this if you do rendering with it, or multitask alot.
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.4CGHz
Motherboard: Asus P4P800 (or any of it's variants, depending on how much money you have left)

2. AMD system: I would reccomend this if you game alot since it can outperform the Intel P4 Northwoods.
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2500+
Motherboard: Abit NF7-S

Both have integrated LAN cards and integrated sound which are of decent quality (the Abit NF7-S integrated Soundstorm Audio card is absolutely amazing and can beat even the Creative Audigy 2 ZS in sound quality).

And there you have it.

Step 1: Get a bigger budget.

This is true. Suggestion: Find a way to stash more money. $6-800 will get you a nice gaming rig.

Yea, that will give you ALOT of options. Upgrading to such as slow system as i described above isnt very wise. If you're upgrading, you dont want an obsoleted system.

Then i suggest you get the Intel rig that i suggested. It's very very close to 500, actually slightly over even with a Geforce 4 MMX440, but u can chop it down to budget if you make the HDD IDE instead of SATA.

500 bucks is enough to build a nice system, with a better graphics card too ... I don't know why your recommending an mx440 but yum ... go with a 9600 pro or something atleast



If you can get another 250 or 500 bucks you could build a top of the line rig btw

(I'm assuing you already have a monitor btw)

laughterkillsme is absolutely correct - $500 is enough to build a nice system. Not the best, but something nice and definitely workable.

check this out:

at pricewatch....

Asus A7N8X-X mobo (upgradable to 3200+)
AMD 2400+
1 GB PC3200

$350

400 W PSU and case
$68 (includes shipping)
http://www.pcmicrostore.com//PartDet...139;p:10501467

you can also get em in different colors..

now all you need is a HD... and CD-ROM which you can take from previous PCs or get them from cheap all over the place...

This is a start, you will also need a video card if you want to do some serious gaming... but its a cheap cheap alternative///

Case ( Raidmax 268 ATX Mid-Tower Case w/350W Power Supply Yellow )
Power Supply ( Standard Case Power Supply )
Processor ( AMD® Athlon-64 2800+ CPU w/ Hyper Transport Technology )
Processor Cooling ( Certified CPU Fan and Heatsink )
Motherboard ( GigaByte K8NS nForce-3 250 Chipset w/5.1 Sound, LAN, USB 2.0 8x AGP Motherboard )
Memory ( 512MB DDR-400 PC3200 Memory Module Geil or Major Brand )
Video Card ( Nvidia Geforce-FX 5700 128MB w/DVI + TV Out 8x AGP Video )
Hard Drive ( 80 GB HARD DRIVE 80 GB 7200 RPM Ultra ATA-100 Hard Drive )
2nd Hard Drive ( None )
Raid Controller ( None )
Raid Configuration ( None )
CD/DVD Drive ( None )
CD-RW/DVD-RW Drive ( 52x32x52 CD-RW Drive Beige )
Sound Card ( 3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard )
580$ From www.Ibuypower.com

wasting money with that pc...
he said he needed DVD burner/word processing....
you dont need an AMD-64 CPU for that...

oh yeah maybe i should read the middle posts next time... heh

I built this one at Ibuypower for $540.00

Raidmax 268 ATX Mid-Tower Case w/350W Power Supply
AMD® Athlon XP 2400+ QuantiSpeed CPU
Asus A7N8X-X w/Audio, LAN, USB 2.0 8x AGP Motherboard
256MB DDR-333 PC2700 Memory Module
Nvidia Geforce FX-5200 w/128MB
Maxtor 40 GB 7200 RPM Ultra ATA-133 Hard Drive
16x DVD-ROM Drive
52x32x52 CD-RW Drive
Speakers, Mouse, Keyboard
XP Home w/ SP2

$6 to $800?! I'll take the $6 one!

Heh, that reminds me of the old "push-up" bet... lol!!1!! Yeah, I know what you meant.

-myrkat

Old Push-Up Bet: A kid in class bets everyone $5 that he can do between "One to two hundred pushups in ten minutes" - he did 6 and collected his money.

First off, I would recommend just building the thing on your own. She won't need a gig of ram, 512 will be enough, no fancy case but good powersupply. Plenty of HD space for movies and music. NForce+AMD for more value and performance, integraded sound and lan. For $531 I configured the following from the egg.

BIOSTAR "M7NCD" nForce2 400 $48.00
AMD Athlon XP 2600+, Barton, 512k, 333MHz FSB - retail $107.00
Kingmax 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200 $66.50
SAMSUNG 160GB 7200RPM IDE Hard $86.00
NEC 16X Double Layer DVD±RW Drive $68.00
MAXTOP Mid Tower "CSX-147K2FGRAY" $28.50
Thermaltake W0013 Silent 480W $49.00
ROSEWILL RADEON 9600 Video Card 128m 128-bit $78.00
Total $531

This is a very respectable system and a good gaming rig. You can also get a OEM version of the cpu if you want your own heatsink+fan. Don't think I missed anything else. Good luck.

My original suggestion still stands, Just add DVD.

IMO, you should never get an external DVD burner UNLESS:

1. No more 5.25" bays left to put it in (and you cant sacrifice anything in the 5.25" bays.
2. You're using a notebook.

Otherwise, get an internal. For the same level of performance, an internal is much cheaper.