Hey, thanks for being such a nice guy, zed. ;D
For
this build, an x3 720 is too expensive. Even though it's highly overclockable itself, zed.
With a monitor AND an OS (since the average user shouldn't have to deal with Server 08), it's way out of budget.
The only reason I'm going to recommend something besides that build you have there (which, by the way, is a nice build) is because with the games he plays, an onboard 3200/3300 chipset would be more than enough for runescape and other games. It will save him some money. Also, I somehow doubt there's going to be overclocking.
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Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives
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$610.30 after shipping, minus 10 bucks in an MIR. So the end total is
$600.30.
I went with this X2 7750 build. It has a combo deal with the Antec 300, so that's a no brainer.
The mobo is AM3 ready, would only need a BIOS flash, so it has upgradeability options, plus it has the onboard 3200 which will be plenty for the gaming his brother does.
4gb of RAM is cheap nowadays, no reason not to get it. You could spend an extra 7 bucks and get PI Blacks, but you don't need to.
You only need a good 400w PSU to run all this. I'm currently running a not-so-great 420w PSU with 2 HDDs, an x3 720, 2 disk drives, 3 fans, etc, and I'm still going strong. 400w will be plenty.
You can shave 5 bucks and get a 320gb HDD, but a 500gb will be a nice 5 dollar investment.
DVD-Burner, that's a no-brainer.
Now with this build, by still keeping it around 600 bucks, I was able to throw in a nice 22" monitor AND an OS. So you get a bigger monitor with a higher resolution, plus Vista SP1 64-bit.
