New build on a budget?

[Ladderman]

Dudes and Dudettes,

I have been out of the pc building loop for a while now.....Marriage, kids, morgtage pymnts, car pymnts, etc. etc. So I have not been keeping up to speed on all the new stuff out there...well yes a little, I have built my own recently and have dabbled with OC'ing.

I have a friend who wants to build his son a new computer but he is on a really tight budget....Any Input at all would help me give him an idea of what we could build for X amount of $$.

The PC would be used for:

Flash animation creation and gaming.....I don't think "Dad" will go for the $500.00 or even $200.00 video card however. But please give me some input on what you think would work...
There will be no OC'ing, and probably the only things worth keeping from the original HP 510N might be the harddrives...

I will be buying my stuff from the usual places like Newegg, Tigerdirect, etc.

Budget might be $500.00

This is a hurry up and build it for me type of situation (I think it might be a birthday thing)

Thanks,

 

[ther00kie16]

Look for some killer CPU + MB bundles at local Fry's if you live near one, specifically e2100 series or e8400.
Otherwise, either get e2180 ($70) or e7200 ($130) + Gigabyte EP35-DS3L ($90)
RAM: whatever 2gb ddr2 kit is <$30 AR at newegg
Case + PSU: Antec NSK4480 w/ Earthwatts 380W PSU ($70 + s/h at mwave) if you could wait, you can find really good deals on budget cases and PSU
Video Card: 8800gs ($90 AR)
HD: WD 640GB or Samsung/Seagate 750GB ($100)
Optical Drive: any DVD burner ($25)

Total: just under $500 after rebates on video card and ram if you get e2180. Accessories should push total to over $500. You could go with a cheaper MB and a smaller hard drive to be able to get the e7200, which would be a decent improvement over the e2180. If you live near a Fry's however, first thing to checck would be if they have the $170 e8400 + MB deal.

 

[modoheo]

Are you talking about $500 all-inclusive from the ground up, including OS, monitor, keyboard, etc?

 

[RallyMaster]

I say you get used parts from the FS/FT section.

 

[modoheo]

For $497.00, you can build a pretty high-performing machine below (after mail-in rebate, not including shipping or OS). This machine will do everything you mentioned, and even play all current games on at least mid to high settings.

Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Wolfdale 2.53GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80571E7200 - Retail 130.00
GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail - 90.00
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model - Retail - 45.00
Rosewill R6422-P SL Black/ Silver SGCC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail - 20.00
Antec earthwatts EA380 380W ATX12V v2.0 Power Supply - Retail - 35.00
EVGA 384-P3-N851-AR GeForce 8800 GS 384MB 192-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 Video Card - Retail - 80.00 (after MIR)
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200AAKS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM - 70.00
SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S203B - OEM - 27.00

If that's too pricey for your budget, then you could downgrade the CPU to a E2180 or the GPU to a 8600 class card, but doing either would only save 30-50 bucks and would severely reduce the overall performance of the system.