find me a comp

[kYuKi]

Specs I want: 2.6-3.0+ Ghz, dual or quad. 2-4 gigs of ram. 160-750 gigs of Hard Drive space. No OS. With a graphics card able to play source games and a bit more. PRICE? 300-600$ Why you? I only have a phone and with it a 3G(still slow) network. Help me please .

 

[mad pistol]

AMD Athlon II X4 640 Propus 3.0GHz Quad core: $99.99
MSI 870-G45 AM3 Motherboard: $74.99
Patriot 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 1333mhz: $39.99
SAPPHIRE 100297L Radeon HD 5830 1GB Video Card: $109.99
CORSAIR Builder Series CX600 (CMPSU-600CX) 600W PSU: $69.99 -$10 rebate
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500GB HDD: $43.99
ASUS DVD burner: $20.99
NZXT GAMMA Classic Series Case: $35.99

Total (before shipping): $495.92

If you can build that yourself, you're looking at playing almost any game out there at high settings.

 

[reflex99]

Comfortable with building yourself?

damn ninjas

To make some corrections to mad's build, the G45 is not very reliable board, the Voltage regulators are notoriously weak, and prone to failure. (if you don't believe me, i can bring out the list of failures)

I would recommend this board instead:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131734

It offers AM3+ support, so it will accept bulldozer CPUs when they come out.

If you don't care about AM3+

The Gigabyte 770T-USB3 is a good one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128431

or the ASrock 770 Extreme3
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157195

 

[mad pistol]

The Gigabyte and ASUS board are far superior. Since you have the money to spare, go for either of them. The ASrock board is good too, but the quality of ASrock boards never feels like it's up to par with ASUS or Gigabyte.

BTW, the way my searches for budget builds work is that I sort by lowest price, and then I go up until I find a component that is considered "good enough" That's the one that works.

The reason I chose that MSI board was because it was the first full-size ATX AM3 motherboard I found. I didn't realize it had problems with power regulation.

 

[reflex99]

yea, it is a pretty well documented issue with low end MSI boards.

Makes me sad since I like to think i am MSI fanboy