The start of every computer requires one essential component. A place to put all the parts. I give alot of consideration to cases quality, Style, features even on a budget PC I feel that compromise is not acceptable in this area. One of the greatest cases I have discovered for the budget pc is the Shuttle box. There are several reason's for this: Size being first, its easy to place anywhere, Quality of the psu and cooling system, and lastly motherboard. Normally I want to pick my own motherboard however in the case of shuttle they have done such a nice job with their motherboards that if I am considering budget I simply cannot build a standard ATX with a quality psu, hsf, case and MB for the cost of a shuttle which looks better then most mid towers anyhow. As such I have selected the following shuttle box for this build. Now as a note, this is an AGP build not PCI-x, This is a budget gamer afterall and dispite the rumor's AGP is still and will continue to be viable for some time to come.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6856101471 ~ $298 + $6 ship Warranty 3 years
This leads to the next component which based on the case you can easily guess. The CPU, In this instance I have chosen an AMD based system. There are alot of reason's behind this price being the lesser of the reason's for once. Simply put if you are a dedicated gamer with the current generation of CPU's on the market there is 1 and only 1 name in your vocabularly and that is amd, Until Intel develops their next "canterwood" equalavent core they are not even a consideration for a gamer.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103537 ~ $139 Shipping Free Warranty 3 years
Now you may ask why the 3000+ and not the 3200+ when it is only $12 more. Simple the 3000+ venice core is the 3200+ simply not overclocked. A simple tweak of the settings that takes all of 30 seconds and you have a 3200+. If you actually want to push the cpu a bit this one is capable of running 3.45ghz on air cooling which would be equal to approx a 3500+ with ease. For ease however I suggest a simple bus tweak using the motherboards dynamic overclocking which does it for you.
Now that brings us to Ram. Ram is vastly more important then people seem to realize and I find myself shocked at how little people honestly know about it. Most people fail to realize what if any difference exists between good ram and generic. Most of the difference comes in the form of stability, alot of it in warranty. Most Ram manufacturers give you anywhere from 90 days to 1 year tops, and wont cover the ram under a slew of reason's. Unauthorized installer, voltage spike, it was overclocked insert 500 other lame excuses. Well one manufacturer does not put you through that bs, gives you a lifetime warranty and even backs the ram if you fry it due to overclocking. As such you want a minimum of 1gb these days and here is the choice.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820145440
$79.67 + $3.83 ship Warranty = Lifetime
What system these days is complete without the ability to burn all those things you downloaded off of newsgroups and bittorrent, all legally off course....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827131258 ~ $39.99 Shipping free, warranty 1 year.
Storage, While it was tempting to throw a Raptor drive in, I had to consider that the budget gamer likely is not going to want multiple hard drives in a raid array, and they are going to want storage space. So I went with my second choice for Capacity, price, Warranty and not to mention silence. While I tend to prefer Western Digital, I even have to admit the Seagates are quieter and a 5 year warranty is pretty darn hard to beat.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148065 $106.50 + $3.49 ship Warranty 5 years
Video card I debated heavily on, I was not as happy with the selection as I usually am as my normal flavor's were out of stock. I am fairly picky on video card and I wanted to spend alot more on this but I had to remember I was doing this as a budget pc so I had to be budget oriented. However that still did not stop me from picking up a good overall card for the money that this system should be able to game with ease for at least 2 years.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814127164 ~ $139.99 + $3.50 shipping Warranty 3 years
That effectively completes the system, What you are looking at for a core with everything shipped to you in 3 days, is $819.97. This is a bit more expensive then some of my budget gamers of the past but I took the liberty of upgrading a few more components to give more flexiability with upgrades down the road. Also I simply refuse to compromise on quality as most often it is at best sub $100 that seperates a nicely built gaming rig from a prefab, but the difference in performance is something that words cannot convey. This unit I have put together here will run any current game at medium to high settings at Good gameplay performance levels. To use FFXI as an example, this could run pretty much everything maxed in ffxi.
Another thing you will notice is everything has a minimum of 3 years worth of warranty, except the DVDrw which at $39 who honestly cares. Why buy a prefab, then have to Pay additional money for a 3 year warranty? Because the Prefabs parts are cheap and are going to break it is why the parts are cheap. The reason why a good custom will often run slightly more is because if you do it right you will have better warranty protection then a prefab owner, and likely you will never actually need yours because the hardware wont break. In the end most people will find that building a custom gaming rig is not nearly as expensive as they thought, and has far more benefits with a little planning then they could of imagined. As mentioned before a little research can drive the price of that unit down even more. I have seen people take the premise, shave some price with price watch reuse their hard drive and burner if they already had a good one and walk out the door with effectively a brand spanking new machine for under $500. Not only that but one that for the money they spent performed exponentialy better then their previous setup.
I guess I could always get into crafting on some level. 