Check out this gaming rig.

[Vizzo]

This GAMING rig is for a friend who has a budget of 2000 CANADIAN and can go a little over. The place he wants to buy it is www.canadacomputers.com because he can pick it up there and he doesnt want to ship. Feel free to nitpick at anything you think would be a better replacement. He wont be OCing. Also I dont know much about video cards so if there are any suggestions please tell me.

Also if you think i should get DDR instead of DDR2 or 939 instead of AM2 please feel free to comment on anything, what to change, whats overkill etc. Thanks

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Dual Core Socket AM2 Windsor
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=010231&cid=CPU.907
Price: $283

Heatsink: OCZ Tempest CPU Cooler
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=010902&cid=FN.349
Price: $59

Motherboard: Asus M2N-E Socket AM2
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=010459&cid=MB.526
Price: $115

RAM: OCZ DDR2 PC2-5400 667MHz EL Gold Edition 2GB
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=009702&cid=RAM.475
Price: $220

Video Card: Asus EN7600GT/2DHT nVidia GeForce 7600GT
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=009604&cid=999.243
Price: $230

Hard Drive 1: Western Digital Caviar 250GB SATAII (WD2500KS) 7200RPM 16MB Buffer
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=007311&cid=HD.96
Price: $97

Optical Drive: LG GSA-H10L 16X/16X DVD-RW BLACK INTERNAL, BLUK, SUPERMULTI + LIGHTSCRIBE
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=010811&cid=CR.184
Price: $50

Power Supply: OCZ (OCZ600GXSSLI) GameXStream 600 Watt Power Supply, Dual GPU,
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=010075&cid=PS.808
Price: $140

Case: Thermaltake Soprano VB1000BWS
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=006429&cid=CS.664
Price: $95

Speakers: Logitech (970118) Z-2300 2.1 Speaker System
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=008896&cid=SP
Price: $90

Monitor: ViewSonic Xtreme VX922 19" LCD
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=009296&cid=MT.983
Price: $290

Keyboard and Mouse: Logitech (967553) Cordless Desktop MX 3000 Laser
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=008621&cid=PE.826
Price: $90

Operating System: XP PRO (thanks)

Price before stupid Tax: 1759
Final price with 13% tax: 1988

Please if you have any improvement or changes feel free to comment.

 

[MrZucchiniHead]

for an Os i'd stick with Xp professional or home edition. id definately stay with Am2, cause later when am3's come out you dont have to replace anything but the CPu when you upgrade unless you want DDr3 support, but we'll have to wait to see if it makes a huge difference.

 

[Trotter]

If he's not overclocking, go with the stock cooler.

SLI is overkill, unless it is the same price as non-SLI boards.

Forget the Raptor and get a couple of Seagate SATA2 16MB cache NCQ hard drives and put them in RAID0. Almost the same performance, at a better price.

 

[Spartan]

You specified this to be primarily for gaming, so I would swap out the 10k rpm hard drive and use that money towards upgrading the vid card to a 7900GT/GTX.

On the topic of Windows XP, don't go the route of x64. Stick with "normal" XP Pro, as the driver support is MUCH better.

 

[Vizzo]

Thanks spartan666 yeah i decided to go with normal XP Pro. I also scrapped the Raptor, he doesnt want it. I also changed the mobo. He wont be having SLI